Digital Home Recording....Or....What The #&!!

<p><span style="font-size: small;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The majority of my musical knowledge has nothing to do with recording and/or mixing multi-track recordings. There was always an engineer in the studio taking care of all that. Of course I've made cassette recordings or digital handheld recordings just so I wouldn't forget something. But that is not the same. I am a lone wolf at the moment. I choose not to have a band, but I still go play live with somebody from time to time, but mostly it's just me. So, that being the case, I'm left to my own devices.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With technology being what it is these days, once you have an audio file created, you upload it to websites and/or radio stations online. Obviously you already know this if you're here at Mixposure. But, my point is that many of us don't have access to high end recording equipment nor can we afford high end recording software, but we want our music to be the best that it can be with what we have to work with.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So, that brings me to the point of this blog .....article .....blarticle .....articog .....whatever. I have recently been trying to figure out recording and mixing multi-track recordings. I want to improve on what I have. This is mainly because I know it can be done because I hear studio quality music here all the time and it drives me crazy that I can't get mine to sound that good. So, I've been working on it, reading a lot about it, and learning. And, since there are well over 6000 members, at the moment, surely others have experienced some of the same issues as me. Plus, it helps me to learn and remember if I write it down, or type it in this case. Therefore, I thought I would share some of the things I've learned so far so maybe it will help somebody somewhere along the way.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Let it be known that I <span style="color: #ff0000;">IN NO WAY</span> claim to know anything about anything and absolutely <span style="color: #ff0000;">DO NOT</span> claim to be even close to the vicinity of the neighborhood of the recording pros. So, please, take the time to investigate these things yourself and <span style="color: #ff0000;">DO NOT</span> take what I say to heart, because I'm trying to learn also. And, if any of you pros, or anybody smarter than me (which is just about everyone), has any corrections or anything to add, please do so. I need all the help I can get.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So, not long ago, I recorded a song called "Pair Of Dice". I had many issues with this song in particular. I used up 16 tracks to get it done. Not all 16 are full tracks. As a matter of fact, there are NO full complete tracks all the way through from start to finish anywhere in the song. I have the drum and bass on one track (they are together because it's basically a digital sample from a synthesizer), the vocals are on one track, the rythm guitar is on a track, the lead fills on a track, and the lead guitar on a track. So, I've already used 5 tracks right there. Some of the rest of the tracks are snippets of things that I used to fill in here or there or add something that I couldn't add any other way, like a seperate bass run or to add a hi-hat somewhere. I put them on seperate tracks so that I could control the volume of each seperate item and add different effects on different things.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I used Kristal Audio Engine (free) to record and mix the song. However, this was the start of the problems. The main problem I was having was latency. A very simplified explanation of latency is it is "lag time", which can be as high as 50-75 milliseconds on a standard Windows sound card, from the time a signal is created (your voice for example) until it reaches the processor and onto that specific track. Let's suppose, for example, you have track one already recorded with a rythm guitar and you are now using track two for vocals. Ordinarily, while recording the vocals, you are playing back track one with the rythm guitar on it. With Windows typical MME <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(multi-media extensions) latency of 50-75 ms, your vocals will be off by that much as compared to track one. The thing is, depending on what the latency actually is, you may not realize it until you are several tracks into it and going back and re-recording it won't help the situation because you will still end up with the same result. So, you can imagine the difficulty involved when many tracks are involved and there is a latency issue on every track.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For more information and further reading on latency, please see </span><a href="http://www.digitalprosound.com/Htm/Articles/April/Audio_Latency.htm">http://www.digitalprosound.com/Htm/Articles/April/Audio_Latency.htm </a>This article explains latency and the many different types of latency where digital recording is concerned.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A quick sideline..... I haven't noticed latency issues nearly as bad while using Audacity as opposed to Kristal, while using the same computer. I haven't quite figured out why yet but I suspect it's because they may be using different audio drivers. I don't know yet.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So, what do you do when you have a situation like this? There are several solutions. But, here is what I did to get Pair Of Dice better than it was, and then I'll mention some other solutions. As I mentioned, Pair Of Dice is comprised of 16 seperate tracks, and each one had latency issues. What I did to start was to mute every track accept the drum/bass track and the vocal track. Muting all but two tracks eliminates trying to here "between" the other tracks and cuts distraction down to nothing. I then aligned the vocal track with the bass/drum track, at least the best I could with my ear. Once that sounded decent, I muted the bass/drum track and unmuted the rythm track. Now I only had the vocal track and rythm track on. Again, I aligned the rythm track to the vocals. The reason I aligned the rythm to the vocals instead of to the bass/drum is because vocals are more prominent than bass and drums and chord changes are much more evident and need to be relatively precise. After that, I then proceeded to mute the rythm track and turn on the lead fills track and also aligned it to the vocals. I again chose the vocal track for alignment of the lead fill track because lead fills are typically done between words or sentences. However, for the main lead guitar track, I turned on the vocals AND the bass/drum track. I did this for two reasons. I included the bass/drum track to get the lead guitar as close to being in time as my ear would allow and I included the vocals because I needed to know where the lead break started and stopped. I followed this type procedure until the song reached a decent equilibrium. It still isn't perfect but it sounds much better than it did.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So, that demonstrates one painful way to re-align a song recorded on a computer where latency is an issue. It works but is far from being exact and far from the way you would typically want to do it. The right way to do it is to eliminate the latency issue altogether....or as much as you can.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The one obvious solution is to empty your wallet and buy a high end sound card or, buy a new current computer.....and then buy a high end sound card for it. But, either way, empty your wallet. But, if you're like me, you don't always have money just falling out of your pockets. We can't all be Garth Brooks <img title="Surprised" src="http://www.mixposure.com/include/tiny_mce/plugins/emotions/img/smiley-surprised.gif" border="0" alt="Surprised" />.&nbsp; So, what's the answer? I don't know. But I do know there is a solution that <span style="text-decoration: underline;">should</span> (and I use that word cautiously) dramatically help with the situation. Windows wants to use MME and/or Direct X with its native drivers to create or manipulate audio. MME is probably the worst with regard to latency and sound quality, from what I've read. Direct X is better than MME but still isn't great. One fix is to install ASIO drivers on your computer. ASIO technology, or </span>Audio Stream Input/Output, was developed by Steinberg Technologies, and was initially developed to assist with VST plugin quality (VST plugin technology was also initially developed by Steinberg Technologies). ASIO helps by supporting variable bit depths and sample rates, multi-channel operation and synchronization. According to Wikipedia "<em>ASIO bypasses the normal audio path from the user application through layers of intermediary Windows operating system software, so that the application connects directly to the sound card hardware. Each layer that is bypassed means a reduction in latency. In this way ASIO offers a relatively simple way of accessing multiple audio inputs and outputs independently. Its main strength lies in its method of bypassing the inherently high latency and poor-quality mixing and sample rate conversion of Windows audio mixing kernels (KMixer), allowing direct, high speed communication with audio hardware. Unlike KMixer, an unmixed ASIO output is "bit identical" or "bit transparent", that is, the bits sent to the sound card are identical to those of the original source, thus having higher audio fidelity.</em>" So, there's a guy named Michael Tippach that has developed an ASIO driver which works seemingly with just about every sound card out there and it's free to all. You can find it <a href="http://www.asio4all.com/">here</a>. Download and install it and you should notice a huge difference. There is also an article concerning .NET programming <a href="http://www.codeproject.com/KB/audio-video/Asio_Net.aspx">here</a> that also discusses latency and ASIO drivers.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I know this has been a pretty long winded post but I think if you're going to learn about something then you should try to learn all you can. I know I've learned a ton of things about recording and mixing since I've been on Mixposure and since I started digging more into digital recording. If you've read this far, I appreciate your time, and I only hope that this helps somebody.</span></p>