All the DJ's in da house... HELP!

rok

okay, i need to record a simple vocal track, and I inherited the following to do this:



? Optimus Stereo Disco 2-channel Mixer (SSM-50)

? Griffin PowerWave

? Nice Optimus Unidirectional microphone



I have a terrible radio shack microphone, which i can just plug into the PowerWave and record, but i get so much echo and noise off of it, i really don't want to use it.



Unfortunately, this gear came to me without manual, hence my post.



The Mixer has your standard array of knobs for mic level, cue level, channel gains, crossfader, toggle switches for start/mute on either channel, an off/on/talkover toggle switch under the mic jack, phono and line toggles for either channel and a basic cue switch between the two.



edit:To make this a bit easier to talk to, i've added some pix:







the back of the unit has your standard rca output jacks, one to "amp" and one to "rec" (record? can you tell i'm new at this?)







so, the logical thing seem to be...



have powerwave attached to computer

attach microphone to mic jack on mixer

power on to mixer (to also give the mic juice)

microphone on

off/on/talkover switch to "on" (i think i have tried talkover as well)



and nothing. all i get is a little hum when monitoring, either through garage band, or directly from griffin's passthru jack.



at first, i thought maybe just plugging in the mic directly to the powerwave's mic jack would work, since it is a powered amp, but no luck there, either.



i have my sound input set to "powerwave usb" in the system prefs, though why i am not even getting sound throught he powerwave's passthru is odd. like i said, this jack does work with your run-of-the-will checp $10 mic on the mic jack, but when i try to connect the mixing board/mic set up, nothing.



any ideas what i am hooking up wrong?



thanks in advance.

rok

thepianoguy

This may be a dumb question but, have you tested the mixer through a a regular stereo set-up to verify that you are getting an output signal?

Also, Is the microphone high impedance or low impedance?

If you are getting a signal, have you tried both outputs?

delphi

First of all you want to ditch the mixer in the equation as they are never reliable in terms of sound quality unless you have paid mega-bucks for it.



It sounds to me like you have a usb sound card. Go straight into that for your best result. Bear in mind that the better the mike and cables, the better the end result.



I am not familiar with the sequencer software...(Garage band is it?) you are running but to successfully record an audio input you need to be running some sort of decent sequencer.



The ideal setup would be cubasis, or Logic Delta which are entry level sequencers with industry standard big brothers which you can evolve into and are available cheaply or free. The right one for you depends on what sort of music you want to make. (cubasis for mostly audio recorded style of music, or logic for electronic dance music.)



Are your sound card drivers installed correctly? If so then the problem is in your software configurations.



Please supply more info and I will help out as best I can. If you are on broadband I may be able to send you some beginner software to get you started. (all legal of course)



I am a producer/songwritwer/DJ in London, UK.



Delphi

rok

Actually, i found the culprit... you had to practically scream in order for the first microphone to pick up any audio. upgraded to a secondary microphone, and i am finally getting results.