Hi everyone - Covid-19 has forced me and my band mates into a really rough cover tunes project. I have literally no recording gear, so I am recording bass directly into Audacity on my Windows laptop.
My signal chain is bass (G&L L2000) into pedal board as preamp (Darkglass B7K - EBS Billy Sheehan Deluxe Drive - Boss EQ - Shiftline cab simulator) then straight into the laptop via a guitar cable with a 1\4 inch to 3.5mm adapter on the end. Yes - incredibly crude but to be honest it’s sounds perfect! I have 2 problems.
The first problem…bare with me here. I am monitoring my playing with the last pedal on my pedal board - the cab simulator. The unit also has a 3.5mm Aux in. I use this for the drum tracks I’m playing along with, playing off my cell phone. It also has a head phone out. With this I get a mix of what I’m recording to and my bass tone. So it is essentially where I monitor. The only problem is the volume level of this unit also controls the input volume of the signal fed to the laptop, and therefore Audacity. With a level I’m happy with for monitoring in my ears the signal for Audacity is too hot and distorts. To get the input level low enough so as to not distort the recorded bass signal I have to lower the pedalboard output so much I can’t really hear my playing or the drum tracks enough.
So with that context - without having anything I can plug in between the pedal board and the laptop to lower just the bass signal does Audacity have a way of lowering the input gain to stop clipping? I can’t seem to work it out?
Lastly - I can’t seem to hear the bass through the laptop as I play… I can see the input level as I play, I can see the track recording etc but I can’t hear what I’m playing coming through the laptop speakers. Can you monitor via Audacity? I can hear the sounds when in playback mode, just not while I’m playing.
Thank you for any assistance.
