Home recording or banging my head against a wall.

[SimonK]

It looks to me that the OP bought something like this package:

 

https://www.gear4music.com/Recording-and-Computers/Focusrite-Scarlett-Solo-3rd-Gen-Vocal-Recording-Pack/6H08

 

which does indeed state "It features everything you need to record vocals and instruments" which is a bit misleading as while it is the basic hardware, you can easily spend significantly more on the software needed to actually record something. As above I would second using Garageband as I imagine the microphone and interface will work fine with very little extra fiddling, and if the OP wants more in the future they can move up to its big brother - Logic Pro - without having to get to grips with a different software package.

[chriswareham]

25 minutes ago, LowB_FTW said:

The OP states they are using a Focusrite Scarlet, which is "class compliant" so yes, it would work, and indeed does work, as I have this setup and works with GarageBand no problems.

 

That's why I added the caveat about class compliance. Some devices need drivers if they offer higher bit depths, since this wasn't in the earlier USB standards for audio.

[LowB_FTW]

If the OP is using Windows then GarageBand isn't an option, so will have that hurdle of drivers to contend with.

I don't envy them this process, I went through something equally frustrating with video editing when it transitioned from analogue to digital, so I understand their frustrations somewhat with this.

 

Mark

[SH73]

14 hours ago, Dom in Dorset said:

A couple of years ago I bought a thing called Focusrite Scarlet.  It's a box with a couple of cables,  a mic , stand and headphones.  According to the blurb "Easy Start gets you set up in minutes. All the software you need is in the box. There’s no faster way to make studio quality recordings than Scarlett."

Utter sh1te , I spent hours registering things, downloading things, no software came with it. In frustration I downloaded a couple of different recording software packages,  couldn't get my head around it,  achieved nothing,  put it away and gave up. Two years later I've dug it all out again and watched the tutorial video provided by audacity ....utter gibberish.  So two more of my life that I won't get back and I've achieved slightly less than nothing. 

Theyshould have waited until all of the old people had died before introducing new things.

 

 

I feel your pain. I bought a 2i2 1st gen many moons ago, it came with a free version of Ableton DAW, and I was on the verge of introducing the Focusrite to a sledgehammer.

Eventually, I set it all up and made few recordings. Since, I updated to 18i20 and use it for recording guitars, bass, drums and vocals even connected to a mixer. I found online tutorials useful setting up these things.

[Rosie C]

12 hours ago, SteveXFR said:

@The fasting showman Audacity broke me. Its really counter intuitive. Reaper is so much easier 

 

Reaper is good. Logic is good. Ableton Live was the one which defeated me - utterly incomprehensible to me!

 

[Leonard Smalls]

Funnily enough I started with the free Ableton that came with a first Gen Focusrite 2i2... And after some faffing I got it sorted. Now I have a Scarlett 18i20, with Ableton 11 Standard and I use both for both live recording and triggering samples live. YouTube tutorials are very useful!

[BigRedX]

To the OP. I'm going to be brutally realistic here and it's probably not something you want to read but here goes anyway.

 

There appears to be a mistaken notion particularly with software, but also with a lot of high-tech hardware, that simply the act of owning it somehow gives you the immediate ability to start producing professional standard results when, as others have already said, these things take time and patience before you even start producing something passable. I bet you weren't ready to join a band within 10 minutes of picking up a bass guitar for the first time, you probably weren't ready within 10 weeks even, so why should recording be any different?

 

Add to this the fact that some people simply don't have the ability to ever do anything more than passable not matter how good their hardware and software is. I learnt the long, hard and expensive way, that my recording ability is pretty much limited to being able to get a decent level signal from my bass into my computer. Everything else on my band's recordings is done by people with the appropriate skills and far more talent when it comes to producing a finished and professional sounding product. There is also no shame in recognising your limitations and accepting them.

 

It seems to me that from the original and subsequent posts that the OP mostly wants to vent rather than actually sort out any problems. That's not necessarily a band thing. Venting does have its uses. However if they want some useful help we'll require the following:

 

1. What OS are you running?

2. There are lots of different Focustite Scarlett interfaces. Which one do you have?

 

I have a Scarlett interface and although it's been a number of years since I had to set it up, IIRC all the associated software including a cut-down version of a DAW, is available for download once you have created a user account with Focusrite and registered the interface. To the OP: have you done this yet? 

[Jack]

Yeah that depends on the definition of 'ready to use', doesn't it? I plugged my Scarlett Solo in with a cable (30 seconds?, mostly cable tidying), typed "sudo apt-get install Ardour" (3 seconds?) and then that was it. I was 'ready' in less than a minute. I just had no idea how the DAW worked, and that took me .... well, about 7 years and counting ...

[SH73]

1 hour ago, Rosie C said:

 

Reaper is good. Logic is good. Ableton Live was the one which defeated me - utterly incomprehensible to me!

 

I think Ableton is more for electronic music production, I use it for everything, mostly recording metal. It crashes a lot and despite sending the crash report to Ableton support emails there is no improvement. I'm used to the layout etc. so reluctant to switch..

[SH73]

28 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Funnily enough I started with the free Ableton that came with a first Gen Focusrite 2i2... And after some faffing I got it sorted. Now I have a Scarlett 18i20, with Ableton 11 Standard and I use both for both live recording and triggering samples live. YouTube tutorials are very useful!

Got the same set up. Does your Ableton crashes a lot?

[Rosie C]

30 minutes ago, SH73 said:

I think Ableton is more for electronic music production, I use it for everything, mostly recording metal. It crashes a lot and despite sending the crash report to Ableton support emails there is no improvement. I'm used to the layout etc. so reluctant to switch..

 

I wanted to use it as an alternative to backing tracks in our performances. It apparently has a feature to do live beat matching so we could give it a harpsichord MIDI file and it could play out to trigger signal from our drummer. Too steep a learning curve for me though, easier to persuade the drummer to play to a click track 😉 

 

Edited Monday at 10:06 by Rosie C

[JapanAxe]

7 minutes ago, Rosie C said:

 

I wanted to use it as an alternative to backing tracks in our performances. It apparently has a feature to do live beat matching so we could give it a harpsichord MIDI file and it could play out to trigger signal from our drummer. To steep a learning curve for me though, easier to persuade the drummer to play to a click track 😉 

 

That’s not a phrase you read on here every day!

[Leonard Smalls]

10 minutes ago, SH73 said:

Does your Ableton crashes a lot

It used to!

Though I think that was often due to certain plug-ins and possibly the amount of RAM I had.

After some tweaking in the Ableton CPU preferences bit, and far more importantly buying a used HP Audio Workstation with Zeon silver processors and 48Gb RAM plus an upgrade to Ableton 11 Standard, it hasn't crashed. That's well over a year now...

[TimR]

Imagine what it was like in the late 90s, early 2000s!

 

I had a Soundblaster with Cubase on windows 98. You had to set the interupts using MSDOS Config.sys and the latency was awful. The Internet was on dial up and help files and forums practically non-exsitent. 

 

But the biggest problem was dealing with the band who all wanted to be louder than everyone else in the mix.

 

Type Device Manager in your search box, open it, and make sure the PC can see the Scarlett under USB devices. That's the first place I would start. 

 

After that it's just a case of working out what sound is routed where. Right click on the speaker icon on the bottom right of your screen and poke around there. 

[Rosie C]

5 minutes ago, JapanAxe said:

That’s not a phrase you read on here every day!

 

We have a kind of Blackmore's Night band doing folk rock-and renaissance music. We have a keyboard player who joins us for larger gigs, but for practice and smaller gigs I've been chasing this idea of harpsichord on a backing track. We're lucky to have a Kawai electric piano in our practice space with a USB slot for loading MIDI    It's a bit heavy to take gigging though, unless we have roadies and a Luton with a tail lift 😉 

[NancyJohnson]

I'm running a very simple set up - old HP PC, DAW is Cakewalk (free), Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, M-Audio BX5 powered monitors.  Aside from power, three cables; USB to the PC, cables from the Scarlet to the monitors.  I'd hasten to add that I've never been a fan of bundled DAW software (or whatever came with the Scarlet), so didn't install anything off whatever disc came with the hardware.

 

From the outset I had a mahoosive issue with the PC; there was some particularly nasty Harmon Kardon software that was running a soundcard that was nigh on impossible to override - you'd get things working, then the HK software just rebooted everything with every restart, so I took the soundcard out of the PC and junked it.  Fixed!  Once you ensure the firmware on the Scarlet is up-to-date and you point your PC audio to the Scarlet, Cakewalk pretty much handles everything (you just need to assign the left or right inputs to individual tracks in Cakewalk or simply go with stereo on a single track).

 

I have issues elsewhere though; in 2023 I bought an Arturia MIDI keyboard to add noise to recordings...I just can't get it working.

[SH73]

33 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

It used to!

Though I think that was often due to certain plug-ins and possibly the amount of RAM I had.

After some tweaking in the Ableton CPU preferences bit, and far more importantly buying a used HP Audio Workstation with Zeon silver processors and 48Gb RAM plus an upgrade to Ableton 11 Standard, it hasn't crashed. That's well over a year now...

48RAM? Niiice. I use a gaming laptop , but yes it's the  plug ins and VST that crashes it.

[Dom in Dorset]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

To the OP. I'm going to be brutally realistic here and it's probably not something you want to read but here goes anyway.

 

There appears to be a mistaken notion particularly with software, but also with a lot of high-tech hardware, that simply the act of owning it somehow gives you the immediate ability to start producing professional standard results when, as others have already said, these things take time and patience before you even start producing something passable. I bet you weren't ready to join a band within 10 minutes of picking up a bass guitar for the first time, you probably weren't ready within 10 weeks even, so why should recording be any different?

 

Add to this the fact that some people simply don't have the ability to ever do anything more than passable not matter how good their hardware and software is. I learnt the long, hard and expensive way, that my recording ability is pretty much limited to being able to get a decent level signal from my bass into my computer. Everything else on my band's recordings is done by people with the appropriate skills and far more talent when it comes to producing a finished and professional sounding product. There is also no shame in recognising your limitations and accepting them.

 

It seems to me that from the original and subsequent posts that the OP mostly wants to vent rather than actually sort out any problems. That's not necessarily a band thing. Venting does have its uses. However if they want some useful help we'll require the following:

 

1. What OS are you running?

2. There are lots of different Focustite Scarlett interfaces. Which one do you have?

 

I have a Scarlett interface and although it's been a number of years since I had to set it up, IIRC all the associated software including a cut-down version of a DAW, is available for download once you have created a user account with Focusrite and registered the interface. To the OP: have you done this yet? 

In many ways you are correct.  I had spent another frustrating afternoon achieved nothing and needed to vent.

My frustrations arise from the fact that the marketing implies that you'll be recording in minutes which I have found to be completely untrue. 

To compare my experience of digital recording with learning to play bass I haven't even managed to get it out of the case yet.

I will respond to some of your questions when I've had a chance to try again. I had forgotten that we got a new computer and so yesterday's troubles were down to not having appropriate drivers / focusrite account etc. Once I have those I'll be back to square one or maybe two. 

[Dom in Dorset]

I'm really grateful for everyone's help here. I only intend to do this for my own amusement,  demos , silly ideas , possible backing tracks. 

[Greg Edwards69]

1 hour ago, TimR said:

Imagine what it was like in the late 90s, early 2000s!

 

I had a Soundblaster with Cubase on windows 98. You had to set the interupts using MSDOS Config.sys and the latency was awful. The Internet was on dial up and help files and forums practically non-exsitent. 

I remember installing an AWE32 Soundblaster card (what a great soundcard that was) in an EISA-based 486 running Windows 3.1. That was painful. I had to boot to an EISA configurator floppy disk to tell the BIOS that I had installed a card into a slot. Only then could I install the supplied Plug and Play Manager from another boot disk so that Dos and Windows could recognise the card.  Then there were other boot disks to content with for playing certain games with custom config.sys and autoexec.bat files

[BigRedX]

I'm glad I ditched DOS and Windows back in 1990.

[tauzero]

Thankfully SCSI and RS232 disappeared before all the chickens and goats in the world had been sacrificed. People today just don't know they're born.

[Leonard Smalls]

1 hour ago, SH73 said:

48RAM? Niiice

And only £900!

[TimR]

10 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

And only £900!

 

My 486DX had 8Mb. It was about £35 per Mb. 🤣

[BigRedX]

31 minutes ago, tauzero said:

Thankfully SCSI and RS232 disappeared before all the chickens and goats in the world had been sacrificed. People today just don't know they're born.

 

I must have been exceedingly lucky in that I never had any SCSI problems during the many years that I was using it. That includes a setup that will probably be anxiety-inducing in anyone else who ever dealt with SCSI of: Mac > Removable Optical Drive > Akai S2000 Sampler. Surprisingly it worked fine so long as I remembered that once I had inserted an optical disc that was formatted for either the Mac or the Akai I couldn't then use a disc that had been formatted for the other device without rebooting everything first.