Hello guys! I’d really appreciate some help. I’ve got no money to spend in the recording of my demo. I’ve been using Ardour with the portable stereo recorder TASCAM DR-07 connected directly to the computers sound card trough the microphone port of the computer, which I found works great at base level (made some tests and it seems to work perfectly because the recorder already has a built-in soundcard, so the computer’s soundcard is just bypassing the recorder’s soundcard output signal). And now a friend lent me a usb microphone BEHRINGER C-1U.
I think that the portable recorder picks up better some higher frequencies and the microphone some lower frequencies. So I wanted to experiment with both at the same time (multitracking) going trough different tracks and mixing/equalizing them to get better results than I would get by using just the recorder or just the microphone (theory and experimenting again, not sure if it’s going to work better than using just one of both, or if the lower/higher frequency trip was just an illusion of the room qualities and microphone distances).
So, the question would be: how can I send the singal of the microphone input of the computer to one track, and the signal of the usb port to another one?
You will have to configure jack to use essentially 2 soundcards which can be tricky and beyond the scope of ardour. You will need to search google for this.
What you are hearing is the difference in sound in the types of mics. the tascam has condensor mics, they tend to have much flatter frequency responses and pick up more detail, they also tend to go higher up in the frequency range.
Dynamic mics dont have a flat response, depending on the mic will depend on how they sound as they will have spikes and “ramps” here and there. Dynamic mics tend to not sound as crisp or bright.
You can blend the 2 but be sure they are at the same distance on you coud get phase issues.
I have the dr-05, the 07 is essentially the same thing but just with some extra features.
I use it as a mic preamp for vocal mics. Using an xlr to !/4 jack then a 1/8 to 1/8th adapter on that to get it into the tascam, then the line out goes to my computers line in. I make sure to ony connect capture 1 to whatever tracks im recording.
TBH i dont see much advantage of using a USB mic aswell apart from possibly using it for the main singer to get a more direct sound that you can mix better.
You would be better of using the line input on your computer if your using the tascams mics, they are stereo. If you use the mic input you will only get 1 channel.