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Behringer XR18 and Audacity as a DAW

musicman7722

musicman7722

Feb 12, 2007
3,012
1,381
Hampton NH
www.chrisparkersound.com
#1
Hi
I am a newbie to DAW so I want to take it slow and whenever possible make the right decisions. I have Audacity and have used it off and on to edit music files. I was wondering if I could use it as a training tool so to speak to record off my XR18 live at gigs via the USB connection.

I have a decent laptop running the Xair App which is always on and I could put the Audacity software on it. I have already installed the driver software for the laptop to recognize the mixer.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Chris
 
#2
Sure. It’s a DAW.

I haven’t used Audacity in a long time, is there an internal limit (a limit not caused by hardware or processor limitations) on the number of tracks you can use?

Somewhere in the preferences, you’ll need to tell it to use the XR18 as the sound card.

Just like any other DAW.
 
#3
Just a tip: if your DAW is stable enough for live performance, connecting a decent laptop can extend the XR18 for live mixing by running some per-channel plug-ins, soft-synths, etc in your DAW via the XR18's USB channel returns.

I've only played around briefly w/ Audacity so I can't say how stable it is for that use, but Digital Performer has been extremely reliable and easy to use live.

But if all you will ever want to do is live capture, any DAW that'll support the track count you need for simultaneously recording should work.
 
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#5
Musicman, there's another free DAW option that works very well...

Waves Tracks Live is a simple, capture-only DAW and it's free. The paid version buys you only some tech support, but there's just not much to the program. It's great if you want to simply capture tracks and mix them through the XR18 (which works quite well) or to import into another DAW.

I don't do a lot of multi-track recording, mainly live band stuff, but while I have Reaper and Harrison MixBus (which I bought on sale, but quit using it because of too many crashes), I use Tracks Live, then set up my X32 to mix down with. I'm not making mixes for national releases, just mixes for our rehearsal needs and I just want to clean up things and make a quick mix for everyone. Gotta be quick.

Good luck.
 
#7
Check out Reaper. I'm running Reaper on an older MacBook Pro. I can record multi-track into Reaper, then turn around and send the recorded tracks back through the XR18 in order to perform a "virtual soundcheck" in order to fine tune my PA setup. It took me a little while to figure out how to set up the routing and input sources, etc., but it works well for me. I can also mix down the tracks in Reaper to create demo MP3's. I have not used it as a live performance mixer -- the I use the X-Air app for that task.
 
#8
+1 for Reaper with XR18. Here's a detailed post on how to set them up together:

Link Removed

Also check out MixTools. This is a very simple little app that you put on your laptop connected to the XR18. You just hit "Record" and forget about it while you perform your live set. It creates 18 .wav tracks from your XR18, then you can just drag them all into Reaper and start mixing right away.

Link Removed
 
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#9
musicman7722 said:
Waves Tracks Live doesn't appear to be free anymore and I was really confused on their website but thank you for suggesting it.
Click to expand...

Tracks Live – Multitrack Recording Software | Waves

Look under the “Add To Cart” button. It says it’s available as a free download. The $99 gets you phone and tech support. And I’ve never had to pay for updates and bug fixes (haven’t found any bugs).

I’m not pushing Tracks Live, it’s pretty immaterial to me. Just posting in case you’re interested. I like Reaper, too.
 
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#11
Bullitt5135 said:
Check out Reaper. I'm running Reaper on an older MacBook Pro. I can record multi-track into Reaper, then turn around and send the recorded tracks back through the XR18 in order to perform a "virtual soundcheck" in order to fine tune my PA setup. It took me a little while to figure out how to set up the routing and input sources, etc., but it works well for me. I can also mix down the tracks in Reaper to create demo MP3's. I have not used it as a live performance mixer -- the I use the X-Air app for that task.
Click to expand...

I just downloaded their 60 day trial. Now for some youtube videos for training. Good tip thank you
 
#12
psionic11 said:
+1 for Reaper with XR18. Here's a detailed post on how to set them up together:

Link Removed

Also check out MixTools. This is a very simple little app that you put on your laptop connected to the XR18. You just hit "Record" and forget about it while you perform your live set. It creates 18 .wav tracks from your XR18, then you can just drag them all into Reaper and start mixing right away.

Link Removed
Click to expand...

I am checking this link out now thanks
 
#16
musicman7722 said:
Thanks all. I got reaper up and running and recoded 3 dummy tracks of canned music over canned music. Funny when I go to play it back through the XR18 I can see the USB input working on the meters tab but they will not light up the main or monitor out. Am I missing something?

TY

Chris
Click to expand...

The default for each channel input is the analog XLR jack. To listen to playback from your computer, change the Input to USB
 

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