January 29, 2025
Finally had a chance to do some testing with my friend Tom. It was an interesting test and I had a chance to do all kinds of tests, and now have a few different paths to accomplish similar goals on the PC.
First, using a PC is not as effective at routing all the sounds to where I would want, but just using the Mackie 1640i is a lot more fun. I really enjoy using the faders, the routing options, the ability to record to Reaper and it was fun figuring out routing so that I can use both internal VSTs for sound manipulation as well as using hardware to accomplish some tasks. The thing that I don’t have much hardware, so I am limited to using the Mackie’s EQ and I have an external reverb unit. If I wanted to do it all in hardware, honestly I’d just need a compressor and perhaps a gate, but in my setup, it’s overkill and. can make due without it.
So, what all can I do and how does it work? Well, I have the setup so far to:
- Use a wireless lavaliere mic for vocals
- Use my 2 super cheap NW-800 condenser mics to capture a nice stereo sound from my acoustic accordions that have no mics. I know that these mics sound absolutely horrid, but truth, with some EQ from the Mackie, they sound pretty fair. I can easily improve that by using the NW-410’s or the SE4400a mics, but the challenge was to use these uber cheap mics successfully, which was achieved.
- Used 2 more inputs with my Getaria wireless transmitter/receivers on my Roland FR-8X and the Petosa Antico, which has some fine integrated mics and they both sound GREAT.
- Have the ability to record my output in stereo on Reaper
- Have the ability to hear the zoom participants without that data flowing anywhere else but my wireless bluetooth headset.
Challenges: Capturing the output of my Mackie mixer AND system audio in to my screen recording app. There doesn’t exist an equivalent functioning program like LoopBack for the PC (too bad!), so, I may figure it out later on, but just now, thats the only challenge that I have.
I’d love to be able to capture the screen with all the participants (no challenge there), plus a separate stereo file of my output and a separate stereo file of the participants, that would be ideal for my scenario (that’s the challenge).
I’ll continue to work on this last aspect and see what I can find.
Enjoy!