Some questions regarding recording live audio and MIDI from a li
Nov 30th, 2010, 07:24
Hi all! Here's what I want to do, and some of the problems I've encountered:
I want to have four mics (3 SM 58's and an old audio technica) running live sound via two different interfaces - with two ports for XLR's each - into my Macbook Pro (10.5.8, 2.4 GHz Intel, 2GB RAM) running Logic 8. I also have several MIDI instruments running through a USB hub into Logic as well. The MIDI works fine, I've done it before with little to no problem, but this is the first time I'm trying to incorporate audio in the same way. I'd like to record all audio and MIDI performances live as they are being performed in Logic.
The two interfaces I have are an M-Audio Fast Track Pro, and an M-Audio Firewire410. Both have worked fine in the past when used individually. I am now running them in aggregate into Logic and they work fine together sometimes, with all four mics producing the desired sounds, but then I get this buzzing sound when either one of the mics running through the Firewire410 gets signal. Sometimes the buzzing is only heard when someone sings, speaks, or plays into the mics, and other times it just buzzes constantly. I believe I've set up everything correctly in Audio MIDI Setup in order for the two interfaces to work together as an aggregate device, and as I said, they seem to work fine for a while. So, that's the first issue. My solution has been to go into Audio preferences in Logic, change the core audio device, and then just change it right back to the aggregate device, and then it usually works fine. This is very undesirable, though. I highly doubt that it's bad cables, or even a bad firewire 400 to 800 cable. I wiggle them and pull them, and I hear nothing out of the ordinary. Is there something I'm missing about setting up the aggregate device, or something else? Here are some screenshots:
[img]http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/4379/audiomidipic.png
http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/967/preferencespic.png
[/img]
Also, is there a way to save a project with all tracks, audio and MIDI, record armed so that when I call the project up, it's ready to record everything, without any additional setup? I've done this before with MIDI, where I can have several tracks recorded simultaneously as soon as the project is called up, if saved correctly. When I try this with audio tracks added, the audio tracks are never record enabled upon opening the project, even though I save it that way. If I save it with the audio tracks' input monitoring enabled, that is saved, but that's not 100% what I want. I still have to record enable any audio tracks, and then all the MIDI tracks that were saved record armed become disabled, and have to be set individually before I can record any MIDI and audio together.
Is it possible to do this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks much,
Adam