I'm an extreme, and I do mean, ex? treme! newby not just to audio production
with Pro tools, but more to recording in general on the mac, as I'm coming
from a Windows/Sonar background, so please please please! have major mercy
on me. I'm probably at that point where I should know this stuff I'm about
to ask, and I kind a do, but not very well. All the docs I've looked at
unfortunately as far as my level goes may as wel be written in greek. So
please you all, stick with me on this, and go easy. I think once you all
get me up and going, I'll be good to branch out and explore on my own, but I
need some fundimental set up help.
OK, let's get started.
First of all, a little background. Last February, my father passed away due
to throat cancer. I know guys, you're going, dude, get to the point. I am,
I am, hear me out. Because of this, I was asked to record the
instrumentation of god of this city by chris Tomlin for being sung at Dad's
funeral. Well, I kind a had my hands tied, as sure I could use Sonar, which
is what I wound up doing, but I said to myself, this is Dad here, Sonar
isn't good enough for him. Plus, I really wanted to get more into doing
major audio stuff professionally. I needed Pro tools, bottom line. So,
after talking to my church and the members of it, they fund-raised and got
me a stocked mid 2010 white 13 inch macbook with Snowleopard, and a copy of
Pro Tools V9. I then went to my local music store, and purchased a really
really nice studio grade microphone, as well as a 10 channel Yamaha mixer.
I love this thing! Anyway, so, here is the deal. I'd been using Garage
Band, even though I had P T, as I wanted to in general get familiar with how
recording worked on the mac before taking the plunge and openning my P T
box, and installing. I finally last night, did it. I installed P T. I
also listenned to the first part done by Kevin Reeves of P T, and it helped
me more than words could express. It's a shame that time didn't permit him
to do more of that tutorial as he said he'd planned to do! Anyway, so, all
was great, but then we ran into a couple of deal breakers, which I r'really!
need help with.
First of all, as most of you know, this is a white macbook, so it's not the
pro, thus, it only has one audio I/O jack on it. Depending on what you have
set in System Prefs/Sound/Input tab, that jack will either/or. In other
words, it'll either function as a line in, or as a line out. It can't do
both at the same time, obviously. This means, if I plug my mixer in from
the line out of my board via RCA to the 8th inch line in on the macbook,
well, that's all great, but, whoops? Now we have no headphone jack except on
the mixer, which does absolutely no good with how I just described my setup.
Yeah, I have A U X control dials on my different channels on the board, but
don't know how they're used. I do have a few send/receives on my board as
well, but again, don't know how to use/work them. Ideally that probably
would be my best option, but, I've gotta go now with what I have and *do*
know. OK, so, here's the deal. Let's just assume I plug nothing at all in
to the board or the macbook, in fact, let's just forget I even have a mixer
for a minute. I create a new session, then insert an audio track. I then
enable it for record. I hear my internal eye-sight microphone through my
speakers just fine. If I plug in headphoens to the 8th inch jack and set it
to be an output jack, I still! hear my internal mike. So, that's good. Now,
here is the catch gotcha, though. Now, let's put the mixer in the equasion.
So I have my mike plugged via x l r into channel 1 on my mixer, which is a
mono channel and only can accept xlr inputs, as the first 4 channels are
strictly made for microphones which of corse are gonna be mono. These 4
jacks have a phantom power setting on them, which I do have turned on. My
mik,e I got does require phantom power. That's done through my mixer, just
a little button I mash which turns it on globally throughout the entire
board. I'm probably giving you all more info than needed, but I want you
all to totally get what is happenning so I can be offered my best option.
OK, so now, our internal mike was working. Now, say that I plug from the
line out RCA red/white to the 8th inch gold tip on the other end and go into
my macbook's audio port, and switch it to input/line in. OK, now, I have no
way to monitor via head phones. So, I have an SB Live 24 bit external USB
sound card. This thing has a mike jack, and a speaker/earphone jack. Both
of which are 8th inch. I also have a gain control on the card which is a
nob to control the mike input. So essentially, I could make that mike jack,
being it is stereo believe it or not, a line in just by turning the gain way
way down to lower the impedance level. Trust me, in Windows, I do it all
the time. It works. It's important I add this is just a
