How Do You Record and Produce Chipmusic With Good Sound Quality? (Page 1 of 2)

yes, I am using the mic jack on my Mac (It's stereo in). I fiddle with the EQ knobs on my hardware mixer till I get what I like. I figured out how to get the levels on the recording software (Audio Hijack Pro) just right so that I'm not hitting the cut off. I usually get the levels around center of the meter so that only the snares and kicks are just touching the yellow range. As for audio interface, would one of these work? I really don't wanna spend too much money. 

I had a hunch that I wasn't equalizing correctly, although I have no idea how to do compression; looks like I have a fun project this weekend. I'm gonna be honest, my ears aren't the best, what is the general rule of thumb when equalizing and compressing?

Last edited by Moriokun (Dec 10, 2011 1:00 am)

That is not at all how it works. USB is a digital signal, the headphone jack is an analog signal - there is no "data" in an analog audio signal, just analog audio. Getting an audio interface just moves the job of converting analog audio into digital data from the internal sound card (decent at the job) to an interface) hopefully much better at the job).

The issue here is impedance matching - a prosounded gameboy outputs at line level-ish, and your Apple laptop's audio input is designed to recognize the difference between line level and mic level. Long boring technical story short, I do quick demos of gameboy tracks by plugging prosounded (or even unmodded headphone) jacks into my laptop's sound in all the time. It sounds totally passable, and yours should to.

When I do serious recording of the game boy, it always goes through an audio interface, and there is a noticeable improvement in bass response and clarity which I find most necessary when combining the resulting signal with other signals.

My recommendations:

1. Try recording without the mixer (straight into the jack) and see what happens. You may very well be fucking something up with that mixer in line. If you can get it to sound halfway decent without the mixer, then try working the mixer back in. You haven't really given any details on how you are plugging the mixer in, so hopefully you aren't using the headphone output or something like that.

2. Eventually buy an audio interface; if all you can afford right now is that Behringer thing, wait. You need to get something that will actually do a better job than your internal sound card. Save up a couple hundred bucks at least.

It's cool man. No it sounds fine when I'm writing songs. Only the recorded song sounds a little weird. I think I just need to Equalize better. Gonna have to try it over winter break.

Ok if you're using a DMG I have some bad news for you. 

You don't need awesome mixing and EQ to sound good.

Yes, I do post processing on my tracks, but it's very minimal with some minor EQ bumps, limiting, and a tiny bit of stereo enhancement.  Nothing major at all.  Why is that?  Because you can get a pretty great mix coming right out of your DMG.  You have to make it huge in your arrangement, not in post production magic.  Surprisingly so, it still baffles me, and I'm a recording engineer and mastering engineer.

I make a big sounding kick drum, usually wave channel (it's loud and goes an octave lower than the PWchannels).  Same thing with the snare using noise channel shaping. 

Then I keep my instrument volumes relatively low in order to make the kick and snare sound louder, and bigger.  It impossible to make your kick louder, but it's easy to lower the volumes of everything else. 

Next I play around with a stereo effects in order to achieve a WIDE sound.  This can be tricky to do right, but adds a lot of depth to your arrangement. 

Check out some of the stuff on my record if you need examples.  I learned everything I know from critical listening.  If you purchase it, I also include the save files if you want to poke around and see what I did.  Good luck! 

Edit: these aren't THE ONLY answers, this is just what has worked for me.  The DMG is a surprisingly powerful instrument but it took me a while to be able to unlock it, keep at it and listen critically to what others are doing.

Last edited by danimal cannon (Dec 10, 2011 9:55 pm)

accidentally hit submit, ignore post. Will respond later.

Last edited by Moriokun (Dec 10, 2011 11:20 pm)