wut are you talking about? i've never seen or heard of such a cable...

it is a stereo mic and it's worked fine in the past....(technically it's a condenser)

this is similar to the cable i have....it comes out the mic, goes into the phantom powere, and out of that into the soundcard...i just recently purchased to gina3g...i used to have a audigy platinum ex....

http://www.zzounds.com/item--CBIMH

That link shows an xlr to 1/4" cable. If your mic is stereo, (which I doubt if that cable is fxlr to 1/4") it's gonna be mono by the time it comes out the 1/4" end of that cable. What model is the mic that you are using?

Check this out for an idea of a stereo mic w/cable http://www.audiotechnica.com/prodpro/profiles/AT825.html

-jb

What model of mic are you using?

A single 1/4 (or 1/8") cable COULD support a stereo mic for use with an audigy type device. A Gina would not know what to do with such a device as its inputs are all mono. If your mic does produce a stereo signal on its output, then you will need a splitter as described to place each mic channel onto two sperate channels of the Gina.

Peter

Take a look at the description of the Shure VP88 and the included cable. The same kind of cable is included with the Rode NT4 (and any other professional stereo mic). Hopefully this will explain it better.

http://www.shure.com/microphones/models/vp88.asp

drbam

That cable has only ONE tip at the end.
One tip = one channel = mono.

I always thought there were cables that were stereo and not stereo....my mic is a condenser....and with the old sound card (audigy) it would record in stereo....must have been the sound card?

So if I were to go to a studio and go into a vocal booth, it would have a condenser mic, and it would have a cable coming out of it with two connectors (1/4 or xlr) coming out the other end to plug into a pre or whatever they have it running into??????

>>So if I were to go to a studio and go into a vocal booth, it would have a condenser mic, and it would have a cable coming out of it with two connectors (1/4 or xlr) coming out the other end to plug into a pre or whatever they have it running into??????<<

No. A typical vocal mic (condenser or dynamic) is 99.9% of the time a mono device. A stereo mic *might* be used for choirs or BGV's, but usually additional mono mics are set up to accomodate the situation. Stereo mics are generally used for recording in the field, and other remote applications where the recorder is a 2 track device (DAT, minidisc, CD, etc) and sometimes for drum overheads.

My assumption here is that your audigy card was wired to send the input signal to 2 channels (for what reason I don't know). But if you were using the cable you described and linked us to, what you were getting was NOT a true stereo recording. It was simply 2 tracks of the same mono signal. A mono cable CANNOT transmit 2 channels in true stereo.

drbam

could you please describle a cable that a studio would have coming out of their condenser or post a link to it?

I have a condenser, it goes into the gina....I guess I need two inputs then?

Before we go any further............WHAT MODEL/manufacturer, etc. mic are we talking about??

-jb

I'll post a link soon. I don't have the mic near me right now it's at home, I'm at work.

Thanks for the help guys.

http://www.shure.com/pdf/discontinued/bg51.pdf

here is the link....any ideas?

>>here is the link....any ideas?<<

This is NOT a stereo mic – I actually own one of these. You should now get a balanced mic cable (XLR on both ends) and go directly into one the Gina's mic pres (with phantom power engaged). That's all there is to it. If this is the mic you were using with the audigy, you were NEVER recording in stereo as it would be absolutely impossible to do so with this mic. As I suspected, and noted earlier, with the audigy you were simply getting 2 channels of the same mono signal.

drbam

ok so it appears it was a 'fake' stereo image that was being recorded...

so now that i have my vocals recorded in mono....(which is a lot quieter than before on the fake stereo recording) and considering i adjust db so it's not clipping while recording...i should then add some compression and limiting to this track to get it louder?

i cant believe all this time i thought it was in stereo...i was dooped!

what should i do when recording guitar then? record to mono too?

>>so now that i have my vocals recorded in mono....(which is a lot quieter than before on the fake stereo recording) and considering i adjust db so it's not clipping while recording...i should then add some compression and limiting to this track to get it louder?
i cant believe all this time i thought it was in stereo...i was dooped!
what should i do when recording guitar then? record to mono too?<<

– Yes, experiment with compression on your vocals – start with some of the presets. Experiment, experiment, experiment. Its the only way to learn this stuff.

– Yes you were probably "dooped" by the audigy – hardly a surprise. You now have an excellent card though and can move forward knowing that any problems you have will most likely not be related to the Gina.

– Unless you have a stereo mic, (or an additional mono mic) you don't seem to have any choice but to record your guitar in mono, right? But. . . there's always overdubbing. And there's less chance of phase problems this way. ;-)

drbam

i supposed this could be why my mixes never sounded completely "right" or "correct" in my head

i couldn't get that commercial sound...

i have a lot of practice with compression limiting etc...so that should be a snap....i guess i was just dooped from the damn SB people so i learned the wrong way from the beginning

"i guess i was just dooped from the damn SB people"

After reading your posts, I've come to the conclusion that you where not "dooped" by anyone, and Echo's tech support does not "suck". No offense, but I can see there is a lot of misunderstanding on your part happening here, and I'm sure that probably showed when you contacted Echo's tech support. The reason why it probably worked in your audigy card is because the input you where using might have been a stereo input, and you where using a balanced microphone and cable, which means you would see 2 channels recorded, but they would be out of phase, due to how balanced signals work. The echo cards are balanced mono inputs, the microphone you are using is a balanced mono output mic. The term you keep posting of "Condenser" has nothing to do with any of this. I've wrote a lot of posts in these forums describing "Condenser" and "Dynamic" mics and how they functiona and their differences. I've also written a lot of posts on balanced and unbalanced signals and their cables and how they work. Do a a few searches in these forums and do some further searching on the web, and you'll probably get some better tech support responses when your questions start to make a lot more sense, rather than relating terms that don't relate, therefore confusing the person on the other side of your email.

they suck because they gave me a one word answer the first time...never responded the 2nd time i had an issue
i dont think that's good customer service...also when i called an got transferred around until finally the call was 'dropped'

i agree some of what i was doing or saying was 'wrong' but i am a novice at all this (don't know all the terminology)...and i think i screwed things up by talking about recording in stereo...but then again i didn't know what was going on because i was so used to it the old way....but i'm getting better all the time...so thanks guys for all the help.. i really use this forum a lot and trust what you guys have to say... that's why i come here almost every day

so now the only thing is, the vocals are really quiet...even though they are almost clipping....

what do i do about this?

Try wave hammer. It can do wonders.

Not loud enough? Clipping where in the signal chain? What type of monitoring setup are you using?

-jb

no

what I said was it's not clipping, everything looks fine and plenty loud but it still sounds quiet....

Look into using the track compressor, this is exactly what a compressor is used for, to "compress" the dynamics range, thus making the loud parts closer in level to the softer parts.