Recording from multiple microphones through a mixer?

Hello! I’m using version 3.0.2 of Audacity on a Windows 10 Home install.

My friends and I are trying to record a little D&D game we’re running through a Behringer U-Phoria UMC404HD USB mixer hooked up to a few dynamic mics we’ve scrounged. My question is this: Would it be possible to preserve each microphone input as a distinct channel within an Audacity recording? I purchased the mixer after receiving assurances that it would preserve each individual channel as opposed to mixing them down into one, thinking that I could then edit each input individually after the fact as opposed to having someone riding the levels the entire time. As it stands, I haven’t been able to preserve discrete channels for each mic—one thing I tried was following the directions, both on the wiki and scattered about the net, as to how to compile a version of Audacity with ASIO support, thinking that might at least give me more options if I had to try to use stereo track splitting to record each of the four microphone inputs as individual mono channels, but I couldn’t seem to get the end product to compile correctly.

As it stands, the mixer works fine; it interfaces with the computer well enough; it would be nice to be able to preserve each input as its own individual thing, though, if only for adjusting volume and correcting for noise and the like.

The 404 is not a “mixer.” It’s a multi-channel (4) interface. Units like this typically come out of the box stereo (2-chnanel) and to get multi-channel you have to make special arrangements either by installing special drivers, or even a whole new audio editor program.

Sometimes an audio editor will be included in the box. Did you buy the 404 new?

Computers natively have stereo record and stereo play back. To get to multi-channel you have to establish all new sound channels and processes. It’s not trivial.

It’s interesting to monitor the work, too. Audacity will only ever play stereo no matter what drivers you have. Post back how the 404 headphone connection works. Behringer has been known to mix everything down to mono for headphones. It solves a lot of problems by doing that.

If you register the interface with Behringer, they will send you a free version of “Tracktion” multi-channel software. That’s not a typo.

Koz

Thank you for the pointers! I did, indeed, buy it new; however yesterday when I tried to install the drivers Behringer indicated were appropriate for the interface, it unfortunately bricked the entire machine, causing it to freeze at the BIOS menu (luckily a more or less completely new install of Windows, so no great loss there. Hopefully lightning won’t strike twice?)

As for the jack on the interface itself for monitoring, it seems to be a single 6.3mm jack for which I’m going to have to locate an adapter; the interface itself connects to the computer through what looks to be a firewire to USB 3.0 connection which came among the other included odds and ends.

Following another lead I had struck upon, I seemed to have some success in recording multiple channels using OBS of all things, but unfortunately the driver issue killed the system before I had a chance to load the OBS recording into Audacity to see what was actually going on under the hood audio wise with it. I -did- notice that it perceived the inputs from the interface as “Behringer 1-2” and “3-4” on a 4-jack interface, so I’m pretty sure you’re right about it being 2-channel out of the box. I’ll see if that changes when I can get these drivers to install without exploding the computer, and I’ll definitely look into registering the unit to take a look at this Tracktion software! Thank you again for the help! :slight_smile: