My friend and myself recently picked up a new USB mixing board. It’s a nice one, but we’re a little confused… Can we make Audacity record each port/instrument on a seperate ‘track’ or ‘channel’, so we can edit each instrument individually? (Without recording each of the instruments one at a time…)
You’ve got to tell us what mixer you have before we can answer that. Some can, most can’t.
Most USB boards mix down to stereo for input to the computer. For individual channels for editing, you need a firewire multimix mixer- like Mackie Onyx 1640, Alesis Multimix 8,16,24, or Phonic 8, 12, 18 to name a few. The USB version of them or the Behringer USB can only send the stereo mix from the mixer to your computer.
you probably cannot do that with a usb mixer, because usb connection is usually a solution to a bad soundcard or a cheaper way to connect to the computer. I personally think interfaces are pointless and a waste of money. Usually if a mixer separates its tracks like you want, it would most likely be a fire wire connection, and it would probably come with a driver. also, you have to have an extremely fast computer to keep up with that many inputs and play them back with the right timing, unless you record in a lower quality.
I will tell you now, it is best to just skip the whole record everything at once thing, because it usually doesn’t work out to well. I’ve done it before and you usually end up re-doing every track on its own anyways, even if its a simple song.