Digital Audio is HARD!

Anyone remember the Barbie controversy from a few years ago. Mattel made a Barbie with pre-programmed sayings that got it in trouble from the politically correct folks because some of the sayings were deemed offensive and gender demeaning. Three of the recorded sayings deemed bad were; ‘Math is HARD!’, ‘Lets go shopping!’ and ‘Will we ever have enough clothes?’ Things got so out of hand that an association called the BLO (Barbie Liberation Organization) got hold of a few hundred of these Barbies and the similarly equipped GI Joes and swapped their voice chips. Now you had bad-ass Barbies screaming out ‘Vengeance is MINE!’ and gender-challenged GI Joes saying, ‘Let’s plan our Dream Wedding!’ I normally would find all this very funny if I didn’t have my own nagging little voice chip slightly modified in the back of my head saying, ‘Digital Audio is HARD!’

For those of you who download the MyMac.com podcast, you may be aware that I do a segment called the ‘Dashboard Minute’. My needs in the beginning were relatively simple, a USB microphone and GarageBand. Apple has made it even easier with the release of iLife 06 and GarageBand’s podcasting support. Just one little snag. As Tim and Chad have made their podcast sound better and better over time, the Dashboard Minute has remained the same tinny, weak sounding audio as it was in the beginning. I decided that an upgrade was in order.

First step was to assess my Mac. She’s an old work horse now (A 933 MHz QuickSilver G4 Tower), but still serves me faithfully and I am loath to give her up for an Intel Mac until the entire line is changed out. I suppose I could get an Intel iMac that would be a great deal faster, but if it turns out to be as noisy (a well known enemy of clean audio) as my kid’s 17-inch G5 iMac, it would hardly suit my needs for audio editing. My G4 is noisy as well, but I plan on building an enclosure for it to cut down on the fan grumbling that emanates from her bowels. I’ve also have over 1 terabyte of storage crammed into her, most of which would have to be relegated to enclosures (none of the drives are SATA) to be useful. Which of course means even MORE noise. So, I just deal with a slightly older, raucous, but more than capable G4 Mac for editing.

I started looking at what hardware would be required to make the DBM sound better. I saw several FireWire output mixers, but they were a little pricey in comparison to similar USB based units. I finally decided on an Alesis MultiMix 8 USB based on positive feedback received from some of the retail online music stores I looked at. This is a very nice unit. Four XLR microphone inputs with an associate standard 1/4 ‘“inch jack for each input. Each input is supplied with phantom power. Four additional ¼-inch inputs are available for external devices like guitars or keyboards and the like. Each input has a number of controls for editing the sound and there are a number of effects you can do as well, but since this isn’t a review for the Alesis (more on why in a bit), I won’t go into a huge amount of detail here.

The next thing required was a better microphone. The adage ‘Garbage in, Garbage out’, is appropriate with audio (and with writing as well, but this isn’t meant as a critique of my writing skills), so I started looking around for a good quality, yet low cost microphone. On the advice from a musician friend of mine, I chose a Shure SM-57 microphone. Long time sound engineers (of which I am not) know this microphone well. It’s been around for a long time for a pretty good reason. It’s a great microphone that won’t break the bank.

The last two items I got were a microphone desk stand and a pop filter screen. I ordered these all from an outfit called ‘Musician’s Friends’ and awaited their arrival with fervent anticipation. I envisioned flawless perfect sounds emanating from my throat for all those eager to hear my words of sage wisdom. To answer the question that may now be rising to the top of your brain’¦.yes, I am delusional.

All the pieces arrived and I tore into those boxes like a 5 year old (not exactly a giant leap in mental age for me) on Christmas day. Since I’m somewhat mechanically inclined, it was easy to figure out exactly how all the various parts fit together and soon I was able to turn on the mixer connected to my Mac via USB to hear those words that every man since emerging from caves has said when confronted with a microphone’¦.test, test, 1, 2, test.

Did I hear myself speak with a deep rich bass timbre? Was there that tiny amount of tweaking required to get it just this shade of perfect? No, there was not. Actually, there was nothing at all. No sound. Zip. Nada, Zilch. After drying my tears of frustration, I realized that of course it could not be that simple. Nothing ever is. Even on a Mac. Out of desperation, I did the unthinkable for most Mac users’¦I read the (GASP!) manual. For those of you out of the loop, a manual is not the name of an illegal immigrant (oh I know that will get me in trouble), but a handy guide that accompanies many computer hardware and software items.

So I read the manuals and started tweaking some OS X and GarageBand settings and when I tried again, I got sound. Not great sound, or even good sound, but sound. I considered this to be my accomplishment for the day and went to bed. The next day, I went at it again ever the glutton for punishment and was rewarded by, yes, punishment. Unless I had my lips physically inside the microphone with the gain turned up loud enough to hear a bird sleeping, I just wasn’t getting the sound that I wanted. I found a CD of some software that came with the Alesis mixer and decided that even though the manual (darn him anyway) said that no OS X drivers were needed; there might be some software on it to help me out of this jam. After looking through the disk (mostly filled with Windows shareware), I discovered a program that would work on my Mac! Cubase LE. I was overcome with joy until I tried to install it. Turns out this version does not work with either 10.4 or QuickTime 7 or when the moon turns full on warm June nights or something.

I called Musician’s Friend (HA!) to find out if there was a solution and they directed me to Alesis. OK. I called Alesis and they wanted me to fax my receipt from Musician’s Friend, which I don’t have other than the email when I purchased the mixer. Of course this is not acceptable. Sigh.

I decided to try another tack. I fired up SoundTrack Pro. THIS worked pretty well as there are many plug-ins for SoundTrack that aren’t available for GarageBand or so I’ve been told. I made a brief intro for the DB Minute, saved it, and sent it over to GarageBand. So far so good. I then kept on tweaking the settings in GarageBand until something came out that wasn’t reminiscent of two cats fighting. Sent it off and it played on the MyMac podcast. I wasn’t delighted, but it was a step in the right direction.

I recorded another one the next week, but the levels were so low that Tim couldn’t use it. I was at the Clarendon Apple Store not long after that and asked some Geniuses if they could help. They directed me towards a Utility supplied by Apple called ‘Audio Midi Setup’. Now I had already selected the default USB audio driver in my Sound Preferences input section and had selected for sound output the driver for the USB headphones that I had. The default USB driver for input was what hadn’t shown up in this utility. Alrighty then, selected, saved, and closed. Tried again. Hmmm. Not bad sound. Hopefully this will cure my ills. I’ll rerecord the Dashboard Minute again for next week and we’ll see how it goes. There is some stuff I want to try and I plan on suckering’¦I mean acquiring the talents of some of my fellow MyMac writers.

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Tim and Chad for their advice and patience during these trials. I would also like to thank Paul (you know who you are) for his many emails to try and help a hapless audio newbie. If anyone out there reading this has a similar setup, please email me at dbminute@gmail.com. Thank you and good night.