Totally with Rob here.
Any weak link can bring the whole thing down, and that single cable is bugging me. Is that a TRS or TS cable?

The Cakewalk forum just trashed a long reply I wrote. Here's the short version.

I don't know what kind of cables I have. I do know that I will give up working on Music Creator if you tell me I have to buy new cables. (If the cables are the problem why would I get sound sometimes. If the cables are wrong logic says you get no sound ever. ) I studied architecture the first 2 years of college. Things weren't going well and one day I lost my toolbox, so I changed majors. True story.

Robert. I don't know what kind of cables I have. All I know is they're black. Here is a photo. The one on the left connects to the sound card line in. It appears to be stereo because it has two black rings on the tip. It connects to the one in the middle which also appears to be stereo. That one plugs into Main Out on the mixer. The plug on the right is the microphone and it appears to be mono.



I'm going to copy this message before I press OK because this is the Cakewalk forum and if it can go wrong it will.

Steve

Robert

Thanks for the offer and thanks for all the help. I turned off the computer for a few minutes and then thought about it some more. I came up with one more angle and I think I solved the problem. As you see below I was using Line In for recording. It needs to be set to Microphone when I'm using the microphone. DUH! I was using Line In because the Audigy card does not have a Microphone jack. It only has a Line In jack. But somehow it evidently can morph that Line In into a Microphone port when you select Microphone in the settings.

I don't want to jinx myself, but I think I've got it working now. I'll try to record my first song tomorrow or Thursday.



Steve

..."I don't know what kind of cables I have. All I know is they're black"...

What else do you need to know. I mean, other than which end is which.
Really, that was a good chuckle, hope you got things worked out.

Later
Albert

Humor, even subtle or understated, is a first requirement when dealing with m/c.
TRS will look like a stereo 1/4" plug, it has a (T)ip, a (R)ing, and a (S)omething else, memory fails me. In your screen shot, you have three cables, the two outside ones are TS, the middle is a TRS. Inside the insulation, in a TS, you have basically two conductors, one positive, the other negative. In a stereo cable, you have one negative and two positive, one pos for each channel, the neg is common to both channels. In a ballanced setting, the same cable is used as in the stereo cable, but the two pos conductors are used as the pos and neg, with the sheilding used for suppression of radio frequencies (rf). The sheilding for rf is necessary for longer cable runs, so on stage mics are connected with the ballanced, sheilded cables, whereas, shorter runs, from the guitar to the amp, usually less than 8 feet, can be done without sheilding.
Does radio shack still make computers? Seems to me they are cell phones and small connectors, and even less connectors these days.
Wait, I went back up and looked at that picture again, I think the smaller, 1/8" plug is also TRS, so you have a 1/8" TRS, a 1/4" TRS and a 14" TS. Blame it on old eyes.
Later
Albert

Steve, I know your frustrated, and i appreciate the humor, but really from what i can see, you do not have everything hooked up right, and have not really followed the suggestions carefully. I do not say this to frustrate you more but really to help. If you are trying to repair a car and had absolutely no idea how a engine worked, you would have little success fixing it unless you followed directions carefully. MC is not your problem, any DAW software would malfunction under this setup. So if throwing out MC because you need to buy the right cables to balance the systems out, seems reasonable then what can we say. But if you attach your mixer to the sound card improperly and send the signal to another software, then you will have the same results.

There are several things suggested you have failed to totally acknowledge and correct. 1. Your cables, and setup can be the whole problem, as how you had it connected in the last screen shot you put up you had it the whole system very unbalanced. you were sending a mono signal out of the mixer on the Left channel only into the sound card which has a stereo signal, you have your mike pluged into channel 2 and it is panned hard right, the volume is knob is cranked full on. So you are getting a very hot signal, so most likely when you press certain buttons, or make certain adjustments it throws the whole signal to output, and when released then removes or mutes that signal, hence the "all or nothing" scenario. Also you are running the sound card applet mixer levels very low, you need to turn them up to about 80% volume drive the system from the mixer, and from MC, not from the applet. This in itself might when coupled with the hot source signal may cause overdriving and bleedover.

Follow me here and I think we can fix the problem.

1. Purchase two sets of RCA stereo cables, A. http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Hosa-Stereo-YCable-Mini-Male-2-14-Mono-Males?sku=333053 B. http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/AV-Link-Dual-RCA-14-Cable?sku=339009 These can be bought at a local Radio snack for prety cheap

2. Take the 1/8" mini stereo plug to from the sound cards line out to the mixers tape input RCA cable "A." above

3. Take the 1/4" plugs to RCA cables "B." above, and run that pair to the line in on the sound card from the main out on the mixer.

4. Bump up the volumes in the sound cards mixer applet, and turn off Wave for now (more on that later), only leave line in record and playback, midi, master, on for now.

5. On the mixer depress the to control room button, not the to mix button.

6. Turn the mike channels volume down to about half way on the mixer and turn the pan knob to straight up.

7. Arm a track in MC and hit record, sing a little ditty in the mike and then check for signal.

8. repost and tell us what is happening.

On the WAVE input, i am not sure about that one as I do not have a sound blaster card. But i believe WAVE is the same as "what you hear" so i suggest turning it off for now, maybe someone with a sound blaster or audigy can clarify that.

Steve, please do not take offense at anything i have said, i am really trying to help. Sometimes when we reach the frustration point we all have a tendancy to hear, but not listen, and the written mode of forums amplifies that problem.

I really hope this solves or at least greatly improves the situation. Rob

It is true that in most venues, all tracks used to be mono tracks, and the panning amde the song stereo, Now with digital recording you can have stereo tracks, for some instruments it simply does not matter, but with some it can be a big plus. Stereo does make for a fuller sound on some tracks, due to the width of that paticular track. Some tracks with a stereo wave signal can use effects better where phasing a chorus come in.

I can't advise to deeply on the audigy line/mic issue, as i do not have an audigy, however one of the issues that you face with the use of Mike input is that it adds a boost to the line level signal, really acting as a preamp, if you are running thru the behringer, the Xenex already has nice pres on it, so in effect you are causing a double PreAmp to the track, this can cause clipping to occur.

I used to have a behringer mixer and i always ran thru the line in on my sound card.I suspect that once you cable the system up the right way, your problem will go away.

Cause the one glaring problem i saw was that the mixer was panned hard right and the mike output was left only that would make getting a signal to the card very difficult. So any wrong setting that caused the signal to be mixed at the control room or main buss might cause a full volume signal to be sent. That is just a hypothesis though.

One reason i use stereo tracks for vocals and accoustic guitars is that i use a stereo effect sometimes and that allows me to place separate effects on the track for each side of the signal, example delay on oen and compression on the other. AS you can see in the illustration i posted earlier http://z8.invisionfree.com/GAPers/index.php?showtopic=54

I hope it works, but any signal coming out of the mixer will be at line level, not mic level, so that tells me that the signal from the mixer was not at a high enough level for the sound card to fully appreciate. Turning on the sound card's mic preamp seems to have compensated for the anemic line level, but it's not something you should have to do.

ORIGINAL: 57Gregy

I hope it works, but any signal coming out of the mixer will be at line level, not mic level, so that tells me that the signal from the mixer was not at a high enough level for the sound card to fully appreciate. Turning on the sound card's mic preamp seems to have compensated for the anemic line level, but it's not something you should have to do.

I'm not sure why you say any signal coming out of the mixer will be at line level? The Behringer mixer has a preamp in it and so I believe the signal is amplified by the preamp depending upon how high I turn up the preamp trim. Anyway, I tried it tonight with the mike set to the Microphone input in the soundcard applet and the vocals recorded at a good level. I am satisfied that the problem is solved.

Steve

One of the reasons the level is low and then high is that the sound cards levels are to low, they are at half volume. Crank them up and you would have to grank up the mixer.

ORIGINAL: 57Gregy

That's right, Steve. The preamp raises the mic input level so the mixer can 'hear' it better, but it will go out of the mixer at line level, regardless of what's plugged into the mixer, or whether the preamp is on, or what the level/trim controls are set to.
So I would set the sound card's levels for all the inputs you use to about 75%-80%, then adjust the inputs on the mixer so they send a line level to the sound card which is loud enough to get good levels in the recording. If the signal still isn't hot enough for decent recording levels in MC, you can boost the sound card's inputs a little more. Once you have the inputs of the sound card set to give good recordings, leave the sound card's levels alone, and use the mixer for everyday adjustments.
It can get confusing sometimes; Sound card's have level meters. Mixers have level meters. Then there are more level meters in the various effects and soft synths. Too many meters, constantly adjusting this one, then the other, pretty soon everything is out of balance.

Greg

You may be right, but I'm skeptical. As I was adjusting the levels last night I believe that the Preamp trim also affected the input level of the audio track. I can't confirm that right now, but I will look at it again later. In fact they have a system flow schematic of the mixer on their website and it looks like the Preamp runs on the path to the Main Outs. But I'm clearly no expert in this. I did however, get a nice recording of my vocals on my song and have mixed it down to MP3. Now I'm waiting for it to be posted on my SoundClick page.

http://www.behringerdownload.de/XENYX_GRP1/802_VIEW_Rev_A.pdf

Steve

Greg

Do you think I need to understand that, because I don't? I think I've got everyting under control so if it's not critical I'm going to ignore what that means for now. If I put any more information in my brain some of the important stuff may get discarded like happened to SpongeBob when Squidward taught him how to be a fancy waiter.

Steve

Steve,
Looking forward to hearing that Sound Click sound check.
Greg is steering you right, and at the risk of turning you into SpongeBob the fancy waiter, here's a few notes you may want to keep in mind. Put them on the back burner if you want, and as everything starts to gel, it will make more sense.
Your signal is going through 4 gain stages. The first, and probably most important, is the preamp. This brings the very weak signal level of the microphone up to a level that your hardware can comfortably work with (line level). If there is too much boost here, you will get clipping that will be carried through to your DAW,MC4. This then goes through the level control in the channel in the mixer, the mixer main out, the sound card level control, and finally to MC4. Ideally, you want to boost the signal just a bit at each stage, so the signal is strong, but clean.
Don't want to get too deep here, but once the signal is distorted, the distortion will be passed to the next stage. Play with it, and you will find the balance.

Never mind. I think I've solved this SoundClick problem.

Thanks

Steve

what program are you using to convert? 50M is way too large for a 96k mp3. what is the starting size of the wave file?