Another Multitracking question...

Special Interest Groups Recording Techniques
1

I have a drum track I created in TabTrax which I want to play AND record my piano at the same time. I have a Yamaha DGX620. I have an external soundcard (Creative Soundblaster). And I HAVE selected ‘play other tracks while recording new one’ and ‘play new track while recording it’. So I plug my piano into the external soundcard, and the card into my laptop. I plug my headphones into the soundcard, and for playback and recording I select ‘Soundblaster’, so I should be able to hear the drums when I plress play, and my piano when I start playing it as it records. But when I do this I get a slight echo on the piano!

I have got round it by playing the drums on my CD player, just recording the piano and then lining them up in audacity, but I would really like to record some actual ‘live takes’ with the drums playing in audacity as I record the piano.

Any help woud be much appreciated!

2

Try deselecting ‘play new track while recording it’. This option is a software workaround for soundcards that can’t handle simultaneous monitoring of inputs and outputs. If your card does support both, then the echo is probably the hardware playback of the incoming piano track plus a slightly delayed version coming via Audacity.

3

Every PCI SoundBlaster card that I’ve come across supports this. Usually monitoring of the input source is just a matter of making sure that it’s not muted in the Creative Mixer (but this is not advisable if you are using a microphone and monitoring with speakers as you will probably get feedback).

4

Thank you so much! It works perfecty now :smiley: