How To Record Options

[JesseJ]

Hi guys So yesterday I bought myself the Focusrite scarlett 18i6. And today I realized I have NO IDEA what I'm doing. It took me 2 hours just to figure out how to make it work with garageband! So currently this is what I do.

1 Plug my guitar direct into my interface ( because I haven't bought a mic yet )
2 Open up garageband and record .

And thats it. I am quite dissapointted with the tone I am getting . I am hoping that will change once I get a mic and mic my amp. but all in all I am wondering if I am in a little over my head. Something tells me I should be getting more out of my interface. So I am debating exchanging it ( if the store will let me ) for an interface with less bells and whistles seeing as I dont even know how to use them. I was thinking like maybe either the M-Audio MOBILE PRE MKII or The focusrite Scarlett 2i2.

My goals are to be able to record for the GMC REC program,
Post Youtube covers
And do some singing and write some songs so I would need some sort of software that does drum, and bass lines.

So if you guys dont mind would you please take the time to tell me how your record with all the steps included, and what software you guys use. Thanks

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[Saoirse O'Shea]

What is Gain staging ? /i have never heard of that before, then again this is the first time I have ever got into recording.

In recording etc you need to make good use of the dynamic range of your equipment and that means having as little noise as possible as well as having as a good signal level. Eveything that you add to the input/output chain has the potenital to add noise - preamps, eqs, compressors, limiters, ADC and so on - as you vary the signal between the devices input and output. Analogue gainstaging in basic terms is ensuring that the increase in noise is kept to an absolute minimum whilst achieving suitable level. If you don't gainstage properly then as you increase the signal's level you will not get any signal to noise benefit as all you will do is increase the noise.

With digital gainstaging there are also issues to do with ensuring that you do not exceed 0dBFS and so clip the convertors. That may sound simple as your recording device and your DAW have peak meters but the problem is that they are not very accurate and they do not always show clipping. It is perfectly possible to digitally clip with out a peak meter showing it. This is made more complicated as a lot of digital vsts can also internally sum and so add additional, unwanted gain to the input without it being shown on the meter. All of this means that you can clip the output even if your meters show you're set below 0dBFS. To be on the safe side it's often best thus to use a conservative -8dB peak level for the focal track, even adding processing and extra tracks should not pull the level up to more than @-3dB and so leave room for final mastering.

If you want to know more about this and other recording/mixing/mastering things Jesse try and take a look at some of the threads I've started.

One thing I was thinking is one advantge a interface has over a pod is that you would learn how to properly mic an amp which I think would be a very important thing to know how to do.

Absolutely. However recording with mics and preamps is more expensive and can also take longer to get to grips with.

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This post has been edited by tonymiro: Jul 21 2012, 03:25 PM