How do I record live sound using the software on a laptop and a mixer soundboard? I am totally new to the software and need help putting it together with my sound equipment and using it to do live recording for church revivals. (For music and speaking together.)
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Also new to the forum.
<<<live sound using the software on a laptop and a mixer soundboard? >>>
Which computer, Which mixer, Which microphone, Which Audacity? Model Numbers, please. There’s billions of different combinations available.
Koz
Audacity: v1.2.6 Jazz ++ CDex v1.70b2 Mixere Gramofile v1.6
My vision is to hook it up to my 16 channel Mackie mixerboard: 1604-VLZPRO…which I already know how to connect my 2 powered Mackie speakers and 2 powered JBL speakers into. I would like to replace using our mp3 player for music and just use the Dell Precision laptop M70 I am on now to run Audacity and record and play background music at the same time.
Modern PC laptops invariably have poor quality sound cards built in, so if sound quality is important to you, then you will need to buy an external audio device. (I presume that you are using Windows).
I have an inexpensive Behringer UCA202 external USB device that works well with Audacity and the sound quality is very good (other makes / models are also available).
To use your setup with the addition of an external USB sound card (must have line level inputs and outputs);
- Connect your existing equipment in the normal way (do not switch anything on yet)
- Plug the USB sound card into the laptop USB port.
- Connect the “Record out” from the mixing desk to the “Line in” of the sound card.
- Connect the “Line out” of the sound card to a pair of spare line level (or instrument level, but not microphone level) inputs on the mixing desk.
- Boot up the computer
- Check in the Windows Control Panel (Sounds and Audio Devices) that the USB device is selected as the default record and playback device.
- Open Audacity and check in Preferences (from the Edit menu) that “software playthrough” is switched off/ not selected. (Audio I/O tab)
- In Audacity Preferences, select either the USB device, or “Microsoft Sound Mapper” as both the recording and the playback device. (test this out beforehand, either setting should work, but don’t leave it till the actual show to find out).
- Switch on the rest of the equipment in the normal manner.
- Play an MP3 file in your favourite media player (Foobar2000 recommended) and adjust the mixing desk inputs to suitable levels (the levels in your computer mixer will probably have no effect at all - that is normal).
- Click on the recording level meter in Audacity and send a signal from the mixing desk to the USB sound card - you should see the recording level meters spring into life. Adjust the levels using the mixing desk as necessary - be sure to avoid overloading the sound card, keep it well below 0dB on Audacity’s meters.
- Click “Record” on Audacity.
- When your recording is finished, Click on the Stop button in Audacity, then Export the audio as a WAV file. Even if you want to do further processing or editing, you should Export as a WAV file at this stage so that you have a safe backup copy - do not overwrite this backup with later exports, use a different file name.
Thank you for the detailed response! I need someone to walk me through his like I am a 4-year old. I do have a basic knowledge of playing music through the computer on windows media player or creative player. How do I keep that going while using the software to record the service (live speaking and singing)? Thank you so much!
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Connect your existing equipment in the normal way (do not switch anything on yet)
-
Plug the USB sound card into the laptop USB port.
-
Connect the “Record out” from the mixing desk to the “Line in” of the sound card.
-
Connect the “Line out” of the sound card to a pair of spare line level (or instrument level, but not microphone level) inputs on the mixing desk.
-
Boot up the computer
-
Check in the Windows Control Panel (Sounds and Audio Devices) that the USB device is selected as the default record and playback device.
-
Open Audacity and check in Preferences (from the Edit menu) that “software playthrough” is switched off/ not selected. (Audio I/O tab)
-
In Audacity Preferences, select either the USB device, or “Microsoft Sound Mapper” as both the recording and the playback device. (test this out beforehand, either setting should work, but don’t leave it till the actual show to find out).
-
Switch on the rest of the equipment in the normal manner.
-
Play an MP3 file in your favourite media player (Foobar2000 recommended) and adjust the mixing desk inputs to suitable levels (the levels in your computer mixer will probably have no effect at all - that is normal).
-
Click on the recording level meter in Audacity and send a signal from the mixing desk to the USB sound card - you should see the recording level meters spring into life.
-
Adjust the levels using the mixing desk as necessary - be sure to avoid overloading the sound card, keep it well below 0dB on Audacity’s meters.
-
Click “Record” on Audacity.
-
When your recording is finished, Click on the Stop button in Audacity.
-
Export the audio as a WAV file.
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Computers don’t much like doing that and it takes a certain skill set to get it all proper. That tends to conflict with…
<<<I need someone to walk me through his like I am a 4-year old.>>>
You can certainly crank through this step by step using the excellent posted instructions, but death will come when something goes wrong. I can’t even begin to predict all the nutso things that PCs can do to you while you’re off chilling a pint. Couple that with live recording at the same time and on the same machine and I would strongly recommend making a couple of similar productions all the way through before you tell people you’re a grand master at it.
I think my favorite killer is volume control. You’re in the middle of what looks like a very successful production and somebody says they’d like the playback a little lower in volume. Remember the last task you launched on the machine was recording, so all the controls you have access to have to do with recording volume, not playback volume. So you have to change the focus of the machine and settings and recognize what you did without damaging or stopping the capture by accident.
But you can’t leave it there because now you can’t stop the recording.
People producing a complicated podcast have the same problem. It looks like you should be able to do all of that in one PC. There are quite a few damaged sound podcasts that seem to indicate you can’t.
Koz