Mic Boffins, help me understand this please

[leedsquietman]

I feel there must be some problem with your IO14 unit. I don't have an NT2000 mic, but I do have an NT-1A and two M3 Rode condenser mics which can be miced from 30-40 cm away and pick up fine, although the input gain is probably 90% of the way up for acoustic guitar (I tend to be a quieter player than usual though) and similarly for vocals (I am not a singer, so don't belt things out with confidence and expression like a good singer would, I'm more of a mumbly indie/shoegazer type singer in the vein of say Ian Brown).

Miking electric guitars with an M3, or a dynamic such as an Audix D5 or SM57 is no problem either.

So unless it's your firewire cable, or a bad XLR, given that you tested the mic, the only logical thing left is the audio interface - something is not delivering the correct phantom power, or a pad is getting in the middle, or the gain controls don't work properly.

I can tell you now that an M-Audio Fasttrack Pro is not as good an interface as the IO14, it's headphone output is weaker, it doesn't feature Cirrus preamps like the IO14 which are decent quality for that price range, and it doesn't have Dice II anti-jitter. However, none of this is meaningful if you can't get a reasonable input signal into your IO14 ... See if someone has a preamp you can borrow and plug that into the IO14's 'insert' jack as described in the manual and see if this helps. Even if it does, I hope that you can get some repairs done under warranty or something because you shouldn't have to shell out another couple of hundred bucks for this.

[leedsquietman]

As you can see, the IO14 captured the acoustic sounds just fine here, no additional gain staging in Live, on this track I recently recorded, which has 2 acoustic guitar channels, 1 dobro channel, one vocal and 2 string tracks (not seen on this screenshot) which were done in Tension and EIC layered together.

The acoustic guitar (chords and arpeggio finger picking) were recorded with a Rode M3, the dobro and vocal tracks with the Rode NT-1A.

[gjm]

Thanks for that. I tried to get a screen shot and post it, but its to friggin late and I can't get photobucket to see it
Anyways, I was gonna post what my io/14 was giving me, and its quite a bit different to yours. I'll try tomorrow a.m.

Cheers

[UncleAge]

Hi. It appears that I can. If I turn the computer off and power up the Alesis with the wall wart, the direct monitoring seems to work fine. By getting decent gain do you mean that I don't have to turn it up to the same levels as when recording? If so, then I don't. If I set the gain to float around the -14 to -10db range on the Direct Monitoring software that comes with the Alesis and have my guitar around the 20cm-25cm distance from the mic and moderate my playing for as steady a signal as possible, then there is a distinct difference in the overall vol of the recorded sound coming out of Live. In other words I have to turn up the vol on the monitors to get the same approx out put that I heard in the Direct monitoring situation. Does that make sense?

You are getting good advice so far but the above statement left a question in my mind. Are you saying that when getting low levels you were running off of the fw buss power? And when you plugged in the walwart you got better levels?

[gjm]

Hi. It appears that I can. If I turn the computer off and power up the Alesis with the wall wart, the direct monitoring seems to work fine. By getting decent gain do you mean that I don't have to turn it up to the same levels as when recording? If so, then I don't. If I set the gain to float around the -14 to -10db range on the Direct Monitoring software that comes with the Alesis and have my guitar around the 20cm-25cm distance from the mic and moderate my playing for as steady a signal as possible, then there is a distinct difference in the overall vol of the recorded sound coming out of Live. In other words I have to turn up the vol on the monitors to get the same approx out put that I heard in the Direct monitoring situation. Does that make sense?

You are getting good advice so far but the above statement left a question in my mind. Are you saying that when getting low levels you were running off of the fw buss power? And when you plugged in the walwart you got better levels?

I actually get the same levels when using the io/14 either bus powered or with the wall wart, both with the recorded signal and the signal through the Direct Monitoring software. What the above statement means is that if I take the computer out of the loop, meaning all I have is the io/14 plugged into the mains I can still get the same signal through the monitors. So the Direct Monitoring signal is unaffected when removing the computer from the set up.

What I have not tried is another computer with my io/14, and another FW Audio device on my computer. The store that let me borrow the Fast Track Pro also has an io/26. It never occurred to me to ask to borrow that. Anyways, I have to return the FTP this afternoon, maybe I'll hit them up.

[H20nly]

For what its worth, I have an Alesis MM8 (which I no longer use). I had the same type of symptoms you are describing. Any boosts that the mixer would provide also provided noise which just translated to aggravation. I finally got a Presonus BlueTube DP (which you mentioned in your original post) and life just got better. I know throwing money at a problem isn't always the best solution, but I have to wonder at this point about the quality of pre amps that Alesis use.

As leedsquietman mentioned above, his Alesis works great so you shouldn't have this issue... but what does that really mean? If you are setting up everything correctly and the mic works properly then the pre amps are looking pretty guilty. His seem to work... yours... ???

If you have the opportunity to compare your unit to another just like it, jump on it.

[leedsquietman]

+1

and for sure, if you can demo the IO 26 which is essentially the same unit but with 8 input pres and 6 outs instead of 4 ins and 2 outs and uses the same driver.

[gjm]

So I picked up the io/26 today and did a comparison between it and the 14. I am now even more confused Just below is a screen shot of the audio from both interfaces at varying Gain levels going through 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 respectively on the gain knob. I strummed a D chord with my nylon strung guitar having it approx 25cm away from the NT2000. You can see the steps in the gain increase in the track graphic.



Below is a link to my soundcloud with the audio file from the above screen shot. At each gain interval my voice will say the number represented on the gain knob. Each interval starts with the io/14 and then switches to the io/26. You will hear the abrupt change. It does it a couple of times for each gain level so you can try and get a sense between the two.

http://soundcloud.com/gjm/io-14-io-26-comparison

My conclusions so far:

1. There does not seem to be any real difference between the audio recorded between the two interfaces.

2. There are small differences in gain between 5-6, 6-7, but a significant jump between 7-8. It seems that 8+ is the sweet spot with 8.5 - 9 being the zone. Both interfaces responded the same. If leedsquiteman's io/14 DOES NOT respond like this then I have to say that some how the NT2000's requirements are different to other Rode mic's.

3. My io/14 never came with the factory supplied FW cable that the io/26 came with. It is quite a bit more substantial that the one I have been using all this time which came with my OWC FW400 ext Hard Drives. I used the factory supplied cable for this test.

4. Very interestingly, both interfaces worked differently when it came to the Direct Monitoring feature. With my io/14, I can power off the macbook, leave it plugged into mains, and amplify a signal through my speakers. This I presume is the Direct Monitoring feature at work. However, with the io/26, its a different story. Leaving it set up the same way, the LED's on the channel with the mic light up showing that it is receiving a signal, but no audio can be heard.

@ leedsquiteman, if you catch up with this thread and have a few moments, can you describe how your Direct Monitoring works when set up in a similar way as described?

So the two units show no real difference in the way they capture audio, but they perform differently with regards to the direct monitoring feature.

Greg

[fishmonkey]

another thought: are you running Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard? (OS X 10.4, 10.5 or 10.6)?

also, what version of the Alesis driver are you using? the latest drivers can be found by going to the iO|26 page and clicking on "Docs & Downloads"...

http://alesis.com/io26

[gjm]

I am on 10.5.8 and am using the corresponding driver. I have not updated to the 10.6 driver.

Apart from the Direct Monitoring issue, I am thinking that I just have to accept that my NT2000 just needs lots of 'juice' to use it. This requires that I learn to manage the mic accordingly within my recording environment.

[leedsquietman]

I think you're right. I've used a Rode NT2000 before but not in my studio (it was at a studio where they were using an Apogee Symphony system), it didn't seem like it needed more juice than others at the time, but then again I wasn't at home to compare.

The NT1-A and M3 mics I own by Rode do seem to be more sensitive on my IO14 than the NT2000 on your home setup. Anyway, it's not really a biggie, gain 8 even would be an acceptable level from your screenshot if you record at 24 bits. At 16 bit it would be on the low side. The NT2000 should still give you a great sound, even if it seems less sensitive. Most acoustic guitar recordings are going to require you whack a lot of pre amp gain in, unless you are recording someone who plays extremely loud naturally.

You can easily use the envelope gain or the utility plugin and pump several dBs into it without raising the noise floor and affecting quality under 24 bit. For 16 bit recording, gain 9 would be adequate. With much less headroom in 16 bit, you do need a hotter recording and on your screenshot, anything under gain 9 would be less than optimal.

Direct monitoring - that works fine on my IO14, but I cannot use buss power given that I own a PC laptop with only a mini 4 pin FW interface, so it's always running on mains power. If I had one bug bear, the direct monitoring input seems a little on the quiet side compared to the usual monitoring through Live with latency, but with acoustic instruments it's not an issue because of the natural acoustic sound generated compensates for it.

[H20nly]

Be very mindful if you choose to update your Alesis drivers. More than once their driver updates have caused freakish behavior for my system. I just walked away from the last one.
It was lame. I would have to reinstall the device everytime I would use it.
If you have backup software installed you should run it first.

Its the same update. It came out last month and should work for the two models you're playing with and the Multi Mix 8 Firewire I was using. alesisfw_win_driver_installer_3_4_2_6300. The difference is mine is for Windows. However, your model is mentioned several times in the read me and mine is not. So the outcome could be different but proceed with caution none the less...

[H20nly]

also worthy of note.

I lost my ability to lower my buffer to anything less than 256 after that update. Before that I could run as low as 32 - as an option. I never went lower than 128.