Recording without firewire hardware

[SwamiRob]

I'm wanting to do some really simple demoing at home with amp & drum software on Cubase but I'm having trouble getting a level on cubase.

Tried plugging a guitar straight into the mini jack mic input with a mini jack adaptor but didn't realise that my sound card wouldn't be able to boost it to line level, tired again after borrowing my friends mini mixer and for some reason there was only about the same level of signal again.

I've messed about with the different ASIO settings without having any luck, it seemed like it automatically looked for all available inputs but it seems to only be recognising my desktop mic and the soundcard. I imagine that it's only recognising is the firewire input of my soundcard though, and the only reason I'm getting the small amount of signal through to Cubase is some kind of background signal coming from the mic input. If that's the case does anyone know a way round it? On an older computer I used Cubase with that didn't have a firewire input it defaulted to the mic input and it was fine but this is being alot more problematic.

[Charling]

Originally Posted by SwamiRob

I'm wanting to do some really simple demoing at home with amp & drum software on Cubase but I'm having trouble getting a level on cubase.

Tried plugging a guitar straight into the mini jack mic input with a mini jack adaptor but didn't realise that my sound card wouldn't be able to boost it to line level, tired again after borrowing my friends mini mixer and for some reason there was only about the same level of signal again.

yeah, they are both line inputs, your soundcard and the desk that is. they both need a line level signal to operate at normal levels. A bass is quieter than that! The channel xlr inputs on a desk (the preamps) have more gain available, so you could buy a TS jack to xlr cable, that should work to get your bass into the preamp and give you a bit more gain, but its still a very 'bodge job'. should work though.

Originally Posted by SwamiRob

I've messed about with the different ASIO settings without having any luck, it seemed like it automatically looked for all available inputs but it seems to only be recognising my desktop mic and the soundcard. I imagine that it's only recognising is the firewire input of my soundcard though, and the only reason I'm getting the small amount of signal through to Cubase is some kind of background signal coming from the mic input. If that's the case does anyone know a way round it? On an older computer I used Cubase with that didn't have a firewire input it defaulted to the mic input and it was fine but this is being alot more problematic.

I think i'm a little confused, you talk about the firewire input of your soundcard? whats that? when you talk about your soundcard do you mean the computers in built one?

firewire is a general computer connection, not just an audio interface connection. i think you may be getting confused, thinking a firewire input on your comp. is a dedicated audio input and part of your soundcard, if so this is not the case! firewire is like USB.

Is it a pc? does cubase have more than one input to choose from in 'vst connections' ie could cubase see input 1 as the computer mic and input 2 as the mini jack in?

does the mic input work? as in can you use the mic to record signals in cubase? if you can then thats a start, it means cubase is working with the soundcard properly etc, you just gotta find a way to get it to focus on the mini jack in!

so you've fiddled with asio, have you fiddled with the soundcard setup dialogs in cubase (it was called vst audiobay when I last used cubase) and have you gone into the 'sound' general prefs and checked the mini jack in is enabled? (these pref's can be seperate to asio pref's)

[SwamiRob]

Found out it was all due to a really sketchy mini jack adaptor, seems you have to have it half plugged in for it to actually work.

The signal seems kinda muffled though even when going through the mixer, it's a terrible little Behringer thing but it should be doing a better job then this, perhaps it's just the crappy mini jack adaptor I'm using and it's not picking up the full signal. Maybe it's just the way the gain stages are setup, can't seem to find a way of altering the line in level on my computers sound card (had to use the built in one cos my soundblaster doesn't seem to have one, doesn't seem to be the best quality card ever obviously) so it distorts when I put a decent level out of the mixer.

Very unlikely but I'm gonna try the mic input on my Soundblaster and see if that clears stuff up a bit, obviously I'll have to turn the input down a fair bit since it's at line level but it;s worth a go cos it sounds pretty awful at the moment, it's only for demoing stuff but it's still pretty horrible.

[Charling]

cool, glad you got it sorted!

the quality is going to be bad, it is pretty much the worst quality inout and the worst quality a/d you can get! even a really good little mixer will not fix the quality of the input!