Line 6 X3 live voice recording

[Redgoat88]

Guys, need an advice. I want to use pod X3 live as a fully fledged station to record vocals without processing at home with a dynamic and condenser microphones. I connected it through XLR input with Sm58 - if the gain is less than 75 percent, the signal is weak, if it`s more - it starts making a noise. I thought about buying an external vocal preamp of a type "ART TUBEMP". Is it possible to connect this preamp directly to the processor for this purpose? And through which input? Is this xlr input works as a line input of an audio card? Thanks a lot.

[silverhead]

... - if the gain is less than 75 percent, the signal is weak, if it`s more - it starts making a noise.....

Not sure what dial/control you are referring to as gain here, but make sure you are adjusting the Mic Trim knob beside the MIC XLR input. It is very sensitive but you should be able to find an appropriate level.

[Redgoat88]

And what about external vocal preamp? How to connect it in the right way?

[Palico]

I've recorded vocals via the X3 and it does work pretty decent. You do have to understand gain levels to make it work best. First if you want to connect a condensor mike you will need another preamp as the X3 will not provide phantom power a condensor needs to work. For this I've used a even a small mixer before. For a setting the gain you HAVE to make sure you are getting good levels but NOT overdriving the signal at any point along the gain signal chain. Forget monitoring the mic at first. Just make all your connections and make sure you not going clipping the signal anywhere. Use what ever meters you have avialalbe. For dynamic mics such as Shure SM58 pull up your DAW and arm the incomming track so you can see your input levels. Now check the mic and see what you have. You should have a decent level but no clipping nothing over 0.0db, perferable a bit less but not much. Adjust the trim on the X3 until you have decent level but no clipping when you check the mic as hard as you plan on singing into it.  Now go back and see what you have in the monitor level. It may not be much. The trick at this point is not turn up the mic, turn up the headphones instead. Work with the volume on the PC  to mix something approrpate to taste for the mix between the direct monitoring and any previously record tracks. 

 

I perfer to get my singers to sing very close to the mic as I won't need as much gain to pick them up well. If they stand back on the mic you have have the gain levels pretty high and you will start picking up any small noise, A/C units etc... The first time I tried this I had a mic setup with so much gain (and it was not clipping) that I was picking up noise from my kitchen three rooms way beind closed doors). In studios vocal booths are setup to be padded and quite so they don't have nearly as much to pick up. Most of us don't have a great vocal booth to work with. There is certinally a lot of information on the web about setting up ideal recording enviroments if you want to try to do what you can in that area. A wind screen can help with the random hiss and any A/C wind noise. But if you can have a singer right up on mic you avoid a lot of that.  You can also play with high pass filters on the DAW to cut off any levels below given HZ settings hiss sometimes. Which is pretty much what most noise gates do on for high gain amps where you also get a lot of hiss without one, although noise gate is gate and works a bit different than a high pass filter. A actually outboard compressor set to low setting can help with being able to tame singers that have large difference between soft parts and loud parts from clipping the gain stages as well, the compressor on the DAW is useless for that purpsoe becuase the once the signal is cliped and distorted by the A/D converter you can't undistort it.  Not that the compressors on a DAW are not useful but they are more useful for specific effects on a track and for mastering the final product. 

 

Hope my rambling helped some.

[Palico]

And what about external vocal preamp? How to connect it in the right way?

 

If your using a external pre-amp, you want to bring the signal in via a line level. The on the X3 this will be the Aux input.  You could still bring it in via the Mic input but be very careful of the gain as it will be easy to overdrive it.  If you going to the point of getting a external pre-amp then you might just look into an interface instead as they will usually have at least one preamp on them. Like the Line 6 UX1, but others work great and honestly for vocals I would look into something less guitar centric than the L6 offerings in that arena.

[Redgoat88]

thanks a lot!!

[kevro2000]

This is great news: I've had to buy a new PC, and my PX3L is the only device w/USB that will connect. On my older PC, I had a firewire interface and matching unit for recording. I'm gonna try several of the options noted above, even tho this is not my thread. Thanks for the advice and to the original poster for asking!

 

Kevin