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Assignment Example | Coursera

Lecciones

Below is an example of what we are looking for in your

assignments. As part of your assignments, you will also be
reviewing your peers, so it is important to read their work
thoroughly. Can you find some of the mistakes that were made in
this example?
Hi I am Loudon Stearns from Boston MA in the USA. This lesson is for week 1 of Introduction To
Music Production at Coursera.org. I will be teaching a typical recording signal flow using the
gear in my home studio.
The gear I will be using for this demonstration is:
A Sure SM 57 microphone
An XLR cable
A MOTU Ultralite interface
A firewire 400 to 800 cable
A MacBook Pro computer
A set of byerdynamic headphones
Sound starts as longitudinal pressure variations in the air.
Those pressure variations strike the SM 57 microphone, a popular handheld stage condenser
microphone.

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Assignment Example | Coursera

The pressure variations are converted, by the microphone, into voltage variations that travel
along the unbalanced XLR cable to the Mic/Instr input of my audio interface.

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Assignment Example | Coursera

The first part of the interface is the microphone preamp, and I need to turn up the Trim control
to get a good signal.

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My interface has a 48V switch and a Pad switch. Since this is a condenser mic I dont need to
have the phantom power on. And, because I am recording a voice, I wont need to engage the
pad, which makes the signal really low.
Inside the interface, the signal is converted into a digital signal, a stream of ones and zeros.

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The output of my interface is Firewire 400 and the input of my computer is Firewire 800, so I
need a special cable for that connection.
From there the signal enters my DAW: Ableton Live.
I record the signal onto an audio track, while I record I make sure to check my levels on the
outside of the Ultralite and set my microphone preamp carefully.
When I play that track back from Ableton the digital audio goes from the audio track to the
main output of Live.

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In the preferences of Live I set which hardware the program uses, and I have chosen the MOTU
ultralite there.
The sound exits the computer, back along the firewire cable, and goes to the MOTU interface,
and finally reaches my ears through my Byerdynamic headphones.

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