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Audacity listen while recording4/16/2024 ![]() If both are ON, you will get both through the monitors, with a few milleseconds of latency from the DAW monitoring - leading to a doubled bass sound with phasing. Generally you want DAW Track Monitoring OFF and Direct Monitoring on the DAI ON - mine I bias a bit towards the Direct and away from the DAW. Track Monitor settings in the DAW control whether or not the DAW plays the sound back to the DAI while recording or idling, not playback. ![]() The Direct Monitor setting on the DAI (blend knob if you’re lucky, a switch if not) controls how much sound comes directly off the DAI 0-latency post-preamp versus how much out of the DAW playback. The mix that goes to your ears is not the one that is recorded, that’s the entire point.There’s two things that make a big difference here - the direct monitoring setting on the DAI and the monitoring setting on the DAW. For one thing, it’s the only way to record a second track using the first track as a guide, metronome, rhythm section, whatever you want to call it and not have the two mixed together, before you want them to be mixed together. For a variety of reasons the mix you want to monitor might be different than the mix you want to record. It is the most important question in selecting what equipment to buy. What do you get to monitor, and how? – is the question you must answer before you start recording. Monitoring is the most important term, and for some reason the most negligently used. IOW you are monitoring the mix as it is being recorded, or will be recorded once you get done fiddling. Listening a mix of playbacks, or a playback and a performance mixed together, for purposes of producing a new recording, is monitoring. Listening to a playback is not monitoring.ī. Monitoring = listening while recording.Ī.Now that we have digital multi-tracking, over-dubbing is of very limited usefulness. “Overdubbing” does not mean mixing or multi-tracking. In any case, IMO the term is used carelessly and causes needless confusion, frustration, and waste of time and money. I suppose it can be used as a creative technique (some sort of echo track) but wonder if it’s worth it some other method is very likely easier, faster, and more controllable. Normally this is precisely what you are trying to avoid, as with the setup above. Overdubbing would be if be if I was recording a real-time mixture of computer tracks and live guitar, voice, something. Then I have Audacity export the whole shebang to a recording (actually when you push play a mix is sent to the headphones). Then I adjust the relative levels of the various tracks. įirst, I synchronize the guitar track with the computer tracks, then tweak the guitar track with levels, effects, etc. Having recorded the additional, discrete, not over-dubbed, not mixed guitar track. This is still multi-tracking, not overdubbing or mixing. Then I want to play some guitar on top, which I do with the setup above, which produces an additional track. When I push “play”, the computer mixes them to two stereo tracks and sends them to the headphones and/or speakers. I record and then synchronize a bunch of computer synthesizer tracks with Audacity That’s multi-tracking. Multi-tracking = two or more tracks played back in synchronization to sound like one, though they remain discrete sources.Į.g. Overdubbing = one or more tracks playing, while, in real time, another is recorded and mixed with them to produce a new recording. Mixing = two or more tracks mixed to produce a new recording. OTOH I’ve wasted hours just trying to understand what various people mean by their latency fixes, let alone making them work. I fix that manually in Audacity with time shift. True, the computer is playing and recording at the same time, and so there is latency when both are played back. Voila, two discrete tracks, the first used as a time cue for the second. But the only thing the mixer sends to the computer (via the stereo receiver) is the instrument/mic input, unmixed with the first track, via the line in. It mixes the instrument/mic input with computer output (the first track) and routes it to the headphones so you can hear both at the same time, using the first track as something to play to. Headphones plugged into Mixer Headphones jack. Instrument and/or mic plugged into Mixer inputs.Į. Stereo receiver (tape monitor circuits) set to “source”ĭ. Mixer Main Out to Stereo Amp Aux inputs jack.Ĭ. On my computer this mutes the line out to the stereo receiver.ī. ![]() Computer headphone jack to Mixer CD/TAPE inputs. Computer and Mixer (Behringer Xenyx 802):Ī. to a set of “tape monitor” inputs and outputs. My computer is connected to my stereo receiver as though it were a CD player, i.e. What about latency? I don’t get it, what’s the issue? In any case, here’s how I do it: with a mixer. I find the terminology very imprecise, ambiguous, and confusing.
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