Trouble with 2 USB mic's...

[fcrand27]

G'day,
Please help! My mate and I are trying to do test runs of our podcast. We're on a Windows XP machine with 2 USB mic's and using Audacity, but we're only able to get the sound input from 1 at any given time. Is there a setting we're missing or something in Audacity that we need to adjust? We've played around with it for a while now and can't seem to get it to sync, the best we've gotten is where 1 mic is clear, while the person on the other mic sounds like they're in the background.
Any advice is much appreciated,
Thanks!

[revupreview]

I think this depends on your sound card. As I understand it Audacity will record only one channel (mono or stereo) at a time, so the input will presumably be one USB mic or the other.

Have you tried setting the input to 'Wave Out Mix'? If you can hear both mics clearly on headphones, you should be able to record them both as a single channel.

[pwfenton]

A USB microphone isn't simply a microphone. It's a microphone with a built in sound card. When you plug in two of them, you essentially have two sound cards with mics connected to them. Most sound software can only look at one sound card at a time. Some more expensive software can assign individual sound cards to individual tracks, for live multitrack recording. I don't believe that Audacity can do this. If I discover that it can, I will post it here. Adobe Audition can do it, but it's not cheap.

[fcrand27]

Thanks for the input PW. and Paul J!
That helps me solve my riddle, but can I ask how is it that other "couple" shows etc. plug in simultaneously to Audacity (or do they use other software)? What would be a solution to my problem? Using two computers to record each person individually and then combining the audio afterwards? Having to use Skype to do the show through two computers?
Another interesting thing I've encountered is that if I plug the USB mic in on my computer before I open Audacity it greys out the input box. If I open Audacity and then plug in the mic the input box stays open for me to select the input. On my mate's computer the input box stays greyed out no matter what, so we're wondering if his sound card may be a problem as far as that's concerned.
I guess I fell in to the trap of doing too much research prior and reading that podcasting was as simple as installing Audacity, plugging your mic in and go! I listen to plenty and subscribe to too many and after much discussion and coming up with an idea and content for which there isn't a podcast yet I talked my mate in to going in with me, because I've enjoyed some of the multi host podcasts more than individuals (other than music specific shows, news and DSC), but for what we're wanting to do we really need to bounce off each other. I realize now that none of the tutorials or help websites I looked at really described a set up for more than one person. I almost feel like on a limited budget my mate and I just spent $50 each on USB mic's that don't work together and now we'll have to spend more to be able to combine them? I feel like such a novice/newbie, lol. It's just so frustrating when you get so excited and have the content ready to go and want to start getting in to it and being able to share your love/podcast with the world and then this wall just comes out of nowhere and smacks you silly. My mate and I are feeling disheartened at the moment and were praying it'd be a small, quick and easy miracle fix of something like "click this setting". Any suggestions are greatly appreciated and thanks for your time!

[fcrand27]

One thought my mate had was that if there was a cable, like a splitter for your TV cable, where we could plug our two USB mics in and have just the one USB cable going into the pc that that might "combine" the signal type thing and solve our problem? Is this a possibility or would this not work? I've seen some products for around $30 just looking around on the web that seem to act like a USB hub where you can plug up to 4 USB devices in and it has the cable with 1 USB extension coming out to connect to the computer.
Would this get around the premise of the computer looking at both mics as 2 different sound cards or would it essentially just give more USB ports and keep the data/feed from each USB device separate still?
Thanks again,
Confused, Tired and Frustrated. :cry:

[pwfenton]

Where to begin? I don't have much in the way of good news for you. The USB mics were a mistake. I feel bad for you though because you bought them based on reasonable logic. However, as I tried to explain before, a USB Mic is not simply a microphone that you are connecting to a computer sound card. The USB is a combination of a cheap microphone and a very limited sound card, a sound card that only works with a single mic.

What you need is a real sound card (you probably already have a usable one in your PC), an inexpensive stereo mixer, and two ordinary microphones. The microphones get connected to the mixer, and then the mixer gets connected to the “line input� of your sound card. As you record, you listen with headphones, and using the mixer, you adjust the levels of each mic, and if you like you can even assign one mic to the left channel, and one to the right, OR you can mix them together in one mono track.

You cannot do this with your USB mics in any way. They will always act as though they are connected to separate, single source sound cards (which they are), AND since they are not ordinary microphones, they cannot be connected to a mixer.

In other words, and I hope I'm making this clear, to do what you want to do, you must abandon the USB microphones, and buy real microphones and a mixer.

On the other hand, there is nothing in the world that says you need two mics to record two people. In fact for many, many, years this is how hit records were made. With one mic in the middle of a room full of musicians. A balance was achieved by the distance each musician was placed from the mic. The singer would be closest, the guitar might be the same distance, the clarinet might be further back, the trumpet player further still, and the drummer, as far away as possible. Today, you listen to those old records, and never dream that this is the way they were done.

[RandomChatter]

For the most part, I just wanted to second what Mr. Fenton said. If you've got two USB mics, you've got two USB sound cards (probably in addition to a physical sound card in your computer). Without high-end stuff (and even then, I'm only speculating it can be done), your'e only going to be able to select one input at a time -- either your sound card, USB-Mic-A, or USB-Mic-B.

To answer your question, the way most "couple" podcasts do it, from what I understand, is they have a mixer (a physical box, not software) that they plug their mics into, adjust the levels, then send a single output from the mixer to the computer.

I don't really like using a single hand-mic for recording two people. Doesn't work well, in my opinion. I did my first two-person recording the other night and had to use the built-in mic on my laptop. It was okay, but it was barely better than a good telephone recording.

Theoretically, you could use an omni-directional mic, like a boundary mic, but that requires "phantom power". Your computer doesn't suppor that; you'd need a mixer that does.

You could use a Y-splitter in your mic input on your computer (or one of the two USB mic inputs). This would give you one single input, but one would be in the left channel and one would be in the right channel. You'd have to fix this later using software. However, there are other impedence issues (that I don't fully understand -- I'm not an audiophile) that make this less than ideal.

[jeffoest]

I've never used the USB mics (always seemed like kind of a gimicky concept to me) BUT Craig P. has been recommending these occasionally here and he doesn't recommend lightly - so I imagine you can get reasonable performance out of them.

[RandomChatter]

Oh, I should clarify...

I didn't mean to imply there was anything wrong with the USB-mics. My point was merely to explain that you can't plug several into your computer and expect to be able to use multiple mics that way.

I own a USB-mic, and I've had no problems or complaints with mine. I've even recommended them before, especially for newbie "soloist" podcasters -- if you get a USB headset mic, it's easy to get set up, they're normally fairly good quality, and the mic is always a consistent distance from your mouth.

[fcrand27]

PW, big thanks to you mate, you've been a wealth of information and a big help in a cloud of confusion for me. Random Chatter, thank you also for your help and comments.
I guess there needs to be a disclaimer on the tutorials and websites regarding podcasting with more than 1 person. Looking back through most of the sites I visited and got advice from it seems like they were all geared towards a 1 person set up. Oh well, I shall move on and hopefully put these technical problems behind me so we can move on to the creative aspect and actually get to share the podcast and put it out there.

Jeff (This and That podcast), I enjoy your show, regular listener and voter.
PW I will be catching up on your shows because I respect your knowledge and if I can scrape a little from you your show will be worth it every time.
Thanks!

[jeffoest]

Jeff (This and That podcast), I enjoy your show, regular listener and voter.

Awesome! Very nice of you to say.