You are not logged in. Please login or register.
Guitar chord forum - chordie → Recording → Behringer XENYX502 5-Channel Mixer
Does anyone have one of these? or one similar to it? If so how do you get it run into your computer? I have a laptop not a tower so nostereo audio or rca jacks.
Do they make RCA to USB?
Thanx in advance
I have the older big brother to yours and I connect to my laptop with a twin RCA to a mini stereo jack lead. All my recordings have been done in this manner.
Roger
**Edit to add**
From you last comment does your laptop not have mic, line-in and speaker jacks? If not there are RCA to USB cables available on the internet.
after posting this I dug in the amazon comments and found a U tube that said the same thing.
I also decided to ask the wife for the 802 so I could have more channels and included the RCA cords.
I may have more set up questions after I actually get it.
Thanks for the quick reply.
hi beamer,
i have an Alesis, it's an 8 track mini mixer which i bought new with a cheap price tag. it comes with a USB out put. that said
it doesn't seem to work very well into the PC. i think roger has the best solution which is to take a pair of RCA's size down to a mini jack and there you go. MAKE SURE YOU DONT LEAVE THE VOLUME TOO LOUD ON INPUT.
If you're looking to record with it, get one with a USB interface like the 1204FX. That will let you record digital audio directly, rather than having to wire up another analog signal.
I like Behrenger kit a lot. It's good value. I've got a couple of their MIDI control surfaces, and am about to pick up a larger mixing board for the band.
Good advice Jerome. You have a couple of drawbacks with your current system.
1. You can only record the total mix from your mixer. ie: one track at a time or all tracks as a single main out.
2. The incoming audio to your mixer is converted four time before you can hear it. Audio to digital ( within the mixer) - digital back to audio( for the rca main out connection) - back to digital to get it recorded by your computer and finally back to audio so you can hear it. Not all convdersion work at 100% so you are best to keep the conversions as low as possible.
3. You are using the sound card within your computer to do a lot of work and they are generally not up to the same spec as the sound card in a dedicated mixer.
4. You will mosty likely experience latency issues when recording and listening at the same time. Latency will appear as a slight dealy in sound from what you are recording to what was previously recorded. This is caused by the speed of the various audio converters coupled with the number of conversions taking place. Latency should be kept as low as possible.
Now, the advantages of a USB connected mixer is tremendous.
1. Only two conversions take place. Audio to digital ( performed by your soundcard in the mixer ) - This signal is then passed to the computer and recorded without any other conversion process. You may use additional software plug ins but in effect they are are still only acting on digital to digital processors so no actual converting. The second conversion takes place after your computer has passed the signal back to the mixer via the usb connection where it is converted back to audio by the same soundcard that converted it in the first instance. Two conversions is the minimum number of processors you can have when recording digitally.
2. The quality of the soundcard in your mixer is most likely better that your computer. Both conversions should be better. More headroom - less noise - faster
3. Latency should be so low as to be irrelevant.
4. You can now record multiple tracks simultaneously by setting the input on your daw to the mixer track you wish to record.Each track will now appear as its own track in your daw and can be acted on independently.
IMPORTANT NOTE : To keep latency as low as possible the transfer rate from the mixer to the computer must be kept as fast as possible. In order of speed from slowest to fastest they are:
slow: USB1 - latency issues here , avoid
firewire - Neglible latency butnot as convenient as it is older tecnology and there are are numerous firewire connecters available. Need to check on the cable and computer firewire connectivity before purchase.
Fast USB2 - marginally faster than firewire but with the total easy of USB.
Fastest - USB3 - dont know if its out there yet but if not it should be available soon and will be a big step up form USB2.
Hope this helps
Good luck with what ever you do.
Excellent list.
I've found that the best thing you can do to avoid latency problems with live sound is to simply monitor directly off the input. The mixer simply sends the signal on the bus to the monitors before it is digitized and sent to the computer. That will cut out any effects or plugins you're using, but it eliminates latency almost entirely. For guitar, where you are usually plugged into your own array of stomp boxes, that's not a big deal.
If you're recording MIDI or something like that, it won't work for you, though.
So I also should MAXX OUT my RAM correct? AS far as the HD goes, Im hopeong the 2T externals will come down in price. but for now Ill settle for a 1T. my 350Gig is only 20G from maxx. I dont want to have it crash by being maxed out.
Memory is good almost universally. You will want to watch your buffer sizes, though, as large buffers can also contribute to latency problems. If you aren't monitoring from the DAW or need immediate feedback (playing a MIDI keyboard, for example) then buffer up. If you are doing those things, then you'll want to experiment with buffer size until you find the one that works for you.
With disks, what matters isn't so much size as write speed. For recording multiple tracks, it becomes even more important. Get disks that spin fast, are on fast interfaces (firewire, USB3, etc...) and are also configurable in Raid 0 configurations for the fastest possible write speeds.
The caveat with Raid 0 is that you will want to record to it, but you wont want to use it for storage. If any of the disks in the array fail, you lose the data on the entire array. Just something to keep in mind.
@ Jerome:
Well I guess I should have said, the base project files will be saved to the external. and audacity will stay on the C: drive. Im not very techie in the whole usb thing.
I still cant figure out wich ports are the high speed ports on my computer. looking at that tree does not tell me a thing as to how they are numbered on the back and sides of my laptop. Would be nice if they were color coded or even a stamped H/S by them.
Beamer.
It is after Christmas. I am now the proud owner of the above mentioned toy, along with athe C-1 Mic from same co. I got teh 2 1/4 jacks to 1/8 stereo to run into my sound card.
Now I think I have the wrong set for looping back to monitor.its a 2 1/4 to 2 male RCA set up. I am thinking I need the set I first mentioned or find an adaptor of 1/8 to 2 female RCA.
I have my laptops headphone out running to my stereo and then I assume I could run from stereo headphone out to mixer AUX imputs?
(I did say i would be asking more questionsLOLOLOLOL)
Thanks for information.. It is really great info for new Laptop users...
Me thinks I smell spam cooking.
Thanks for information.. It is really great info for new Laptop users...
I'll bet he's got some great information for laptops, too, at some links about to show up somewhere....
Guitar chord forum - chordie → Recording → Behringer XENYX502 5-Channel Mixer
