help me please
okay here goes lots of qeustions for advice Please I will start with my system info first then ask the qeustions I am in need of answers please. all are welocome to help.
system info: 866 motherboard, pentium 3 866 mhz processor, 2 hard drives 4 and 10 gigs,2 iomega predetor cd rw’s creative sound blaster audigy sound card, iiyuma monitor with radion vid card, standard mouse and keyboard, a carvin 8 channel stereo board, a marshall 30 watt mini stack, yamaha power v drums & yamaha keyboard and severel sm 58 & 57 mics, jbl computer speakers and pro headphones.
software is millinem, ntrack 4.1, winamp 5 free version, creative surround mixer, ntrack plugins and klauhsomething classic plugins. decent right not the best but decent.
now qeustions.
1. can I record 24 bits and if yes why is it better for me.
2. what settings for my ntrack are going to be best for 16 or 24 bits.
3. what should my computer settings be at.
4. what should my ntrack settings be at ie. recording freq and so forth.
5. whats the best way to put all this together. to give me the best sound I can acheive and how good should i really expect it to be.
I have heard several recordings with n track that seem to be much much much better than I have acheived and I am wondering what it is that I lack weather its the technical mixing side of it that I lack knowledge in or if i is the way may system is set up everything works the way i have it set up I have little or no ghost in the machine and no glitches but my sound qaulity seems to bite especially when I mix down to tape or burn. any and all advice is greatly appreciated.
You’ve got some pretty involved questions, but I’ll try give you my opinion/experience.
1. You can record 24 bits if your version of n-track and your soundcard support it. There’s currently a thread on the forum that’s discussing 24 bit recording and the opinions you’ll read pretty well cover the gamut. I can’t hear much a difference between 24 bits and 16 bits on my rig so I record in 16 bit. 24 bits will allow you to record at a lower volume without losing resolution and it should also give you slightly lower noise. I record mostly rock and I am meticulous to keep my recording levels as high as possible so for me the advantages of 24 bit recording is minimal. You don’t have a lot of hard drive space so you might want to record at 16 bits until you upgrade your system. I record at 16/44.1 and I’m happy with the sound I’m getting.
2. I’m not sure what you mean by n-track settings but if you record at 24 bit you’ll have to experiment to see which 24 bit setting works with your soundcard.
3. Regarding your computer settings, are you referring to the appropriate driver? I use the WDM drivers for my soundcard (M-Audio Delta 1010) which I’ve found to work the best for me. Asio can have a little lower latency but it’s more complicated and I’ve never found latency to be a problem. Stay away from MME drivers.
4. I would suggest you use 16 bits and 44.1 khz. With your small hard drives you just don’t have the space to use greater bit depth and higher sampling frequencies. I seriously doubt that your recording settings are the major factor affecting the quality of your recordings.
5. This question is a tough one. Recording and mixing take a lot of practice to get good at. I’ve been doing this for three years and I’ve completed about 25 projects. I feel that I’m just now getting to the stage where I can record and mix a project that could pass for a commercial recording. The biggest factor is mixing skill, IMO. Beginners usually don’t have a clue as to how much work goes into a mix. Here’s a link regarding recording electric guitar that will give you a good idea of how much work a pro goes through to get the sound he wants. Slipperman’s Recording Electric Guitar
Another good resource is Audiominds
Your gear is going to be somewhat of a limitation but the two biggest things are learning how to get good sounds to begin with and then learning how to optimize your tracks in the mixing process. If you can spend a fair bit of time lurking forums like this one that will teach you a lot. Other good forums are Audiominds, the Listening Sessions, and Recording.org.
OK. That’s a lot of questions but I’ll have a go and others can chip in later.
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| 1. can I record 24 bits and if yes why is it better for me. |
Big subject. 24 bits gives more headroom and better quality in theory. Some argue that they can’t hear the difference; others say it only makes a difference on certain instruments.
It puts a bigger load on your system. (50% more bytes). Your PC is OK (slow CPU) but you’ll run out of tracks much quicker at 24 bit than 16 bit.
Your Audigy may not even be able to do 24 bit recording. The early Audigys were advertised as 24 bit but in the small print they could only do it under certain conditions (I can’t remember exactly but I think it was on the digital I/O only). I’m not sure aobut later Audigys.
My advice. Don’t bother with 24 bit. It ain’t your problem yet.
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2. what settings for my ntrack are going to be best for 16 or 24 bits. |
See above
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3. what should my computer settings be at. |
What Operating System? There are plenty of Music PC tweak sites around. It’s not as important nowadays but on your system you want to squeeze every ounce of performance out of your system.
The best thing you can do is to take off all the junk. Better still do a clean build and only install the bare minimum. Remove the PC from the Internet, turn off Antivirus tools, spyware tools, helper apps, etc. You don’t want one of those programs jumping in and stealing precious CPU cycles or sending the hard disk off to the other end of the platter right in the middle of that killer take.
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4. what should my ntrack settings be at ie. recording freq and so forth. |
16bit 44.1kHz
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5. whats the best way to put all this together. to give me the best sound I can acheive and how good should i really expect it to be. I have heard several recordings with n track that seem to be much much much better than I have acheived and I am wondering what it is that I lack weather its the technical mixing side of it that I lack knowledge in or if i is the way may system is set up everything works the way i have it set up I have little or no ghost in the machine and no glitches but my sound qaulity seems to bite especially when I mix down to tape or burn. any and all advice is greatly appreciated. |
Ahhh. The $6m question. I’ve not heard your mixes so I’m going to have to speculate - but you are hearing songs that sound better than yours and wondering why. We’ve all asked that question at sometime, haven’t we chaps!
Hmmm. The answer is skill/experience/learning. That’s why top engineers and producers get paid top $$$.
You have to keep working at it by creating mixes, listening, reading, re-mixing, re-recording, re-mixing… And eventually you’ll start to get somewhere (but you’ll still be asking yourself that question!). Sorry, no easy answer.
As for gear. Buying more stuff won’t solve your problem - as tempting as it is to do so. I think you need to work with what you’ve got until you know it’s limitations. Then upgrade.
Tell us how you plug everything together. It may be that there is something better you can do with what you have.
And having said that about gear, you are going to struggle mixing on PC speakers. See if you can find a nice old (70’s or 80’s) hi-fi with nice “flat” (boring) sounding speakers.
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| sound qaulity seems to bite especially when I mix down to tape or burn. any and all advice is greatly appreciated. |
Your sound qaulity (sic) should not change when you mixdown - at least not to cd; tape may sound different though. Do you mean your songs sound different on other systems? If so, then that’s completely natural and all part of the mixing process! Mixing on a good set of speakers will help you make mixes that translate better on to other systems but the difference will always be there. Sometimes this means having to make compromises in the mix.
Final thoughts… post some mixes and let folks here comment.
That’s enough for now.
I see that 8th note has posted as well while I’ve typed this. Hopefully we’ve not covered the same stuff or contradicted each other! (EDIT: I see we are both saying the same things)
HTH
Mark
Looks like Mark and I see the world pretty much the same way. You’ll rarely see two posts that are that close, Vig. The oracles have spoken.
okay some good advice there. and I can elborate on set up. I have just built the system up graded from celeron 333 mhz and n track 3.01 the system is bare minimum and the iternet has only been conected to registar n track and windows operating system which is ME. connection set up is I run from the main outs on the board into the line level in on the sound card. I run from the line level out on the marshall into the board, wich seems to generate hellasious noise levels, I have a set of mcs 1975 speakers but no power source for them at the moment but will eventually use as the monitors. I have had great success with the recording of my live drum tracks getting good clear tones from drums and crashes though occasionally the cymbal bells can be peircing but can be EQ-dto be less so. my guitar sound sucks A*# its grainy and too much mids no high def and muddy muddy lows so that the mids are really the only thing you hear and sound like crap. I have been running alot of just general test tracks to find out why this is and not having any luck with this aspect of the sound. the sound is good in my ear but the track after recording it is kaka…so I geuss all my questions are really about maybe this issue and wondering if maybe its something that the system lacks or if its the way im doing it" the more likely reason". I used to use a fostex before I got hooked on ntrack and always got a very good sound but the fostex was much more limited you needed all the effects. I am always conducting research when I can. Does this help and more advice Please I will check out the resouces mentioned above as well…thanx and listening.
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| Stay away from MME drivers. |
This just plain wrong. It’s misinformation. I really wish people would stop parroting that MME is bad. It’s not. On many machines MME will be more stable than WDM or ASIO and may use less resources to boot (not necessarily though). The tricks used to lower latency can add instability if not done well, and not all drivers are created equal.
I use MME now and have almost always used MME. I can’t record 24 bit with ASIO or WDM. I don’t have stability issues as many other folks have. I don’t need lower latency since I use Echo cards and they have good built-in monitoring in the Echo Console.
Use what works for you and give them all a try at least a few times.
Also check out Jezar’s article “How to mix a pop song from scratch”. Jezar’s was an old n-Tracker many years ago and used to hang out here. His site seems to be down as I type this but I found a copy of his article here:
http://www.audiomelody.com/Tutorials/MixingIntroduction.htm
I have a more printer friendly copy if your need it.
HTH
Also checkout “The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook” by Bob Owsinski" and “The Art of Mixing” by David Gibson.
You can sometimes get them on ebay as ebooks.
When you get your new (old) speakers up and running, be sure to listen to lots of familiar songs through them so that you can get aclimatised to what they sound like.
As for MME drivers, I’ve got to agree with Phoo. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with MME drivers and IMO if you are not looking for low latency then MME tend to be more stable. I used MME drivers for many years. I switched to WDM when I got my current card “because I could” and so far all has been well.
Finally, Vig, can I politely ask you to put a few blank lines in your posts. Makes it much easier to read. (As for punctuation and spelling, I guess things were different when I went to school 
)
Mark
Sorry about spelling and punctuation in previous post! It was just alot of info that I was trying to get out while it was fresh in my mind and usually I am much better at it than previously illustrated, but the mind usually funtions much faster than the appendages.
Every one has been very helpful. and I have recieved alot of valuable information that will take some time to digest. I will post a track after some studying and some experimentation for futher insight from the guru’s.
I wanted to say something further on the one that seems to think he needs to critisize english and judge his schooling comaparitivly with someone else’s but decided I’m better than that and his advice was sound as well so I added some blank lines for him. 
You’re asking how to paint a picture here. It aint that easy. Lot of brushes and paints to use and honestly, I can’t say what you want your picture to look like. You’ll just have to have the experience to know how to do that yourself… Not an over night process by any means.
To put it mildly, learning to record, mix, and master, IMO, is akin to learning to play a musical instrument. Yes, having people guide you, having good equipment, having good work skills, great songwriting and arranging ideas, will all help in the process, BUT, like learning an instrument, it takes time. Look back to when you first learned to play and how you are now. Yes, the videos and books helped. Your friends gave good advice, you copped some good licks from CDs and concerts, but in the long run, it was you putting in the time. Nothing will ever circumvent that fact.
So now you have some ok gear and you want to make killer tracks. You are on your way. Just the fact you are hear asking great questions is a major step. But only doing the process over and over will gain you any success. Even if you had the most pro studio at your disposale, your efforst would be about the same as where you are now.
You can’t learn the piano, guitar, drums overnight. same goes for recording. With most of us here, it is a passion almost or just as equal to the instruments we play!
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| I wanted to say something further on the one that seems to think he needs to critisize english and judge his schooling comaparitivly with someone else’s but decided I’m better than that and his advice was sound as well so I added some blank lines for him. |
Thankyou for the blank lines.
Actually that wasn’t a criticism, it was an observation and was meant to be humourous. Did you spot the smiley on the end? If I had written a homework assignment like that at school it would have been thrown back at me, however I notice, through my own experience with my kids, that things are somewhat different nowadays.
My point still stands though. Think of it like this. You had an issue to communicate to us; you wanted help. Unfortunately, your post was very hard to read, and took me longer to work out what you were asking because of that fact. I may have even misinterpeted what you were asking because of that.
I then gave up my time to respond and help, which I did gladly, but it took me longer. All I’m saying is that if you put in the effort then others will put in effort to help. Afterall, this whole business we are in is about communication.
Then again, make a dig at me and I might throw a sulk and not reply to any of your messages.
Mark
Eyup!
If you have several years to spare try HERE
An excellent resource I am sure you will agree.
Steve
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| my guitar sound sucks A*# its grainy and too much mids no high def and muddy muddy lows so that the mids are really the only thing you hear and sound like crap. I have been running alot of just general test tracks to find out why this is and not having any luck with this aspect of the sound. the sound is good in my ear but the track after recording it is kaka…so I geuss all my questions are really about maybe this issue and wondering if maybe its something that the system lacks or if its the way im doing it" the more likely reason". |
It sounds like there is indeed a problem with the way you are trying to record your guitar. You say you are running the Marshall line out into the board. Are you running into the line input on the board? Your problem sounds like severe overloading of a preamp or another curcuit which would explain the high noise and grainy sound.
You say the guitar sounds fine in your ear but when your record, the track sounds bad. Do you mean that it sounds OK through headphones when you monitor or do you mean that the amp sounds OK when you listen to it in the room? If you are not monitoring through headphones you will need to get your speakers set up so that you can tell if the monitored signal is bad. If your live drum tracks are OK then I would suggest micing your guitar cab instead of running the signal from the line-out. You will likely get better sound this way anyway because the speaker/microphone interaction is a significant element in getting good electric guitar sound.
Isn’t it also possible to run the guitar directly into the board?