Audiophile 2496 recording volume question

[plug]

Hi,

I recently switched to an Audiophile 2496 from a Philips sound card and I'm having a problem with the recording volume. With the old card, I just used the windows volume slider to do the job. But now that I've installed the Audiophile software, the old windows volume sliders that I used to use won't even open anymore when I click on them. And no matter what I do with the mixer supplied with the Audiophile software, the volume doesn't change at all. What the....?

BTW, I'm using it with Wavelab 4 and Cooledit 2. I apologize if I sound like a dork, but this is driving me nuts! Any assistance would really be appreciated!

plug

[Robert D]

Hi Plug, believe it or not, everything is working as it should. You don't want your pro audio running through mickysoft mixers, only through the Delta control panel. The volume faders on the Delta mixer do not control record level. They simply adjust levels being sent to the monitor out of the mixer. Record levels are absolute, and should be monitored in the Delta control panel, but adjusted at your preamp or instrument out. Be sure to read the Delta manual, as this is not the only thing that requires some understanding with the Delta cards. They are very good, very flexible cards, but with that flexibility comes the need to understand the patchbay router, mixer, and such.

Regards, RD

[Vernon Kuehn]

When I installed my Audiophile 2496, I was running Windows 95 and the Microsoft mixer was in the chain and I could set record volumes. When I installed WindowsXP, I did a quick install of somethings and now I am set up where Microsoft Mixer will not allow me to get to the record settings, so apparently they are not in the chain.

What if I am a dummy who would like to have the Microsoft drivers in the chain. How would I re-install to cause that to happen?

[Sui]

Why would you want to...?

The M-Audio mixer is INDEPENDENT fo the K-mixer (kernel mixer) What does that mean?

WEll with the introduction of Win 2K MS (MicroSoft) had all the audio route through the K-Mixer. What was wrong with that...?
There was a 30ms buffer the audio had to go through, Which means that playback and record at the same time was impossible to do through WDM. (you could with ASIO but not through WDM Applications)

So, M-Audio figured out how to route AROUND the K-mixer and that allowed lower latencys in programs like Sonar.

So insted of going to the K-mixer controls to adjust you levels just go to the M-Audio control panel and adjust volumes.

Sui

[cstockdale]

More details would help as in what are you recording and how are you recording it. I had the same problem for a while until I figured out something called "gain staging"...you need to control the level of the send from whatever device you are recording. If you are recording via a mixer this is easy, it you are recording straight into your PC, then it is time to invest in a mixer.
I use a simple Behringer 602A mixer, which is ~$100. Any mixer will do, you just need to route the recording device through the aux sends. Raise the levels of the channel you are recording into so that they are just shy of clipping, and then drop the aux send level so that it doesn't clip in the recording software.