Recording With More Than One Mic

[proudnole]

Hey, I was wondering how to record with more than one microphone at a time. I'm podcasting and I have three people and we all can't use the same mic so I have two. I've been looking all through the program and haven't found a feature to assign each audio track to a different mic. Thanks!

[steve]

To record 2 microphones onto different channels, you either need a mixer that allows you to pan one microphone all the way to the left and the other microphone all the way to the right, or you need a sound card that has 2 microphone inputs. You can then record a stereo track - this will have one microphone on the the left channel and the other microphone on the right channel - then split the stereo track into 2 mono tracks.

To record more than 2 microphones onto their own tracks at the same time, you need a multi-channel sound card that works with Audacity (not all multi-channel sound cards will work with Audacity).

[whomper]

or a cheap mixer and run them all into the same channel

[steve]

... to assign each audio track to a different mic.

or a cheap mixer and run them all into the same channel

[kozikowski]

Most regular computers, Mac, PC, or Linux will not let you do multiple microphones. They have a place to plug in one microphone (no "Y" cables allowed) and Audacity will only record from one sound device, so both the hardware and the software are working against you.

This is the mixer I use. Up to four microphones and it has sound level meters, phantom power, and headphone connections.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/PV6

I'm on a Mac which has stereo Line-In connections. Most PC laptops don't support that. I understand this mixer has a version with a USB output.

Koz

[katycopsey]

I use a mixer (sportmix) from JKAudio which allows one member to phone in for an interview and have 3? live mics (could be 4).IT is not cheap but each mic has its own headphone and volume before the master volume spits it out into the computer and audacity. I have not used multi mic this end yet, but have used the 1 mic (me) and one phone input (guest) to one audacity file. Gives a solid recording that accounts for voice levels being different, but a huge learning curve for me who is not technical.

[kozikowski]

How do you connect the phone?
Koz