Hi Recording People

[FergusVoice]

I made my first recording in the early 1950's. Actually, my father was the sound engineer - a roving reporter for BBC radio who realised that his kids were good content for spots on the radio. Having been a child actor I went into electronics with a sound recording engineer who also designed and built recording desks for studios in the '60s. Like wow, a 4 channel desk half the size of a car that cost megabucks! Now we can all buy a small desk that does far more for a few hundred bucks. Different world.
I am here to learn more about which firewire interface to choose to make spoken voice recordings for my CDs (I train people in speaking and I record voiceovers and books for clients). I have used Tascam 122, Alesis i/02 and Toneport UX2. None of them are clean enough, and I get occasional latency clicks in recordings. So which to choose? That's why I am here!

[richiebee]

Interesting story. Hope you can give us some advice too!

I'd say to make it cleaner you should probably try a higher quality pre-amp. One that goes into either of the units you have will allow you to cancel out the pre-amps built into those units and give you a cleaner signal. What microphone do you use?

If you did want to upgrade your audio interface, I'd suggest looking at something by Echo or RME.

USB is more than capable of handling one or two channels of audio without noticable latency. Certainly the US122 can do direct monitoring too, so if latency is too high (I find it low enough to play keys live), then you can always use this and increase the buffer size while recording to eliminate clicks. I'm pretty sure that going to a Firewire device is not going to help you here - the latency is caused by your computer as much as the data transfer.

[FergusVoice]

Hi Richie,

Happy to be of help when I can be. Thanks for your reply.
My ideal would be a preamp with lots of gain and zero hiss. I use an AKG C3000 which I love. I don't like the idea of having a preamp AND a preamp interface half of which I bypass. When I mix baking music with my voice I don't want to hear hiss come in when I am about to speak that stops at the end of my voice track shortly before the end of recording... thus...

clean music... HISSS Hi this is Fergus... etc... bye for now HISS Hiss ends, clean music, end of track.

So, lotsa gain, clean voice, zero pops, is my outcome. The Tascam didn't work well at all with my G4 Mac powerbook. The Alesis was too low in gain and hiss on one channel - I tried 3 and each one had different gain and hiss levels. The Toneport has good gain but too much hiss. I am sure al 3 are great for high level music recording, just not for soft-spoken voice

[richiebee]

Kind of weird. What kind of compressor are you using on your voice?

There's no doubt that the audio interfaces you mentioned in your first post are budget devices. That said, I've never had any problems with my US122 with an AKG C414 which I guess is as close as I can get to your C3000. Is your power clean? Do you use your powerbook with the two prong plug or three prong (is there even an option on the uk one?)? Can you rule out the microphone as the issue?

What software are you using with your Powerbook? I found that Cubase REALLY sucked with mine, and it was no slouch - G4 1.67Ghz, 2Gb RAM.

[FergusVoice]

Originally Posted by richiebee

Kind of weird. What kind of compressor are you using on your voice?

Originally Posted by richiebee

No compressor.

What software are you using with your Powerbook? I found that Cubase REALLY sucked with mine, and it was no slouch - G4 1.67Ghz, 2Gb RAM.

I have tried: Jasmine, Garage Band, Sound Studio, Audacity, Amadeus Pro, Audio Hijack Pro, (Maybe others I have forgotten!).

Gearbox - the software for the Toneport, can make big demands on the computer and cause other programs to fall over at times.

My PB is 15" 1.25GHz, used with mains or on internal battery. The mains is 3 pin - bless them, Apple are thorough and the power plug is wired to earth as well as the other two pins on the wall plug.

Even on listen through there is far too much hiss to be acceptable.

I have used several other mics - none such high gain - with the same challenge.

Best,


fergus

[synchu]

It is very possible that the hiss comes from the laptop. Does it have noisy fan? Do you hear the fan while doing the voice overs?

As for the audio interfaces depending on your budget, I will look at:
- EMU 1616 USB devices. Budget device with very good specs & performance;

- Mackie Onyx firewire interfaces. Preamps are supposed to sound good on these ones.

- Higher priced audio interfaces with great specs and performance - such as Apogee MiniMe and the alike.

Then again if you decide to go with higher end equipment, then good mic preamps (IMO) are Pendulum (probably a bit pricey for your purposes), DAV BG1 and last but not least FMR Audio RNP come to mind.

[FergusVoice]

It is very possible that the hiss comes from the laptop. Does it have noisy fan? Do you hear the fan while doing the voice overs?

The hiss is there when you listen via the headphones socket on the devices - which means a direct path, not going through the laptop. I let the fan stop before recording. If it ever comes on in the middle it makes no difference to the hiss.

I will certainly look into those interfaces, thanks.

[MR.BYTCH KILLA]

What Is A Compressor And What Does It Do To Music?richiebee?

[richiebee]

Originally Posted by MR.BYTCH KILLA

What Is A Compressor And What Does It Do To Music?richiebee?

A compressor is the most abused piece of gear in the recording world. It has numerous functions, to varying degrees, but the basic point is for you to be able to turn up your signal without getting distortion and to level off momentary peaks in a performance. I can't imagine a vocal performance, speech in particular that wouldn't benefit from a touch of compression. There are other creative uses of a compressor...

This article will do a better job of explaining it -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_level_compression

[richiebee]

Originally Posted by FergusVoice

It is very possible that the hiss comes from the laptop. Does it have noisy fan? Do you hear the fan while doing the voice overs?

The hiss is there when you listen via the headphones socket on the devices - which means a direct path, not going through the laptop. I let the fan stop before recording. If it ever comes on in the middle it makes no difference to the hiss.

I will certainly look into those interfaces, thanks.

The laptop is powering the audio interface so it is relevant and a possibility that the laptop itself is causing the problem. I've not heard it be an issue with Mac's particularly, but it is a longstanding laptop issue in general.