When recording vocals, it’s essential to actually hear what you’re singing. Recently I switched to a Scarlett 2i2 USB audio interface, and even though the monitoring audio quality is fine, I wasn’t able to get enough volume to my headphones while recording. I tried lowering the volume of all other tracks in Ableton Live, but then the overall volume was too low. For a while I used a separate recording channel, which would have higher volume than the rest of the tracks, and then move the recorded audio to another channel for listening. This solution worked, but was a tedious process. Today I tried a new way to get extra volume, and it seems to be the best solution I’ve come up with so far.
It’s a really simple solution, but those are the best, right? Insert a Utility device and a Limiter device in the beginning of your channel effect chain and group them to create a rack. Now set the gain control of the Utility device to something crazy like +20db, and you’ll get a significant boost in your recording volume. This way you don’t need to set the preamp gain too high, but you can still hear your voice very clearly. When you’re done with recording, turn the entire effect rack off, and adjust the channel’s output to a level that suits the mix. Now you can easily switch between a good headphone mix and a speaker mix.
Download Unzyme’s Headphone Amplifier Simulator 0.4.adg
and if you like, combine it with our simple vocal effects rack: Classic Unzyme Jerry Springer Vocal FX.adg