Recording Advice needed please.

[Glen.]

I have a Focusrite Saffire 6 USB pre-amp and a Rode NT2-a mic, and have recently begun trying to record.

I've moved my recording gear to the bedroom where everything is much deader, I open the closet etc while recording.

I'm recording acoustic fingerstyle guitar and micing it relatively close (my pc is really quiet but the NT2-A still picks it up a little even on the cardioid pattern setting and the PC behind it.

for DAW I've just been using audacity but I'm open to other free or cheap alternatives.

I'm usually using a little compression as there's sometimes quite some spikes in the recording and even when normalized to -1dB the overall sound is still pretty quiet over the whole.

I'm not EQ-ing at all or rolling off any bass (mic has 0 - 40 and 80Hz roll off settings) but should I be?

Any tips or advice would be great as I'm completely new to this! :-D

[rick-slo]

Read through all the prior threads on this forum about basic recording tips. Also there are many other recording websites where you could read up on the basics.

Post a sample clip when you are ready.

[Glen.]

here is a sample I did last week, please excuse the playing, I was still practicing this piece but recorded it because my sister wanted to hear:

https://soundcloud.com/glen-bullivan...ngerstyle-glen

I'll have a trawl through some threads :-)

[Fran Guidry]

Originally Posted by Glen.

...
I'm usually using a little compression as there's sometimes quite some spikes in the recording and even when normalized to -1dB the overall sound is still pretty quiet over the whole.
...

You're comparing the loudness of your tracks to that of mastered commercial recordings.

Those commercial recordings have been processed to raise the average (RMS) levels significantly, through the use of compression/limiting. So if you want your recordings to be subjectively as loud as your comparison tracks you'll need to use a similar process.

But it makes a lot of sense to skip this step and just turn up the volume on playback, especially if you're not distributing your music into an environment where it will be played back-to-back with commercial tracks.

Fran

[Rudy4]

Hi, Glen.
Best thing I ever did was move the PC to the other side of the wall from my desk:



If you're not seeing too many excessive peaks in your waveform display I'd suggest applying automation to your track and manually taming the unruly parts before normalizing your track on render.

Check the rest of my webpage for other home recording tips.