Advice wanted on a home recording setup for vocals and guitar

close2uclose2u Frets: 997
edited January 2017 in Studio & Recording

I have just started on home recording using a new setup. This is my current gear:

Recording in:

Me on guitar (acoustic / electric) & my wife on vocals (dynamic mic) ----->

Voicelive Play GTX ----->

Windows computer via USB ----->

Audacity software

Playback out / monitoring:

Audacity --->

Behringer B207mp3

I also have some 'budget' headphones.

The Voicelive Play is acting as an audio interface. When recording guitar and vocals simultaneously, once levels etc are adjusted accordingly, all is good.

The immediate problem is separate recording of vocals and guitar, if I record a track and then want to record vocals after. I have tried using the Behringer B207mp3 as a monitor to hear the guitar track as a guide for the vocals. This isn't ideal as the microphone will be picking up the sound coming from it. I tried using headphones but the vocal levels in the headphones suggested a good mix which when listened to on playback wasn't the case - the vocals were quieter on the recording than they had been in the headphones. Also, in both cases, there seems to be some lag in recording the vocals after as when played back in Audacity the vocals are a fraction behind the guitar.

I am not looking to create a pro level recording setup, nor to have to spend hours mixing, eq-ing etc. But I would like to know that once I have this setup it can be used as a simple 'plug & play' system.

Any advice? Thanks.

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Comments

  • Ben8010Ben8010 Frets: 150
    Get a USB audio interface. There's plenty out there and you could get one for under £100 which will do what you want
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  • close2uclose2u Frets: 997
    edited January 2017
    Ben8010 said:
    Get a USB audio interface. There's plenty out there and you could get one for under £100 which will do what you want


    Thanks @Ben8010

    So what is the difference between the Voicelive Play acting as an audio interface and getting an audio interface?

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  • CabicularCabicular Frets: 2214
    It's totally normal to record with headphones on and mix without them so don't worry about that. The delay you are experiencing is latency. You can go into the settings in audacity and take the buffer size down to 128. It depends how good the audio interface is in the Voicelive as to whether it will support going so low without pops and crackles.
    Also the faster the machine the lower achievable buffer size (within certain limits)
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  • close2uclose2u Frets: 997
    edited January 2017
    Cabicular said:
    You can go into the settings in audacity and take the buffer size down to 128.

    Thanks @Cabicular ; I can look at doing that - but I don't understand what you mean.

    Cabicular said:
    It depends how good the audio interface is in the Voicelive as to whether it will support going so low without pops and crackles.

    I'm not sure I know what this means - if I adjust to 128 the sound quality will be compromised?

    Cabicular said:
    Also the faster the machine the lower achievable buffer size (within certain limits)


    Do you mean the PC by 'machine'?

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  • CabicularCabicular Frets: 2214
    If you look at your recorded audio like a stream of water and the buffer as the size of cup and the bath as your hard disk.
    A smaller cup fills up faster so takes more trips and therefor effort to move the water to fill up the bath
    A bigger cup takes less trips but takes longer to fill up

    So the smaller the buffer size the quicker the audio gets on to your machine (PC) . but if you make the buffer too small (i.e. < 128) then the machine can't keep up with transferring it to the hard disk

    So IOf your buffer is set too high then you will hear a delay by the time it is processed and is played back to you
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  • CabicularCabicular Frets: 2214
    I'm not familiar with Audacity to be honest but a quick trip to google shows me
    http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=2092

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  • close2uclose2u Frets: 997
    @Cabicular That is a little clearer. Thanks. I will certainly investigate.
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  • close2uclose2u Frets: 997

    Question ...

    Can the vocal track in Audacity be 'dragged' to sync with the 1st recorded guitar track?

    If so, is it by trial and error until it 'sounds right'?

    Or would there be a systematic means of doing this?

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  • CabicularCabicular Frets: 2214
    Most Daws will allow this but I again I can't say specifically for Audiacity (although I would be amazed if it didn't)
    Generally what you do is switch off snap (the bit that automatically places the track at the nearest bar when you are moving it around) and then Zoom it in and line up the waveforms using a combination of by eye and listeneing
    A good habit to get into is stumping a percussive 1 2 3 4 on the guitar before you start and clapping 4 times along when you do the vocal. makes it a lot easier to line up later if you can't get rid of the latency issue

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  • close2uclose2u Frets: 997
    Cabicular said:
    A good habit to get into is stumping a percussive 1 2 3 4 on the guitar before you start and clapping 4 times along when you do the vocal. makes it a lot easier to line up later if you can't get rid of the latency issue

    So obviously a good idea - why didn't I think of that? Thanks. Though, of course, not needing to do so is the ideal.




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  • CabicularCabicular Frets: 2214
    Its a good thing to do when you are syncing audio and video too

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  • Ben8010Ben8010 Frets: 150
    close2u said:
    Ben8010 said:
    Get a USB audio interface. There's plenty out there and you could get one for under £100 which will do what you want


    Thanks @Ben8010

    So what is the difference between the Voicelive Play acting as an audio interface and getting an audio interface?

    I don't know much about Voivelive but most AIs let you direct monitor (monitoring your direct signal as opposed to your processed signal), which should get rid of the latency
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  • close2uclose2u Frets: 997

    @Ben8010 Thanks.

    The latency isn't in the monitoring, it is in the recorded, overlaid vocals that lag behind the initially recorded guitar track.


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  • Ben8010Ben8010 Frets: 150
    @close2u Ah right. Well all i can say on that is that while using a dedicated audio interface I've never had any problems with latency. Sorry I can't be much more help!
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  • wave100wave100 Frets: 150
    Another factor with latency is the driver used by the interface - for lowest latency you want to select the ASIO driver in your DAW. I don't know if Audacity is able to use this technology or if the Voicelive Play has dedicated ones, if not it might be worth trying ASIO4all which is free. If this still doesn't sort you out, a dedicated AI is the way forward...
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  • close2uclose2u Frets: 997
    edited January 2017
    So if I get a dedicated audio interface, due to the latency issue shall I simply not go through the Voiicelive play gtx? And will I want a better daw than audacity? Thanks @wave100 ;
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  • Reaper is much better than Audacity and is essentially free. There's a long eval period (which you can keep extending) and if you choose to buy it, it's incredibly cheap.
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  • close2uclose2u Frets: 997
    I had a copy of Reaper on my laptop but it died so I lost it. I'll check it out again thanks @vasselmeyer I seem to recall I downloaded some add-ons or had to do some fiddling arond with extension something-or-others to get it working nicely.
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