Greg,

Hi Greg,

Thank you so very much for your most kind comments.

Most people are nearly shocked when we tell them our recording process. As far as the backing tracks, we do not use a DAW whatsoever. All the mixing, effects, panning, tone, punch ins and punch outs, etc. - literally everything - is done right there on the on the chord entry interface. They never leave the BIAB interface where we saved the initial track recordings. We do not use Real Band, Sonar, Cubase or any of those programs - simply the BIAB chord entry and song creation interface. We then record that using Audacity as an mp3 @ 256 rate.

Now, to your real question:

We record the vocal using Audacity and save it as an mp3 at the 256 rate or as a wave file. We use a cheap ($74.00) Behringer unpowered mixer. We use my guitar amp (Peavey Nashville 112) to power the mixer. That's where we manipulate the voice for tone and reverb. The spring reverb of the guitar amp is so much warmer than digital reverb. That's what allows her voice to lay so smoothly in the mix. We tried digital reverb and it sounds dry and "tinny", no matter how we adjusted it.

We run a cable from the amp's "Headphone" jack to the laptop's "mic in" jack.

We play the recorded backing tracks on the music player and record the vocal through Audacity as the backing tracks play in the background. We can hear it all, voice & backing tracks, through the laptop's headphone jack.

We plug the mic into the mixer. We set all the tone controls on the mixer to a neutral position. We run a cable from the mixer "out" to one of the guitar inputs on the amp. We then adjust the tone controls and reverb depth on the amp. We control the vocal volume with pre-gain and the master gain.

We do not record the voice dry. We record it with the reverb from the beginning. It's probably all in our head, but when we hear ourselves in the headphones with the reverb, we tend to sing better. Of course, like I said, it's probably just a head game - but if works, so what!

We use an AT 2035 condenser mic (about $160.00). We tried 5 or 6 different mics, some as expensive as $600.00, but kept coming back to this one. It's a perfect fit for her voice.

I hope I've answered your questions and given a little helpful information you didn't specifically ask about.

Thanks again for the kind words! Best to you,

Alan & Di

BIAB 2024 Ultra Plus-all StylePaks*Win11*32GB DDR5*Rhyzen 9745x*AT 2035 Mic*Peavey Nashville 112 Amp*Ibanez ART120* Acoustic/Electric/Washburn D200S Acoustic*Stromberg Monterey Jazz Guitar

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