Some recording tips?

Hi all - have had my AK1 for 6 months now and have finally found the time to play with it. I recorded some stuff on the weekend and now I have a bunch of questions as I want to ensure that I'm using my AK1 correctly (some I think are answered on other threads but a bit vaguely anyway...)

I've got Vista Home SP1 (2.2 duo, 4Gb ram) and have hooked the AK1 in fine and it plays my tracks through Sonar 6 fine.

One thing that's happened to me is that I like to do a final mix with a realtime/'what u hear' recording as I export out of Sonar and the mix is crap and doesn't sound like it does through the AK1 speakers. I guess I can adjust the mix and keep exporting to get a more even mix but I'm finding it hard to believe that AK1 won't let me record with windows sound recorder or something.

Here's my questions

a) is there a way to use it as my soundcard for *everything* on my laptop? The instructions from the manual (4.3. Configuring Third-Party Software) are for XP only and I can't see where I configure it. All I have are 2 AK1 'speakers' next to my onboard soundcard. Say for example I want to use it with WinAMP or iTunes - I can't seem to do this with Vista.

b)more artistically, has anybody got some good links on doing mixing 101 (ie where to position instruments on the soundstage, eg ranges etc)?

cheers

Joe

 

Why would you want to do a "what you hear" recording when you can do a mixdown of the audio from SONAR 6 itself? You can take advantage of all the DSPs SONAR has.

Unfortunately you can't do a 'what you hear' recording using the AK1. NI doesn't bundle a software that can do that. You might have some luck with other programs like using Steinberg's Wavelab Lite if you really want to do so.

By right, as long as you have no other sound devices running on your laptop, your AK1 is already your soundcard for everything on your laptop.