Audacity Forum

Cast your mind back. Was there a Noise Gate that had problems with mono? The gate I'm using now works famously. This one is v2-1 and the control panels are very different.

This is the down side of shifting between machines twice a day. Actually, it works too well. The silence between the performance blobs goes to dead zero and it sounds funny that way. That's a setting, I understand that.

Koz

The current version is Noise Gate v.2.2. (Koz - PM sent)
Personally I thought that the Noise Removal worked very well on that recording.

<<<Personally I thought that the Noise Removal worked very well on that recording.>>>

I'm not surprised. The shoot was engineered to make correction almost redundant. It's the textbook perfect sound shoot for correction tools. Very low level, constant noise in a seriously high quality, uncompressed, wide band file.

Did you use the trick of boosting the level of the sound before the profile capture?

Koz

I usually don't pay much attention to the windows forums (linux and mac user here), but this one caught my attention while browsing the new and active topics (this one starting to get long too hehe I wonder if one shouldn't be moved to the recording equipment forum...)

Anyways, I'd like to add that if you're going to buy a mic usb preamp, my vote would go for the art dual pre usb of course... I don't know how well it would work with the guitar pickup but, if it helps to know, the mic inputs are XLR/jack hybrid (you can either connect a XLR cable or a Jack one). Good thing about this preamp is that you can connect two mics and record them separatelly, one goes for the left channel and the other for the right channel. If you have two mics, one for voice and one for guitar and record both at the same, well... both will catch both instruments at the same time... but (depending on the mic placement) at different levels so that should add an extra margin on post-processing editing (compared to using a single mic for both guitar and voice).

Koz, your playing is not that bad... I mean, it's not your guitar... You'll get there with some more practice
I'm not much of a fan of steel strings, but for a $20 mic I think it's pretty decent.

Hey, I have another question...... would this preamp allow me to record my acoustic guitar and vocals at the same time? http://www.long-mcquade.com/products/87 ... erface.htm

From what I understand it would..... I understand you would connect the USB cable to the laptop from the preamp.... connect the microphone and guitar pickup into the left and right inputs of the preamp.... and yeah.... I also should be able to connect my computer speakers into the headphone jack for latency free monitoring and amplification of the guitar and vocals?

Also..... it says left and right input... does that mean your vocals will only come out of the left speaker and the guitar will only come out of the right speaker? or will the vocals and guitar come out of both speakers... I assume they will come out of both as I assume that left and right input is just a way of organizing them.... example: Left input is on the left side of the preamp and right is on the right side... correct? Just checking and it may seem like a stupid question....

PS: I am sorry if I kinda acted rude to people on this forum who simply wanted to give me legitimate advice. I now understand that I need a higher budget then 50 bucks if I want quality recordings that I can mix and do stuff with. This is even a low end preamp but if I buy a decent condenser mic for 100 bucks It shouldn't be too bad sound right?

Thanks,
-Chris

cwaugh18 wrote:From what I understand it would.....

From what I understand, that is correct. Hopefully bgravato can confirm.

cwaugh18 wrote:it says left and right input... does that mean your vocals will only come out of the left speaker and the guitar will only come out of the right speaker?

When you initially record, yes it will. That could be a bit weird for live Skype, but not a problem, in fact a major advantage for recording.
After recording, using Audacity 1.3.12 you would click on the track name and select "Split Stereo to Mono".
This will create two mono tracks from the stereo track and they will both play out of both speakers. One track will contain the voice (plus any "over-spill" from the guitar) and the other will contain the guitar. You can then process (independently) and mix the two tracks as required.

That looks like the preamp I have and that I was talking about (ART USB Dual Pre).

Is that price canadian dollars? If so that sounds like a good price for it too.

On the rear of the preamp you have (stereo) headphone output, you can connect that to headphones (preferred so that the sounds doesn't look back to the mics) or to speakers. What you will hear from there will depend on the position of the button on the left of it which says "MIX". If you put it all to the left you'll hear only what is coming from the inputs of the preamp (I think this is what you want). If you put it all to the right you'll listen to what's playing in your computer (it will work like an external sound card). If you put it in the middle you'll listen to both what's coming from the inputs and what's playing on the computer.

Regarding left and right... On the left speaker (or headphone) you'll hear what's going in the left input and on the right speaker you'll listen what's going in the right input. In an ideal scenario with no "spillover" you would have the guitar on one channel (for example left) and the voice on the other (right). Of course there is no ideal scenario so there will be some "spill over" from one channel to the other... This means that the mic in front of your mouth will capture mostly your voice but will also pick up a bit of all the surrounding sounds, namely the guitar.

I hope I was clear enough. If you still have any doubts please ask again

If you're looking for good value for the buck mics I would recommend the T-Bone's from Thomann. I have the SC1100 and I'm very pleased with it (recording the guitar only, I can't sing so I haven't tested it for voice but should be even better). I believe the SC1200 should be slightly better for a little more money. Both of them might be a bit over your budget though... But for voice you'll probably do fine with a cheaper mic, since you'll probably need less gain for voice than you need for the guitar. Take a look at the cheaper T.Bone's (SC400, SC450 and SC600). Samson's C01 and C03 are regarded as decent ones too. Some models by Behringer, Shure and SE Electronics are mentioned sometimes too. I have no experience with any of those so I can't recommend any in particular... I'll let the elders come in and give their advice on that...

cwaugh18 wrote:..

From what I understand it would..... I understand you would connect the USB cable to the laptop from the preamp.... connect the microphone and guitar pickup into the left and right inputs of the preamp.... and yeah.... I also should be able to connect my computer speakers into the headphone jack for latency free monitoring and amplification of the guitar and vocals?
...
I now understand that I need a higher budget then 50 bucks if I want quality recordings that I can mix and do stuff with. This is even a low end preamp but if I buy a decent condenser mic for 100 bucks It shouldn't be too bad sound right?

Thanks,
-Chris

that is correct
and is what we recommended many messages back
...

that would sound quite good - especially considering what you started with

and you can get a decent mike for under 50 if you look for a sale
mxl 990 is often $49. get the 990/991 for $80 and use one for vocal and one for the instrument. get the knockoff sm58 or 57 for $30 or
$60 for one vocal and one instrument (58/57 pair).

I would not recommend a Shure SM57 or SM58 for recording acoustic guitar, and I certainly would not recommend a "knock-off" version for the job. I don't know about the mxl 990, I've never used one, but the reviews are mixed.
I would be happy to recommend the T-Bone SC450 or any of the more costly SC microphones - I've used several models and they are excellent value for money.
(I'll be testing their top model, the SCT2000 against some expensive brand name professional studio microphones in a few weeks, which I'm looking forward to. I'll post the key points in the review section when testing is complete).

stevethefiddle wrote:(I'll be testing their top model, the SCT2000 against some expensive brand name professional studio microphones in a few weeks, which I'm looking forward to. I'll post the key points in the review section when testing is complete).

Looking forward to it.

I wonder how the SC1200 compares to the SC1100. Knowing what I know now if I was going to buy now I would probably pay a little more €€ and go for the SC1200.

I think Chris already has a mic in the guitar and is going to use the new mic for voice recording only. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Steve do you have any idea how the SC400 and SC600 compare to the SC450? The latter seems to be more expensive than the other two...