Hi, I’m VERY new to recording guitar through audio interfaces and whatnot. I am a GIANT noob on these things, and am just looking for some friendly advice. I did buy a Behringer 302USB Premium 5-Input Mixer USB Audio Interface (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005EHILV4/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i04?ie=UTF8&psc=1) after looking through some reviews on it and people saying they recorded their guitar through it. When it arrives, is it easy as plugging the USB into my computer, and then my guitar straight into the mixer? I do have a multi-effects pedal for my guitar which is the Line 6 Floor Pod Plus. Do I still need to use my amp with my audio interface for recording? Can I still run my effects pedal WITH the audio interface? Kind of looking for a pretty detailed explanation of how to go about doing this. 
Thanks!
That was painful.
The instructions for his mixer are in five languages – on the page at the same time.
As I understand this, you would plug your guitar 1/4" plug into the mixer at the top of channel one and keep turning down the volume controls (Gain, MIC, and Main Mix) until none of the red overload lights comes on when you strum, but you do get the green flashing SIG/CLIP lights. You should be able to plug your headphones into the place set for them, turn up the Phones control and hear what you’re doing.
That’s full stop. That’s the basic running of the mixer. If you can’t get it this far, then we need to find out why. Forget the computer, forget the pedals and special effects. Go for the green lights and music in your headphones.
Notes:
— The little sliders should all be in the middle of their travel and the second volume knob along the bottom should be turned down.
— Use The Wall Power Supply! Getting mixer power from the computer on the USB cable may be convenient, but not if the mixer picks up computer buzz, whine and other noises along with it.
Plug the mixer into the computer and start (or restart) Audacity. Use the recording drop-down (microphone symbol) and look for the mixer listing. It may only say “USB Audio CODEC” or something like that. That’s probably it. Attached is what my panel looks like.
Press Record and strum something. The Audacity red recording meters should bounce and the blue waves should start to form.
http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity1_record.jpg
Once you get all that running, you should be able to plug your guitar into your pedals and plug the pedals into the mixer. I have a friend that does this to four different pedals, one after the other, so there seems to be no limit.
Let us know where you get stuck. Do Not scramble the steps. If you do it will take us days to figure out what failed.
Koz
If your amp has stereo Line-Out connections, you can connect them to the mixer “Line-In” connectors, Left and Right, next to where you had the guitar plugged in. Then you turn up the second knob from the left on the bottom of the mixer.
That will pick up the guitar and the amp effects, but not the sound of the cabinet.
The last step is to plug an actual microphone where it says Mic-In and use that to record the amp speaker. That will pick up everything, the guitar, the amp effects and the cabinet sound, but it will also pick up the washing machine next door, the jet going over, and the TV upstairs.
Once you get into live recording, we start a new thread.
Koz
Haha, yeah my post was pretty unorganized. Was just typing questions that came to my head at the time. Seriously though thank you SO much for this reply, it was incredibly helpful. The thing is though is that I want to use my effects pedal with this if I could since it was given as a gift and was kind of pricey. Don’t just want to NOT use it, you know? The pedal does have an “input” and “phones” plug-in that I plug from my amp. I have a cable from my amp into the “phones” part and then a cable from my guitar to the “input”, which is how I normally played my music. It does also have a “in” and “out” plug in for midi (no idea what that is), a l/mono and right output (no idea what that is either), and an “aux input.” I don’t use those, but just giving information in case I need to use them if I want to use them with my audio interface.
Was just typing questions that came to my head at the time.
That’s how I answer them. We’re going to get along just fine.
I want to use my effects pedal with this…
Baby steps. Once the basic recording system is up and running, you can branch out into many options. The player who makes us nuts gets out the new boxes, plugs it all up, it doesn’t work and then wants us to troubleshoot all six thousand wires at once.
Audacity doesn’t deal with MIDI particularly well, so we can go around those connections. MIDI is machine control. “Press the fifteenth key from the left very hard, hold it for three seconds and then let go. Play it in a ‘Grand Piano’ sound.”
That’s like a MIDI command. It’s not actual sound. It tells the keyboard how to make the sound. The thing that’s weird about it is the sound will change depending on the keyboard. If you email me a MIDI “song” that calls for a Grand Piano and my keyboard Grand Piano sounds awful, then the song will sound awful. One up side is you can choose the instrument at the time of the performance. It’s perfectly valid to MIDI perform a delicate violin sonata on a sackbut. In a different key.
People treat MIDI like it’s just another sound channel and it’s not like that at all.
So leaving off the pedal for a minute, did everything else work? Were you able to get the green lights on the mixer when you played the guitar? Could you hear it in your headphones plugged into the mixer? You do have headphones, right?
As a fuzzy rule, you should avoid turning any of the three sound controls: Gain, Mic, and Main Mix all the way up. Start with each control about 12 noon and I’m expecting you to have to turn them down. Having those controls really different from each other can cause noise problems.
You are messing with three different sound signals. Line-Out and Line-In are close cousins to Headphone level. Many machines can cross those three very easily. Then comes guitar pickup level which is quieter than Line-Level, but it’s much more powerful than Microphone level.
Then there’s Microphone Level which is atomic-level tiny. I call it the delicate butterfly of the sound world. You usually need special cables, electronics and considerations to make a microphone work without problems. You only have one “real” microphone connection on your mixer and that’s the one far up-left. You might well ask how you can plug a guitar into a microphone connector when I said they were very different. Yes, that did get my attention, but the instructions are very clear that you can do that with no harm as long as you adjust the three volume knobs as needed.
Give it a shot. You know you got it wrong when either you can’t get rid of the red overload lights, or you do get the green lights and the guitar sounds like fuzz but you didn’t want fuzz.
See, this is all the stuff you have to iron out before you throw the pedal into the mix.
Koz
I wrote pieces of the overdubbing tutorial. Overdubbing/Sound-On-Sound can be pretty complicated (and rewarding when you get it right), but we found it valuable to insist that the player be able to make a good straight sound recording before they get fancy.
Koz
You are…an incredible help. Honestly. I actually did not get it in the mail yet xD it should be here tomorrow and I will try everything you wanted me to try and get back to you (if you’re still up for helping me out). Thank you again. One more question, do you have any idea if this AI has some sort of looper? I’ve always wanted to mess around with playing something, looping it, and then playing something overtop.
Kozikowski, what cables do I need for this? The cable from my guitar to my mixer, the usb from the mixer to my pc, but do I also need audio cables from input and output to my sound card?