GEAR STRUT HELLLP!

RAJ

Hi folks,I have 4 days to myself in this big old house. We're having the ceiling done in our dining room and it is empty. The acoustics are phenomenal. So, I am forcing myself to do some recording. I spent all this money on drum equipment, mics, Mackie mixing board, etc. and I have yet to use it.... until now.So... I am gonna lay down some basic shit in Garage Band to hopefully catch the bug. I have my kit all mic'd up hooked into a Mackie mixing board. My MAC has a wimpy 1/8th inch input. How would I go about outputing the Mackie into the 1/8th inch input. I bought a 1/4 to 1/8th inch adapted but shit is coming in only in one channel. I want stereo, B!Please help urgently as I would like to buy some shit at Guitar Center or Radio Shack tonight so that I can take full advantage of being free from wife and kids!!Thanks!

Jonny_Paycheck

oh dude... you need a converter. You can't do even semi-pro recording direct in!

Get down to the Sam Ash/Guitar Center asap and ask what the best look is based on your inputs.

spelunk

What you need is a 1/8th to rca cable. Same shit you'd use to connect an iPod to a home stereo. Take the aux out of your mackie into your computer. Running 1/4th balanced cables into an unbalanced input isn't going to help you, i doubt your computer can handle those kind of levels properly anyways.

Snagglepus

oh dude... you need a converter. You can't do even semi-pro recording direct in!

Agreed. I have this one (Tascam 122)



It works well but there are plenty of others out there. You definitely want something like that, though ... even if you have to borrow it from a friend for the session. You probably don't get recording spaces like this every day ... make the most of it.

Cheers.

bozak

get a yamaha i88x. its firewire (mlan) gives you 8 i/o, digital i/0, good conversion, midi, two seperate and very very good mic pre's and the price dropeed from 1200 to 400. the reason for the price drop is that people were not really jumping onto the mlan (yamahas one cable solution via firewire) bus so they were trying to jumpstart peoples interest via a huge saving.

you can always return it after 4 days.

spelunk

get a yamaha i88x. its firewire (mlan) gives you 8 i/o, digital i/0, good conversion, midi, two seperate and very very good mic pre's and the price dropeed from 1200 to 400. the reason for the price drop is that people were not really jumping onto the mlan (yamahas one cable solution via firewire) bus so they were trying to jumpstart peoples interest via a huge saving.

you can always return it after 4 days.

Cosine on that one, the preamps are crazy good on it. MLan has it's issues, but by now there are enough people out there to help you figure it out.

ZEN2

What you need is a 1/8th to rca cable. Same shit you'd use to connect an iPod to a home stereo. Take the aux out of your mackie into your computer. Running 1/4th balanced cables into an unbalanced input isn't going to help you, i doubt your computer can handle those kind of levels properly anyways.

As far as I know, there's no difference in level between balanced / unbalanced connections. A balanced connection just uses two channels of the same signal with inverted phases. When the signal gets to your interface, the channels are summed so that all is left is the noise, which is then phase flipped and added to the signal, removing any interference that was picked up in the cable.
So I'm guessing the reason you're hearing only one channel is you're using one balanced 1/4" connection to 1/8", which although it IS carrying two channels technically, it's the same signal inverted on the other channel, hence no stereo. So in order to go "line-in" on your computer, you'd need to take both 1/4" balanced outs into one 1/8". But as was previously mentioned, this is nagl for a good recording.

You should be able to get a decent 2 in / 2 out interface with balanced 1/4" TRS connections for around $200.