help, recording problem. (should be solved, but isnt!)

so my friend called me a copule days ago and wanted help because his mic had a delay in it.

his recording chain was this

blue spark mic to presouns tubepre, balanced in/out to mbox mini (protools .

then he record enables the track and when he is rapping, he says his audio is delayed. so it messes him up.

his audio buffer was set at 512, so i told him to turn it down, and he turned it to 128 and bypassed all the effects. same problem.

his mix knob on the mbox was all the way to the right (i think, it was pointed away from the "input" side).

so i told him to put it all the way to the input side, and he is still having the problem.

i also told him to try to go into the preamp balanced, then go out unbalanced, and go into channel two on the mbox (with the 1/4 inch cable ) instead of channel 1 (with the xlr). that produced no audio at all for some reason. and i made sure to ask if he had the line level button pushed in and had his input on channel two.

so that was weird to me that he didnt hear anything then. i wasnt at his house though, he just called me, so i cant be positive we tried everything in those channels, but i assume that we did.

but anyway, when we hooked it back up going into channel 1, as it was before, is when i realized that the mbox mini also had the input monitoring thing too, so then is when i told him to turn that all the way to input and see if it worked.
i asked him to try it and call me back if it worked or not, so i just talked to him today and he said he never got it working.

i feel like we covered everything and it usually wouldnt do that, do you guys think it could be the mic?

he says that his old mic worked with that exact chain, so it was weird to me that this one didnt.

do you guys have any ideas as to what it could be?
do you think the mic could be broken?
i dont see why the buffer settting or the input knob wouldnt help it.

thanks.

Try going to "options" and enabling "low latency monitoring". See if that helps.

i was looking for low latency monitoring mode, but on the website i was at, it said it was only for protools with a 002 or 002r?

could you tell me exactly how to get there on PT 8, so i could tell him? i dont have pt, so i was trying to explain all of this over the phone.

thanks man!

He needs to mute the output of the vocal track in Pro Tools while he is recording, and use the input/playback knob to mix in the direct input of the mic signal with the backing track coming out of Pro Tools, to allow zero latency monitoring of the input signal while recording the vocal track.

After the vocal track is recorded, unmute the vocal track in Pro Tools, and turn the mix knob all the way to playback to listen to only the output of Pro Tools.

He can go out of the mic pre into either channel 1 or 2, if channel one, send it into the Mic/Line input (combo XLR/jack connector) with a 1/4" balanced TRS or unbalanced TS cable, if channel two, switch it to Line.




If it is an MBox2 Mini, rather than an MBox3 Mini as above, the mic pre goes into the Line/DI input of channel 1, and the Mic/DI switch is set to DI...

OHH SHIT, i forgot about muting the playback, he is hearing the delay because it wasnt muted then right? so he is hearing the input from the mic, and also the playback of what is being recorded, and that is playing slightly afterwards. right?

thanks man! i just told him to try that and tell me what he finds.

he is using the mbox 3, but taht still wouldnt explain why he was getting no signal when he was going into line input 2. maybe he had something connected wrong, but he told me it was like you said.

either way, he wont need line input 2 to work if this works on line 1 like its supposed to. ill keep you guys posted, thanks!

damien907 wrote:OHH SHIT, i forgot about muting the playback, he is hearing the delay because it wasnt muted then right? so he is hearing the input from the mic, and also the playback of what is being recorded, and that is playing slightly afterwards. right?

Yes, probably.

Though if he is hearing both the direct and the delayed signal together, it would probably be more of a phasing/flanging sound, rather than just delay.

thank you man, i will post if he fixed it or not. he said hes gonna try it out when he gets back home.