Monitoring sound recording

[Tim]

I am recording sermons on my Dell 1100 laptop using Nero Wave Editor
and the microphone IN. The recordings are coming out great but I can
not figure out how to monitor the sound as it is being recorded. Any
ideas?

Thanks,

Tim

[Ethan Winer]

Tim,

> I can not figure out how to monitor the sound as it is being recorded <

Call up the sound card's mixer by double-clicking on the little loudspeaker
icon in the system tray at the lower right of your screen. If you have the
standard Windows mixer there should be separate volume controls for each of
the various inputs - CD, Wave, line input, etc. If yours has a control for
Microphone Input, turn that up and the incoming sound should come out the
headphone jack.

If your laptop/sound card doesn't offer this, then you'll need an external
mixer to do what you want.

--Ethan

[Ethan Winer]

Tim,

> I can not figure out how to monitor the sound as it is being recorded <

Call up the sound card's mixer by double-clicking on the little loudspeaker
icon in the system tray at the lower right of your screen. If you have the
standard Windows mixer there should be separate volume controls for each of
the various inputs - CD, Wave, line input, etc. If yours has a control for
Microphone Input, turn that up and the incoming sound should come out the
headphone jack.

If your laptop/sound card doesn't offer this, then you'll need an external
mixer to do what you want.

--Ethan

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> I am recording sermons on my Dell 1100 laptop using Nero Wave Editor
> and the microphone IN. The recordings are coming out great but I can
> not figure out how to monitor the sound as it is being recorded. Any
> ideas?

If you can find someone who has this exact combination of hardware and
software, you can get an exact answer (which may be "you can't" but
that's not likely). However, using the built-in hardware, you'll have
to deal with the time it takes for the audio to be digitized, go
through the drivers, and back out in analog form. This is often long
enough to be bothersome. It's usually called "latency" and is the bane
of everyone trying to do this sort of recording on the cheap.

As Ethan suggests, poke around in the mixer application to see if
there are some boxes you can check (or "mute" boxes to un-check" which
will allow you to hear both the playback and the microphone input while
you're recording. You need to be careful that you don't enable "WAV
Playback" as a recording source (just enable the microphone) or the
track will be recorded on top of itself.

Since you're probably want to do multitrack recording (which I doubt
the Nero Editor can do) you might want to invest in an external audio
interface that takes care of all the details and makes the job a lot
easier. I was pretty happy with the TASCAM US-122 (under $200, plugs
into a USB port). It has a headphone amplifier built in, as well as
two mic preamps with phantom power, and a simple mixer that mixes the
playback from the computer with the microphone input so you can
overdub easily and have hardware controls in front of you while you're
working. It comes bundled with an elementary version of Cubase
(Cubasis) that's functional as a multitrack recording and mixing
program.

I have a Dell Inspiron 2650 laptop and it worked fine with that, with
only one exception. When I switched the phantom power on while the
interface was connected to the computer, apparently the transient load
on the computer's power supply (the US-122 receives its power from the
USB port) was too great and it caused the unit to disconnect from the
computer. Unplugging the USB plug and plugging it in (with phamtom
power switched on) brings it back to life. It's just one of those
things that you have to learn to live with, but it's not something
that you'll be doing frequently during a session. And if you're using
a microphone that doesn't require phantom power, it's no bother at
all. But the capability is there when you get a better mic.

The only other glitch that I found with the US-122 was that the
impedance of the instrument input wasn't as high as the specification
sheet stated. It's not a disaster, and it worked OK with an electric
guitar and bass that I have here, but it's not a fine, high quality
direct box, and I wouldn't recommend plugging a passive piezoelectric
pickup into it.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

[Mike Rivers]

In article > writes:

> I am recording sermons on my Dell 1100 laptop using Nero Wave Editor
> and the microphone IN. The recordings are coming out great but I can
> not figure out how to monitor the sound as it is being recorded. Any
> ideas?

If you can find someone who has this exact combination of hardware and
software, you can get an exact answer (which may be "you can't" but
that's not likely). However, using the built-in hardware, you'll have
to deal with the time it takes for the audio to be digitized, go
through the drivers, and back out in analog form. This is often long
enough to be bothersome. It's usually called "latency" and is the bane
of everyone trying to do this sort of recording on the cheap.

As Ethan suggests, poke around in the mixer application to see if
there are some boxes you can check (or "mute" boxes to un-check" which
will allow you to hear both the playback and the microphone input while
you're recording. You need to be careful that you don't enable "WAV
Playback" as a recording source (just enable the microphone) or the
track will be recorded on top of itself.

Since you're probably want to do multitrack recording (which I doubt
the Nero Editor can do) you might want to invest in an external audio
interface that takes care of all the details and makes the job a lot
easier. I was pretty happy with the TASCAM US-122 (under $200, plugs
into a USB port). It has a headphone amplifier built in, as well as
two mic preamps with phantom power, and a simple mixer that mixes the
playback from the computer with the microphone input so you can
overdub easily and have hardware controls in front of you while you're
working. It comes bundled with an elementary version of Cubase
(Cubasis) that's functional as a multitrack recording and mixing
program.

I have a Dell Inspiron 2650 laptop and it worked fine with that, with
only one exception. When I switched the phantom power on while the
interface was connected to the computer, apparently the transient load
on the computer's power supply (the US-122 receives its power from the
USB port) was too great and it caused the unit to disconnect from the
computer. Unplugging the USB plug and plugging it in (with phamtom
power switched on) brings it back to life. It's just one of those
things that you have to learn to live with, but it's not something
that you'll be doing frequently during a session. And if you're using
a microphone that doesn't require phantom power, it's no bother at
all. But the capability is there when you get a better mic.

The only other glitch that I found with the US-122 was that the
impedance of the instrument input wasn't as high as the specification
sheet stated. It's not a disaster, and it worked OK with an electric
guitar and bass that I have here, but it's not a fine, high quality
direct box, and I wouldn't recommend plugging a passive piezoelectric
pickup into it.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo