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There are one or two USB mics on the market now that have had favorable reviews. Nothing amazing, mind you, but from what I hear definitely worth not having to shell out on a sound card and/or mixer.

...at least, I think it's vocoding. What I want to do is combine spoken or death-metal vocals - i.e. no melodic qualities in the signal - with the signal from a guitar or synth, and thus have the vocals be somewhat "sung". After fiddling around with my MDA Vocoder for an hour I'm at a loss as to how I'd do this. Any suggestions?

I enjoy having a second monitor for every-day stuff, not just music production. I leave Winamp up on it, usually toss MSN windows over there, and it gives me somewhere to watch movies/shows while still being able to do other stuff. Definitely worth the $100 I spent on it.

I wouldn't mind having an SPC-MIDI tool just for the purpose of making arrangements. Convert the music, drag stuff around in my DAW until it sounds cool, and then go record all the parts by hand. Efficiency rules.

A stringed instrument where vibrato is used very often - the same technique used on guitars. Fixed it for you. Unless you're talking about the tremolo arm on a guitar, which is itself a misnomer, pretty much any musician will use it to refer to amplitude. The definition does technically cover any kind of pulsating, vibrating, etc effect you create, but since the pitch-related kind has its own word already... yeah.

Throwing in lots of ambient crap can help. A friend of mine records in his basement and you can randomly hear the furnace kicking in on the guitar tracks. For professional work, obviously a bad thing, but it makes the best black metal sound you will ever hear.

Anyone know of a good free Key Gating VST? It's essentially sidechaining with the opposite effect - your main signal only gets through if a signal hits the sidechain.

The Kjaerhus "Classic" effects let you sync at anywhere from one cycle every 8 measures down to one per 32nd note - assuming my brain is working correctly as I fiddle with the knobs. Oh, and they're free. Party on.

My two Behringer mixers don't add a damn thing to the signal that wasn't in the room already...

I'd save up a bit more, if I were you. The C2 reviews I've seen weren't very positive, and (as Overcoat mentioned) condenser mics aren't typically the sort of thing that both "good" and "cheap" apply to. Q: What (as in guitar, bass, vocals, etc) are you going to be recording?

How completely retarded would someone have to be to do that?

Err, question? I just described what lead me to this because it'll become something I'm going to use . I rarely (have to) ask questions . Sorry, I read the post as asking whether using a mixer was a good way to get the mic into your PC as opposed to getting a preamp. My bad, as the kids say.

That's exactly what I use (though a bigger one) to run my shit into the computer. SM57 or whatever, into the mixer, two outs into my E-MU. Also, not really the best thread for a question like that.

Go into the Volume Control panel (assuming you're on Windows), click Options, Properties, and change the "Adjust Volume For" setting to "Recording" if it isn't there already. Then back out to the volume sliders and make sure your input isn't muted.

As much as JerryC kicks ass, that's the worst rendition of Enter Sandman in the history of the universe.