recording drums with behringer umc 1820 interface

[Stefan De Cnodder]

Hey all,

I installed cakewalk on my windows 10 laptop and connected the behringer audio interface with the usb.  plugged in my in-ears into the behringer and after a few hours wrestling with the settings i finally got sound for each individual mic.  I have 8 mics (drumset).

Now i can only adjust the mic volume on the behringer but when i try to change volume with the mixer in cakewalk nothing happens...  Same if i try to add effects to any track nothing changes in my output(in ears).  Cakewalk is set in record mode...

I can see that the signals are comming in on the eq but i cant seem to get the processed sound to come out.

1track is uploaded with a wav file and for that track i can adjust volume just fine.  but for the channels coming from the drum mics...nothing.

Dont know if the problem is to be solved in the DAW, behringer or laptopsettings.

Any ideas?

 

Thnx a lot!

 

Greets Stefan (noob)

Edited February 18, 2021 by Stefan De Cnodder

[57Gregy]

Welcome to the forum.
You can't set the input level in Cakewalk; that can only be done in the interface.
If all your tracks are set to record, that's why the track volume sliders don't do anything.
Adjust you levels at the interface and after recording you can set the playback level of each track, as you discovered.
Also, using a plug-in effect such as EQ or compression, those are not recorded. They are applied to the output only.
Make sure that the Input Echo button is clicked on the tracks you want to hear while recording.

[rsinger]

6 hours ago, Stefan De Cnodder said:

I can see that the signals are comming in on the eq but i cant seem to get the processed sound to come out.

It looks like the UMC 1820 has direct monitoring, if you want to hear plugins make sure that direct monitoring on the i/f is disabled. 

Edited February 18, 2021 by rsinger

[Hatstand]

also worth checking that global fx bypass is not turned on (FX button in the control bar)

[John Vere]

If you toggle input monitoring you'll hear the effects etc  BUT you'll also hear the round trip latency of your system which might be a lot. This won't work very well for drumming where you'll want tight on the money timing. 

For stable tracking of audio best to use a safe buffer level and do not use any effects.  Bypass all effects while tracking. In a way this interface will work but you have no way of using compression or EQ going in. These will be added after you record. If you desire EQ and compression going in then you will need more outboard gear, like a mixer etc. Just use good mikes and positioning and you'll probably be fine...There's always Drum Replacer  

Monitor your drums in the headphones using direct monitoring.  The blend of your DAW playback and your input is controlled using the knob marked Monitoring. 

Edited February 18, 2021 by John Vere

[Glenn Stanton]

as a note about the latency - when using direct monitoring - you'll be playing to the output from the DAW and hearing your drums directly - should all sound normal, however, once in playback, you'll likely find the latency has put the drums out of sync with the other tracks. having an audible click track (use it during recording or not) will make shifting the drum tracks to the proper position easier (rather than simply trying to line up based on the bass or other instrument peaks).

Edited February 19, 2021 by Glenn Stanton

[John Vere]

With ASIO there better not be any issues with sync. Your DAW uses reported latency to adjust playback so your overdubbing will sync perfectly with the original tracks. This is only true in ASIO mode.  Your songs would be a total mess if this didn't work properly. 

If you do a loopback test and compare different driver modes. ASIO is right on. The other modes are late. Second best is WASAPI exclusive which when I tested was very good performance but depends on the interface used. But even though the reported latency was low, Cakewalk doesn’t use it in the calculation so it’s still late by around a 32 note  

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by John Vere
Update info

[orhor]

Hi all, can you please someone post real ASIO latency values for UMC1820?

 

I would like to buy one, but I read some messages over the internet reporting some latency issues.

 

My old Lexicon Omega said goodbye to me. It was able to give me nicely acceptable 7.9ms of total roundtrip when set to Highspeed.

I also tried Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 which could give me total roundtrip 4.5ms when the buffer was set to 32samples.

All values mentioned above were reported by Cakewalk.

Thank you.

Edited June 14, 2022 by orhor

[John Vere]

It will be a mid range level interface so most likely gets same performance as most of that price range. Only the high end interfaces like RME get the real low readings.
But more importantly ! even if a low reading is available is can you use it?  
My Motu M4 needs to run at 256 or higher on the same system where my Scarlett runs at 128.  The quality of the drivers varies. Motu is a Mac focused product. The windows driver is not very good. 

Watch video #103. 

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by John Vere

[Glenn Stanton]

depending on the project - no fx etc, i've gotten the UMC1820 down to 6ms round-trip to record clean guitar, bass, and drums. if i'm not monitoring directly i'll bump it to 10ms, and mix time - i set it to 2048 in my ASIO panel.

[orhor]

1 hour ago, Glenn Stanton said:

depending on the project - no fx etc, i've gotten the UMC1820 down to 6ms round-trip to record clean guitar, bass, and drums. if i'm not monitoring directly i'll bump it to 10ms, and mix time - i set it to 2048 in my ASIO panel.

The specs in your signature are the specs of the machine you work with?

So AMD Ryzen 9 5950X could do much better, couldn't it?

 

[Glenn Stanton]

19 hours ago, orhor said:

The specs in your signature are the specs of the machine you work with?

yes, the desktop machine. down to 32 samples and 64 samples. however, it imperative to ensure the project is minimal to record at that low level.  so where you need effects etc for the performer, then you'll need to find another way to add them into the monitoring or increase the latency. so the AMD processor should do better in terms of maintaining low latency with some fx processing - but it also depends on I/O capabilities, system tuning, etc. my next machine will likely use a server type board with multiple physical cpu, numa channels, dma, etc to get the I/O to microseconds and shared processing across 128 cores etc ? 

[orhor]

Thank you for your thoughts. I searched the internet more and found only bad reviews on UMC1820. Especially on Behringer's web site. So now I think about M-Audio Air 192|14.

But in the end, I think,  I'll go with  Focusrite Scarlett 4i4. It doesn't have as many inputs I would like, but there are only positive reviews.  

Edited June 16, 2022 by orhor

[Jane]

You may find information about drum recording here - https://apartmentrecording.com/