***The Official Home Recording Studio Thread***

Hi guys,

I've recorded many things over the years with a friend, but he really does all the recording. I tend to play, sing, and supervise :P I'm participating in a Chris Cornell tribute album, and it looks like I'll be doing quite a number of bass tracks, so I'm going to get an audio interface.

The cheapest that appears to meet my needs is the Behringer UMC22. Anyone have any experience of this? The reviews I've seen are very positive.
 
My bro wanted to get an interface to mess around with and I suggested it.

If you're not willing to spend money it will record instruments.

It'll have cheap pre-amps/converters so may or may not sound amazing. From what I've read Behringer is rarely as bad as audiophiles make out.

Essentially, for £40 it's worth a go I guess. :p
 
I now have a Presonus, delivered from netherlands. :) Got it from bax at a great price of £280.

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easyrider, if I can pick your brain. I've yet register the interface and download the software, I'll do that today.

What's the best way to set an individual gain pot on the 1818? Turn it all the way to max, hit a drum and reduce it until there's no clipping and then reduce a bit more to allow headroom? Should the main output volume knob be set to unity and is that 12 o'clock? And the seven rows/pairs of indicator lights on the right, should they only be hitting as high as 3rd row down from the top to avoid clipping?
 
Merlin5 said:
easyrider, if I can pick your brain. I've yet register the interface and download the software, I'll do that today.

What's the best way to set an individual gain pot on the 1818? Turn it all the way to max, hit a drum and reduce it until there's no clipping and then reduce a bit more to allow headroom? Should the main output volume knob be set to unity and is that 12 o'clock? And the seven rows/pairs of indicator lights on the right, should they only be hitting as high as 3rd row down from the top to avoid clipping?
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Pretty much yes mate, Even if the input signal is slightly lower it doesn't really matter as you can always raise it in the mix. :)
 
I would not recommend as a habit starting with gain at max, then coming down. That can be a recipe for some horrendous surprises, ear damage and eqpt failure! Start at zero and go up. It's standard gain staging procedure.
 
banja said:
I would not recommend as a habit starting with gain at max, then coming down. That can be a recipe for some horrendous surprises, ear damage and eqpt failure! Start at zero and go up. It's standard gain staging procedure.
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Yeah that's what I meant I sort of skim read it....usually about 2/3rds up before it hits the red to avoid clipping.

Merlin5 said:
And the seven rows/pairs of indicator lights on the right, should they only be hitting as high as 3rd row down from the top to avoid clipping?
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Best practice is to start with the gain down and move up. Apologies for any confusion.

My point was don't be obsessed with getting the input signal just hitting the red...as long as it's fairly hot you'll be ok in you daw...

My interface has a cool auto sens feature....enable it on any inputs , play the drums and the levels are automatically set.
 
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easyrider said:
Yeah that's what I meant I sort of skim read it....usually about 2/3rds up before it hits the red to avoid clipping.



Best practice is to start with the gain down and move up. Apologies for any confusion.

My point was don't be obsessed with getting the input signal just hitting the red...as long as it's fairly hot you'll be ok in you daw...

My interface has a cool auto sens feature....enable it on any inputs , play the drums and the levels are automatically set.
Click to expand...

Thanks.
That auto feature sounds nifty.

I'm a bit unclear about the difference between normalise audio and a limiter. They both seem to increase the volume and level off peaks I think. And is there much difference between a llimiter and compressor?

After I do my first recording on drums, do you recommend I normalize it, and then later on use the limiter?
 
Merlin5 said:
Thanks.
That auto feature sounds nifty.

I'm a bit unclear about the difference between normalise audio and a limiter. They both seem to increase the volume and level off peaks I think. And is there much difference between a llimiter and compressor?

After I do my first recording on drums, do you recommend I normalize it, and then later on use the limiter?
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Normalising is an offline process whereby the audio file is scanned and the maximum peak level is found. Once found the difference level to 0dBFS noted, then that amount of gain is applied to the whole file. It used to be fairly important back in the day of limited bit depth recording, but these days it's really not an issue and I wouldn't recommend it - all you're doing is raising the noise floor of your recordings.

A limiter is a generally an online (i.e realtime) process that is effectively a gain control with a peak threshold level. You set the peak level at which the limiter aims for (normally somewhere just short of 0dBFS; -0.3 for PCM, -1 if encoding for lossy formats to avoid inter sample peaks), and then dial in some gain. If a loud section in the track hits the peak level set, the limiter does what it says on the tin - it limits the signal and stops it going over that level. There's various methods to this and I'm not going into the ins and outs of it, but they can sound fairly different.

A compressor is similar to a limiter but there are a few significant differences. The on a compressor the set threshold level isn't a hard limit - instead you can choose a ratio of how hard the signal level is reduced. A slight reduction might be a 2:1 ratio, adjustable up to something fairly extreme like a 20:1 ratio - which is near enough a limiter. You then have an output gain setting which is used to compensate for the overall level reduction caused by the dynamic compression.

Older compressors (looking at you 1176) don't have a changeable threshold - instead it's fixed, and you have an input level control instead. The harder you drive the input level, the lower the effective threshold is. Hope that helps. :)
 
Merlin5 said:
Thanks.
That auto feature sounds nifty.

I'm a bit unclear about the difference between normalise audio and a limiter. They both seem to increase the volume and level off peaks I think. And is there much difference between a llimiter and compressor?

After I do my first recording on drums, do you recommend I normalize it, and then later on use the limiter?
Click to expand...

I would do a recording first and get everything into your daw...then mix all the mics together to get the rough sound you want...before anything else...
 
easyrider said:
How have you been getting on mate?
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I've been dying to get stuck in but been ill with a terrible cough (probable chest infection) and achiness since Tuesday so I'm intending to plug everything in on Sunday and start getting levels and recording from Monday. I've just received five more 4m XLR cables, 3 red to match my kit and 2 blue for the overheads. :D I've also got my other 3 black cables. The new ones were only £4 each and the cable is thinner but hopefully won't break on me. Just three things to buy now. I'm popping down to studiospares to pick up two more mic boom stands and a metal snare mic clamp for my SM57 as I probably won't use the Samson snare mic. But I'll plug both in and do a side by side test.

So I've not turned on the 1818 yet and I've only been messing around with Studio One. I understand how to arm and record, and I've tested some of the Presonus effects like binaural pan, reverb. At this stage, I don't have much of a clue how I would set the various parameters in the compressor like attack and release and I don't really understand much about adding buses or if I'll need to.
 
Merlin5 said:
I've been dying to get stuck in but been ill with a terrible cough (probable chest infection) and achiness since Tuesday so I'm intending to plug everything in on Sunday and start getting levels and recording from Monday. I've just received five more 4m XLR cables, 3 red to match my kit and 2 blue for the overheads. :D I've also got my other 3 black cables. The new ones were only £4 each and the cable is thinner but hopefully won't break on me. Just three things to buy now. I'm popping down to studiospares to pick up two more mic boom stands and a metal snare mic clamp for my SM57 as I probably won't use the Samson snare mic. But I'll plug both in and do a side by side test.

So I've not turned on the 1818 yet and I've only been messing around with Studio One. I understand how to arm and record, and I've tested some of the Presonus effects like binaural pan, reverb. At this stage, I don't have much of a clue how I would set the various parameters in the compressor like attack and release and I don't really understand much about adding buses or if I'll need to.
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I've been recording drums tonight. And messing with mic placements and stuff.

Straight into MIXBUS, as MIXBUS has its own EQ, Compressor, Leveller and limiter on each channel (just like a hardware console) its really easy to get a decent sound...next time its on offer get it...Its was $29 last week for MIXBUS 4.2

I just got a sound a liked clean. Then mixed the Overheads with the close mics...and applied a bit of EQ, some compression to the Bass drum and some compression to the snare...

Didn't use one plugin

:)
 
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