recording acoustic guitar

[theelectricdisco]

Hi

My first post here, so apologies if this ends up in the wrong place.

Looks like a cool forum so I'm probably gonna be hitting it up every couple of hours from now on!!

 

Anyway...

 

Finally picked up a mic so I can start recording my old man playing his acoustic guitar and getting it down in logic.

 

Problem is, Im getting a rather nasty amount of hiss on all the recordings.

 

I can get it so that it's tolerable, but as soon as I kick in any channel strip setting for an amp sim for example, it amplifies the hiss to an unpleasant level.

 

I've got an SE SE2000 mic going into a mixer input which then outputs into an apogee duet then into my macbook pro.

 

I had a few issues with monitoring, feedback and software monitoring but I think Ive got that sorted and am just listening to the click track via headphones and everything else has the volume right down.

 

I'm getting a middle-ish signal going into logic from my record channel, everything looks ok, but Im just getting this daft buzzy hiss all the time!

 

I'm gonna do a separate post on how Ive got my duet set up with the mixer routing audio into the mac as I was wondering whether I should just use the mic in on the apogee rather than go through the mixer as well.

 

I did try this very quickly and didnt really see any difference in the results..

 

I use the apogee to record vinyl (through the mixer) sample audio back in from logic (again via the mixer) and also for hardware synths (again, via the mixer) so it would mean a different set up if I started putting a mic track in bypassing the mixer. I dont know if this is a big deal as I havent really got to grips with the apogee yet, but as its working for everything else I dont want to mess with it just yet..

 

So, is there something obvious that Im doing wrong that could cut back on the hiss? Record levels? Output levels on the mixer?

 

The mic has got a 0db to -10db switch and a second switch with a horizontal line icon on one side and a line which dips down at the end on the other side.

The manual doesnt really help with what these do (ive only just got the mic) so Im not sure if these are in the wrong position or if they are standard mic features?

 

Wow.. epic first post..

 

Sorry about that... but anyone? Any clues as to how I can clean up my audio?

 

thanks in advance

Mark

[jwhite5598]

Hi

The mic has got a 0db to -10db switch and a second switch with a horizontal line icon on one side and a line which dips down at the end on the other side.

The manual doesnt really help with what these do (ive only just got the mic) so Im not sure if these are in the wrong position or if they are standard mic features?

 

The 0db to -10db switch reduces the gain by 10db. I've never really used this but I believe its used for recording electric guitar amps or something like a kick drum. I only record acoustic guitar so again I've never had to use it. The other switch is a high pass filter. This will cut all frequencies below 100Hz (with my mic it cuts everything below 80Hz but I believe different mics have different high pass filters). I tend to use this when recording my acoustic to cut the unnecessary low frequencies out.

 

I fairly new to recording also so I really can't help out with a lot of you're questions, I can just suggest things I did to better understand what I was doing. Try going to Youtube and search for recording techniques or micing acoustic guitars. You could also google this stuff and read up on recording. I'm also using a duet but I have my mic directly into the duet and then the duet directly to my macbook pro and my recordings sound awesome, well atleast I think they do. I'm really not sure how to setup a mixer going into the duet.

 

Maybe someone else can chime in to help you with you setup.

[theelectricdisco]

Hey

thanks for the reply.

Thats useful re. the mic settings.

I'll ammend on my next visit to the stage!

 

I'll also try going straight into the apogee and see what that throws up.

 

I guess my reluctance with that was that I've somehow bumbled my way into geting it set up so that it works with the stuff that's being fed from my mixer, and now this would necessitate a different setup.

 

Is it it easy to toggle between settings on the duet for different inputs?

 

Im using the instruments 1 and 2 grouped together to recieve a stereo left and right from my mixer at the moment, this includes an electric guitar feed which goes into one channel, the mic feed which goes into another channel, my decks on another and the fx loop which I use to send the computer audio back to logic for sampling.

 

So.. if I then broke out of that setup for just the mic, can I toggle back to the above easily or is it the beginnings of a ball ache?

 

Im quite new with the apogee so Im not sure whether this is something super simple or as hard as Im actually envisaging it might be!

 

hmm...