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4 Hints and advanced tips
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4 – Hints and advanced tips
This section gives a few hints and tips
which may be useful to you when you
make recordings using the Porta02.
4.1 Recording techniques
Learning how to record is an art, not a
science. One of the best teachers is expe-
rience. However, there are a few things
mentioned here which may be useful to
you, and there are several good books on
the subject which can explain the theory
of recording and some of the techniques.
4.1.1 Recording electric guitars
Much of the sound of an electric guitar
(and also bass) is due to the effects,
amplifier and speakers, as well as the gui-
tar and style of playing. If you plug the
guitar straight into the Porta02, you will,
of course, be able to record it, but the
sound will probably not be what you are
used to.
Plugging effects units between the guitar
and the Porta02 will certainly help to pro-
duce a fuller sound. The sound which
will come closest to a live sound, though,
will be provided by the amplifier itself.
You can adopt one of two approaches:
either to put a microphone in front of the
guitar speaker and record this (at
MIC
level), or to connect the output of the pre-
.amplifier to the Porta02 and record at
LINE level.
4.1.2 Recording with effects
Professional recordings often use effects
like digital reverberation on vocals, etc.
You can add some of these effects by
plugging the microphone into an effects
unit, and plugging the unit into the
Porta02. Note that the effects unit must
be able to accept microphone-level sig-
nals, and will output to the Porta02 at
LINE levels.
In addition, you will need to use the inter-
nal balance control in the unit to decide
how much of the “dry” (un-effected)
sound will be passed through to the
Porta02 for recording.
If you do not have access to a reverbera-
tion unit, you can try recording vocals in
a very “live” room (without much furni-
ture).
WARNING
Do not connect the speaker output (or head-
phone output, if provided) of the amplifier to
the Porta02. This will almost certainly dam-
age the Porta02, and may damage the ampli-
fier. Only use outputs which are marked
LINE OUT, PRE OUT, DIRECT OUT
and so on. Avoid using any outputs marked
SPEAKER OUT, SP OUT, 4Ω, 8Ω, 16Ω
or the like.