anomie life

The next step in my audio equipment upgrades was to go back to a computer-based system. I wanted a way to record multiple tracks simultaneously, but also have the mixing flexibility of using a program such as Adobe Audition. I found the AudioTrak MAYA1010 PCI based system, which seemed to meet my needs. This system is part internal, part external. It has a PCI card which you have to install in your computer that then connects to a breakout box with all the inputs and outputs.

It has 8 Line Inputs and 8 Line Outputs. All of the inputs and outputs are balanced 1/4″, which is kind of annoying since pretty much all microphones use XLR. Luckily, I already had a bunch of XLR to 1/4″ cable adapters from my previous mixer. The inputs are so close together that you can’t just use an adapter or transformer without putting the adjacent ports out of commission.

Notice how I said these are “line” inputs. That means that barely have any gain, except for 2 of the inputs. Those 2 support phantom power and have a mic preamp with adjustable gain (through software), which is good because condenser microphones almost always require phantom power. So you can record with all 8 inputs, but the signal on everything except the 2 condenser microphones is extremely weak.

2 of the outputs are also considered “headphone” amplifiers. This just means these are a little louder than the rest. But they’re not stereo ,so unless you get a special adapter, you only hear audio out of one ear. I ended up just using the computer’s audio out for headphones. I did use 2 of the other outputs to provide a signal to the studio monitors, which are already power, and that worked very well.

Practically, the MAYA1010 looked really good, but only having microphone preamps on 2 of the channels was really annoying. If I wanted to record vocals while recording the drums, I had to use one of those two channels, otherwise it was practically inaudible. Being able to hear everything while recording was also very difficult because you have little control of the audio.

We recorded a few things live, such as some quality Robotic Melee. It was just drums, bass, el cheapo casio keyboard, and screaming vocals. Good times Jimmy and Carl…. After making a purevolume site we actually had a few requests to play shows…. It made me sad that anyone would want us to come play that music anywhere.

Scott and I also wrote a song called “Confessions of a Broken Heart” that we attempted to record with the 1010. The problem is we recorded pretty much all the instruments and vocals before we recorded the drums. This made recording the drums next to impossible, especially since most of the instruments weren’t perfectly in time with the metronome. I learned to always, if possible, record the drums first. And then add in the rest of the instruments.