Just a quick comment - for multi-tracking myself or overlaying onto backing tracks, Audacity will play the tracks it's got while you're recording a new one, and cunningly time-shift the recorded track to sync it after you press 'stop'. This means I can plug my headphones into my stereo (connected to the Line Out of the PC), play along and record real time, just using the PC mic.
This is how I recorded my arrangement of 'Nostalgia in Times Square' for sax quartet (
listen here) completely for free in our spare room!
Nick
Hi Nick,
I’m going to have to go back and visit your site tonight and listen to some more of your playing, great stuff.
As Chris mentioned above, yes the gain control is quite important because doing it software side will create more noise, however, there are USB mics with their own gain control such as the one I use so this is also worth looking for.
Saxnik is also right about syncing multiple tracks in Audacity, I forgot that it could do that! the only thing I would say about Audacity is that the MP3 output is not very good quality, WAV is perfectly fine so I use a converter to convert the WAV to MP3 with much better results, obviously with higher end software this wouldn't be a problem.
Here is a recording I made with mine. Bear in mind this is the first recording I ever made on my sax and the mic was just plugged in without changing any settings etc, plus I sound really bad! The sax track is way too loud on this one!
Hi Jason,
Brilliant, the more people that record and put stuff up the better as far as I'm concerned, after all, we are talking about music and making music, words can only go so far. A good first recording, just out of curiosity how far away were you from the mic and where generally was the mic pointing? Also how are you dealing with reverb in Audacity, or are you not?
The Shure PG27-USB is quite a new mic if memory serves me right, I suspect Shure have spent some time considering the best way to implement gain stages, analogue to digital conversion and USB interface, great that it also provides a monitoring solution.
John,
Monitoring is important as Jason mentioned above, but you might not be aware of where the potential problems lie. Take this example:
Your computer plays the backing track off the time line at the same time you’re playing and recording your sax. The sax signal is picked up by your mic and sent to the computer, somewhere along the way the signal is converted from analogue to digital. Your sax is then mixed with the backing track in the computer and pushed out again, converted back into analogue, and played back in your headphones. Sounds great, yeah? Both your sax and the backing track in your headphones at the same time. Except the processing takes a little time so the sax lags behind the backing track by a fraction of a second but it’s enough to put you off your timing. This lag is dependent on the quality (sample rate & bit depth) you’re recording at and how powerful your system is.
To get around this problem a lot of interfaces now enable you to do a monitoring mix completely in the analogue environment so there is no lag what so ever, others do it in software but manage to do it with very low lag times, know as “Low latency mixing”
This is purely a personal preference but I prefer to have my headphones covering just one ear and only having the backing track played through them, my other ear I use for listening to the sound I’m making with the sax.
All the best,
Chris
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