Niche question to do with audio settings on a video recording

So here’s the set-up:

  • I’m trying to record a video (from my laptop) of me playing guitar and singing
  • I can’t just use the laptop’s mic as my guitar drowns out my voice
  • I’ve plugged in an old Avid MBox Mini with vocals in channel 1 and guitar in channel 2
  • This is a bit better, but the vocals are hard-panned left and the guitar is hard-panned right

Can anyone help? Ideally I’d like to pan a bit more centrally (mono would be fine) and to be able to apply some kind of compression to the vocals and guitar to even it out a bit. Would prefer to do this as I record, but would happily edit afterwards if necessary. Is there any free/cheap software that would do the job or am I being unrealistic?

Can Garageband do that? Or maybe a free/trial version of Ableton or similar?

Any audio software can do this. Did nothing come with the mbox?

I think reaper is still free

Don’t think you can multrack in audacity can you?

It came with Protools. But I can’t seem to get it to work with a “live” recording.

I think I’m just being thick :frowning:

Also how would this all work if I’m recording video too?

Oh it deffo will. Follow some YouTube guides.

If you can install it and make site the mbox is selected then gonto new track and create 2 mono audio tracks.

Set one input to input 1 and one to 2 an ditvshoukd what you need.

You will have to drag the vid in after and line it up. Do a visual clap or something to make lining up easier.

Failing that just experiment with phone position and do it live and more roughly.

If you are managing to record but having this issue it’s because you are recording to stereo tracks. Record 2 mono tracks if possible.

The Free Way To Do This:
Audacity is a free piece of software for audio editing. It’ll allow you to pan the audio channels and apply compression

You’ll want to add it to the video. I recommend at the start of a video doing a clap queue (clap to the camera) so you can sync up the ‘worked’ audio with the video.

The easiest way to do this:
Would be to buy a USB microphone designed to capture room audio. There are quite a few in the market designed specifically for music.