Recording With a Mixer

I was given the Behringer XENYX X2014 USB. It is a nice little mixer and I love using it, however there is a problem. I use it with audacity all the time, but thats just me alone. A few of my friends are coming over to record and I need to use all four of the preamps on the mixer, however Audacity doesn’t recognize that I have four preamps, only two. Could somebody tell me how to get it so that all four can record all at the same time, it will save me a huge headache.

Do you mean “XENYX X1204USB” :
“Built-in [u]stereo[/u] USB/Audio Interface”

it will save me a huge headache.

I think I can do it, but it’s still a huge headache.

This mixer has a Pre-Fade Send and an FX (Effects) Send, and they’re different. So technically, you could record the first two instruments like you would any normal sound production and connect the Pre-Fade Out and the FX Send to a Behringer UCA-202, Left and Right and plug that into the other computer.

That one would be a little magic because those two musical instruments would not have volume faders like the first two. You would have to use the Preamp/Gain volume controls up next to 3 and 4 inputs to set the volume—or, I guess the two send volume controls would work. Oh, and you would have to use the Audacity volume meters because 3 and 4 would not have sound metering.

Of course, you would need to use the Audacity volume metering on all four so as not to overload anything during the performance. Overload is deadly on musical performances. If you clip the sound channel, there is no recovery.

That means you would need to watch both computers and the mixer at once.

Piece 'o cake.

You’re not playing one of the instruments, are you? You’re going to be very busy.

Koz

At the end of a performance, you should Export instruments 3 and 4 as a stereo show, transfer it to the first computer and import it to Audacity along with 1 and 2 (also a stereo show). you can easily split up the two stereo shows into individual channels for mixing, filtering, effects and production. Drop-down menu on the left > Split Stereo to Mono.

You can set up Windows Networking, but even on a Mac, networking protocols and WiFi routing make my head hurt, so I push everything over to a little USB thumb drive and transfer stuff that way. That also give me a hardware backup of the work.

Enjoy.

Koz

If you go much over about three minutes, the two shows may not sync with each other. One show may be slightly longer due to computer manufacturing variations. You can easily cure that with Effect > Change Speed on one of the two tracks to match the other.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/change_speed.html

Koz