Need sound card for recording....

[Rebel7254]

I am the choir director at my church. In that past, I have made CDs with me singing along with the music to help them learn their parts. All I did was simply use Windows sound recorder to record my my voice and the music from the CD at the same time. This was achieved with my Santa Cruz by selecting "Stereo Mix" as the recording device or whatever, and with my onboard audio by just selecting WAV as the recording device and leaving the microphone unmuted.

Now I have built a new PC and upgraded to Vista and my Santa Cruz will not work with the new OS. There is a work around, but it requires installing Windows XP, and I don't want to do that. The drivers that came with my onboard audio (Gigabyte GA-965P-S3) do not have any special software. The only way I can get it to record my voice is to set the recording device to Microphone, but then it only records input from the mic and nothing else.

So I went out to CC and bought a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio sound card. Same problem. If I want to record input from my microphone, I can't record anything else with it at the same time.

Is this just going to be impossible to do with Vista, or do I just need to get a higher quality sound card? All I want to be able to do is record my voice and music from WMP at the same time. Does anyone know?

 

[Boyo]

It's a driver issue, so you will just have to wait until Santa Cruz comes up with a driver for Vista. CHeck out their website to see if they have one yet. If not, ask when.

 

[JEDIYoda]

so what your saying is that your mike will not pick up both ypour voice and the keyboard or organ played at the same time??
That doesn`t sound right....when I record my voice for others I have one microphone for the piano and voice together.
A microphone hooked up that way will not differentiate between the 2....

hmmmm.......

 

[Rebel7254]

There won't be any Vista drivers for the Santa Cruz. It is a "discontinued product" and will not have any Vista support, according to the Turtle Beach website.

There's no piano or organ. We sing from CDs. I will put the CD in the CD-ROM and play it with Windows Media Player. Then, while it is playing, I use Sound Recorder to record my voice from the mic and the music from the CD at the same time.

 

[Markbnj]

I'm a little unclear as to what you want to do, but I can say that all the SB cards from Audigy forward support multiple channels of input using ASIO drivers. I use Adobe Audition here, with the standard Creative ASIO drivers, and have no problems recording 2 channels simultaneously. It may be able to do more, but I haven't tried it. Audition is kind of expensive, so if you want free take a look at Audacity.

What you'll need are microphones, a multi-channel (at least 2) microphone preamp like the M-Audio DMP3, and a splitter that takes two 1/4" mono jacks down to a stereo minijack for the line-in to the SB card.

You can take the mike through one input, and bring the sound in from the CD player to the other.

 

[Rebel7254]

Ok, you guys aren't getting it.

Here is an example. In my Santa Cruz control panel, I set the recording device to "Stereo Mix". And then here is what I do, step by step:

1) I put a music CD in my CD-ROM.

2) I open Sound Recorder (Start>Programs>Accessories>Entertainment>Sound Recorder)

3) I open Windows Media Player

4) I click PLAY in Windows Media Player to start playing the CD

5) I click RECORD in Sound Recorder

6) I sing into my microphone while the music from the CD is playing

7) When I am finished recording, I click STOP in Windows Media Player and click STOP in Sound recorder

8) I save the file to my hard drive (.WAV file)

9) I burn the file to CD

I don't mean to sound condescending or anything, so please don't think I'm being a smart alleck. I just want to make myself absolutely clear, because there seems to be confusion in understanding what I want to be able to do.

 

[Rubycon]

CD player+Mic->Mixer -> line in on sound card. Then you can use ANY sound card to record and get the same results every time. A very inexpensive mixer found in a music store will work.

 

[Rebel7254]

That's probably what I'm gonna have to do, unless I wanna go back to XP. Vista is terrible for sound cards right now from what I've been reading. Turtle Beach doesn't support Vista at all yet.

I'm going to wait a couple of more weeks for Turtle Beach to post Vista drivers for the Montego DDL. I have seen screen shots of the software and it looks like I'll be able to select "Stereo Mix" for recording like I did before.

I guess I'll just have to do what you say if they don't have Vista drivers by then. In the meantime, I'm just going to install my Santa Cruz in my fiancee's computer and make the CDs over there.

I still want to hear from anybody who knows of any Vista compatible sound cards that will accomplish what I want to do.