S-pdif to record vocals

[albee1952]

So much to learn. As soon as you use a computer to record, you are recording digital(and there's nothing wrong with that). Your microphone is analog, your mic preamp is analog, but the next step in the recording chain is digital conversion to get audio into the computer.

[zedhed]

Originally Posted by Bill Denton

This is kind of an example of "right string, wrong yo-yo"...

You would simply connect your MBox to your computer with a USB or Firewire cable (depending upon which MBox you have), then connect your microphone directly to your MBox.

There is no need, nor any real reason, to connect to your computer via S/PDIF. The one exception would be if you were trying to use your computer's built-in mic or speakers, which doesn't usually work very well.

Perhaps if you let us know a little more about what you are trying to do...

I totally agree.

Originally Posted by albee1952

So much to learn. As soon as you use a computer to record, you are recording digital(and there's nothing wrong with that). Your microphone is analog, your mic preamp is analog, but the next step in the recording chain is digital conversion to get audio into the computer.

By plugging your Mbox into the computer via firewire you are using the Mbox converters (Analogue to Digital) to get the signal into your computer. Of course this works in reverse as well, which IMHO is what you want to be doing. Even if you S/PDIF the Mbox to the computer card you'll still be using the Mbox converters anyway so I can't see any gain in doing so.

Originally Posted by Switch101

from the top.....the reason im asking this is I was under the impression when recording digitally you wont get as many ranges of sound as you would Analog...because when I feel like I have a good initial recording from the get go and process the clip it sounds as dry as a bone even with a little reverb and delay.i go gate then either eq or comp first the depending on the artist and proximity effect then deesser after that I use aux sends for the verb and delay...obviously this is a home studio...and I slap my self every day for trying to be energy efficient and spend 5000 on plugins and not hardware but hey that's my story.. now the vocals are mainly hip hop vocals(tricky) at the end of any project the vocals are siting okay in the mix just not perfect but still sound dry even with the space from the verb.

There is no good reason why you can't get a good result once you're signal is in Pro Tools, which at this stage is in the digital domain no matter how you get it there. If you're not happy with the 'Analogue/Digital conversion then you may have to look at another interface. It's unlikely your computer card will yield better results (assuming it has it's own built in converters) even if you can get it to work in Pro Tools.

I would suggest trying more radical settings in your plugins or trying different plugins to see if they give you a better result. Don't be afraid to totally change your whole approach and experiment with different techniques. That's the beauty of digital, it can all be undone in an instant if it's not working.

BTW, what sample rate are you recording at?