Audacity Forum

Hi to all , first time poster. let me start by saying that I've used Audacity on several live music recordings with great success,up until now. My question concerns my latest project. This is a 6 track recording with the 1st track being an imported MP3 stereo backing track with the remaining 5 tracks (guitar/vocal) recorded live (mono) via condensor mic(48v supplied) plugged directly to the mic input of my sound card. The trouble comes when the last track ,the vocal track, is added. Prior to that the play back of the previous 5 tracks sounds great. After adding the vocal track, the sound quality of the project on playback is horrendous!Staticky,popping,delays, a real mess. When I remove the vocal track the previous tracks playback fine. If I open a new project and record the vocal track ,it sounds great. I tried exporting the vocal track to a wav/mp3 file and import back into the target project and that doesn't work either. I'm at my wits end. I'm using a PC with 2.8GHZ proc. and 512MB of RAM with the onboard sound card. Again ,my methods have always worked in the past. Have I exceeded the track capacity of Audacity or perhaps the capacity of my sound card? Any insight would be greatly appreciated ,thanks.

First off,

Have I exceeded the track capacity of Audacity or perhaps the capacity of my sound card?

No, and no. You can scratch those two issues off the list. Audacity has no limit and it doesn't use your sound card to mix tracks. You've also got plenty of computing power in your processor for this. I used to record tunes with 20 tracks using an 800 MHz processor.

Second,

recorded live (mono) via condensor mic(48v supplied) plugged directly to the mic input of my sound card

This really bothers me. That mic input is not supposed to have a professional mic plugged into it. It's designed to have a computer mic plugged in (they have a 3-conductor phono plug on them, usually the plug is colored red). You're supposed to plug a condensor mic into a mic pre-amp and then plug the pre-amp into the Line In on your sound card. The ART TubeMP is a very cheap mic-pre that works really well for project studios.

If you plug a real mic directly into a computer's Mic In port, you'll end up with a noisy recording. Using a pre-amp is the only way to fix that.

Just to be clear, you've got 1 stereo track that you've imported (make sure you don't move that file or delete it, your project is dependent on it). You're also able to record 4 new mono tracks with 1 microphone (obviously not at the same time). But when you attempt to record the final track using the same mic setup, things go haywire.

I can think of three things that might be going wrong.

1) Your project is suddenly clipping and you need to turn the gain down equally on all the tracks. Turn them all down by 6dB, does that sound better?

2) You've suddenly moved the mic around and now it's pointing at something noisy (like your computer case). What does that last track sound like when it's Soloed? Does it sound as good as the other 4 tracks sound when they're Soloed?

3) The source you're recording for the last track (voice) is quieter than the other sources. If that's true, then the recording level will not be as great and you'll have a much lower signal/noise ratio on that last track. You'd have to compensate by turning the gain up on the last track, but that will turn the noise up as well and raise the overall noise floor. Is the gain on the last track significantly higher than the gain on the others?

Thanks for the quick response Alatham!!

Sorry for not being clearer. The mic goes thru a preamp and converted to an 1/8in. output to the sound card. I've used this mic successfuly on many other projects just not with as many tracks. As far as your question of the ability to record 4 new tracks individually with the same mic with everything fine till the last vocal track ,that's correct. The level of the voice track is fine , as far as Audacity's level meter is concerned. Again , when I record just a vocal take in a new project window the sound/level is perfect on playback. Also , thanks for the heads-up with regards to the first imported stereo track being of paramount importance to my project ;^) , I did NOT know that. Per your suggestion I'll try playing with the levels (<6db) and see what happens when they're soloed. Thanks again for clearing up what in can't be, in any event.