Help me get stereo input when plugging my mic into my mac!

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I do a lot of home recording, but I have no money and very little gear. Here's the current problem. I have an SM-58, and use adapters to make my xlr mic cable into an 1/8" (that's 2 adapters: xlr->1/4", then 1/4"->1/8"). That then plugs into the mic input of my griffin iMic, which connects to my mac via usb (no sound input on my iBook). I swear it used to work before, but now, whenever I try this, I only get one channel of input--never stereo. Why is this happening? How can I fix it and stop relying on the little dot mic on my laptop's screen? I'm sure this is a fairly obvious question to someone who knows anything about audio, but (obvs) I'm not that someone. Help!

― David Gooblar (gooblar), Sunday, 5 March 2006 23:37 (twenty years ago)

the sm58 is a mono input source

― electric sound of jim (and why not) (electricsound), Sunday, 5 March 2006 23:52 (twenty years ago)

So that means the sm-58 always records in one channel? Is that just standard? Is there nothing I can do to make it stereo? (in case it matters, I use audacity)

― gooblar (gooblar), Monday, 6 March 2006 00:05 (twenty years ago)

yeah. i mean you could record the same input to two different tracks and pan L/R but it would still be mono really.

― electric sound of jim (and why not) (electricsound), Monday, 6 March 2006 01:15 (twenty years ago)

somewhat similar (possibly incredibly stupid) question: is there a way to record the line in input on my pc with cool edit pro?

― spastic heritage (spastic heritage), Monday, 6 March 2006 22:23 (twenty years ago)

Just hit record in CE and go. The only thing is to make sure in the Windows Volume Control (or, if your sound card has its own software volume control panel, that) that the recording input is set to Line In. In the Windows Volume Control you need to go to Options -> Properties to select "Adjust Volume For...Recording."

This is also a handy panel from which to try and control the levels of recording; as a rule it seems to work best to have the signal coming in be fairly high (I turn all my keyboards up to max) and the line-in recording volume in Windows turned really close to zero - this may be something that varies across sound cards, but mine at least seems to be absolutely terrible at amping anything up without producing tremendous noise et cetera.

Hope that helps!

― Doctor Casino (Doctor Casino), Thursday, 9 March 2006 16:17 (twenty years ago)

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