Tell me if this would be a decent setup please!

[allthewhile]

Howdy,

My current setup is just not working at all. I can't even get decent sound quality. I'm looking into investing in a new microphone and a mixer. I'm looking at this mic:

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=AT2020&num=100&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&sa=N&tab=wf

and this mixer:

http://images.google.com/froogle?q=Yamaha+MG+10%2F2&btnG=Search+Froogle

Now I think these are decent, but let me ask you, am I really going to lose a lot of sound quality if I have an entry level souncard? Or do I need to buy a soundcard as well?

-jayson

[cid92]

Mic looks fine. I use Marshall mics myslef. I think the mic you are looking at might be the brand and or model that Craig uses.

As for the mixing board - I just bought the same board last week. Best $100 I've spent in a long time. The key part that sold me on the board was all four mic channels have phantom power. I was looking at a really nice Alesis mixing board that was similar to the Yamaha but it had no phantom power. Bummed me out and the board itself was twice as much. Then the sales guy at Guitar Center showed me the Yamaha and I took it on the spot. I've run tests with the board so far where I've had three mics running and line in for a CD player and the levels sound great. My next experiment tonight or tomorrow is running the line out to my Alesis 3630 compressor, feeding the signal back to the board (the Yamaha has the outputs/inputs for this) and then running the signal to the recording software. I'm confident it will work with no problems.

I would say that this Yamaha board is a good bang for the buck especially for doing podcasts.

[allthewhile]

so do I need to go with a quality soundcard in order to not lose quality? Also, what does a compressor do exactly? I'm new to all of this!

[cid92]

Honestly, I record into some semi-no name sound card on my laptop (I don't know the name off the top of my head and it's at home now) and the recordings come out fine. I'm sure it doesn't hurt to record into a quality soundcard but so far, I've been happy with the testing that I've done.

A compressor in simplest terms makes loud noises softer to keep your recording from clipping. Typically hardware compressors have compression ratios like 2:1, 4:1, etc. That simply means that it takes 2dB of sound to create 1dB of sound. You then set a threshold on the compressor and any sound level above that threshold needs to be doubled (or quadrupled if using the 4:1 ratio) in order to make sound level the go up by 1dB level.

I think that's a good explaination. Someone may be able to put it in better terms.

I use a compressor for recording guitar and it keeps the recording for clipping and damaging equipment.

A good link to compressors and limiters is:
http://www.harmony-central.com/Effects/Articles/Compression/

If anyone has more info, chime on in.

[Craig]

Great mic. Save money on the board and get a Behringer UB802 along with a Griffin iMic. Together they will run you around $85 and let you bring your sound in through the USB port and bypass the soundcard completely. (The iMic does a much better job of converting analog to digital than most built-in soundcards.)

Craig

[allthewhile]

If possible, I'd like to get away from using usb. I'd like to use http://www.mixcastlive.com for my podcast creation, but like all other solutions I've tried, usb input is clumsy at best, i.e. simply being able to record an mp3 and your voice at the same time. But I'll mull it over craig, thanks.

[Craig]

I'm curious as to what you've found clumsy about USB. Assuming you have the right driver (if you're on Windows), recording from USB is no different than recording from your soundcard...it's just a matter of selecting the appopriate input in your sound app. (MixCast Live added USB device support in 0.9.1.)

My guess is that if you took a poll of the top 50 podcasts the majority would be recording from USB inputs.

Craig

[allthewhile]

Craig,

I've not found a solution that allows me to put the usb mic into the stereo mix of my soundcard. If for example I'm speaking about something, and want to play an mp3 file, I can't get both my voice and the mp3 file to record into audacity or any other program I've used. The patching solutions that I've found, that stitch the output of one soundcard into the input of another cause a great amount of fuzz. If I can bring the mic in through the audio in, then that solves the problem.

But maybe I'm missing something.

[Craig]

First, you don't have to use USB...I was just pointing out that you can bypass the limitations of your soundcard by doing so. A simple adapter cable from Radio Shack (or your local electronics store) lets you run the line out from your mixer into your sound card.

If you do decide to go with USB, you shouldn't need to use the patching solutions. Instead, you probably want to look at switching to a sound editing application that's designed to handle multiple input sources (Audacity isn't, without multi-channel hardware). You mentioned MixCast Live...that's one that should work with no problems.

Craig

[allthewhile]

* Don't use a USB mic. MCL was designed to work with a soundcard that supports wave out recording, and microphone playback. This works best, there is no detectable latency.

This is from the creator of mcl.

Are there any other cheap but good or free but good programs out there that support multiple sound inputs?

[Craig]

That's true to an extent...there's no detectable latency from the hardware side. Any effects you're adding through the software (reverb, echo, etc.) may add noticeable latency depending on the efficiency of the effects algorithms being used and the speed of the processor you're running on. But in general, USB sound input typically adds enough latency to be annoying, apparently more so in Windows than on the Mac.

With respect to software recommendations, I'll have to defer that to Windows users.

Craig