Learning Something New - Amazingly Frustrating Fun

Learning something new can be both frustrating and satisfying at
the same time.

Over the weekend I was able to sneak in several painful, frustrating, hair-pulling, beard-graying hours trying to understand my new audio board. Now please keep in mind it is not the Behringer Xenyx X1832USB's fault. I personally have taken to task learning from scratch how to incorporate a more professional piece of equipment into my studio with almost nil of previous knowledge. So I understood from the very beginning I would hit some pitfalls getting said board incorporated with my multiple, PCs, recorder, iPad2, and new condenser and dynamic microphones. After some rather long sessions I still have much to learn.

So what did I get to work? 

• New condenser microphone feeding to main - check
• New dynamic microphone feeding to main - check
• ZOOM X4N - Recording from either microphone and a direct line back in to listen to recordings as well. -check
• iPad2 - Line into board for playing from Garage Band or other audio apps.- check
•           - *Note - Have not tested for recording into iPad2 - yet.
• Studio PC - Direct line in and back
•                  - USB Webcam - Check
•                  - Skype Session - Check
•                  - Hangout - Check
•                  - AVS4YOU -  recorder - works but buzzing noise (60Mhz issue with monitor) - help!

What is driving crazy and not working!

Laptop - Direct line in and back
            - Line back into the board is working fine - check
            - USB Webcam - Cannot get to work without using webcam speaker instead of board mic.
                  - This renders any video programs useless until figured out.
            - AVS4YOU - Cannot get input to work correctly to record

I have played with the Dell application that recognizes the input into the microphone jack and I have played with the sound recorder settings as well making sure the default line in is microphone/headphones. I can get it to input through the board mikes but there is a buzzing noise being caused by my secondary monitor being plugged in - HELP! The bigger issue is I can't figure out how to get the webcam to have input from the board mikes like on the Studio PC. I am using the same settings but not getting the same results. I suspect this studio microphone application from Dell is the culprit but I don't know how to disable it and just rely on Windows 7 to control everything. That is my main pain at the moment.

If anybody has suggestions about how I can resolve this please feel free to email me at headhardhat@gmail.com. I would greatly appreciate it.

If not I am going to figure this out one way or another. Ah the wonders of technology when learning something new.

-Andy

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