MAIN FEATURES AND OPERATION
USB Activity Section - Monitoring Section
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USB Activity Section
This section indicates the current activity status of Audio or MIDI data travelling along the connected USB
cable. Red LEDs indicate data travelling from the SpeedIO to the computer while green LEDs indicate data
travelling from the computer to the SpeedIO.
Monitoring Section
The process whereby audio material already recorded into the audio sequencer is listened to by the artist
or recording engineer is known as monitoring. When new material is blended and recorded with previously
recorded sounds, the process is known as overdubbing. In order to hear the previously recorded work
while overdubbing a monitor mix is sent to both the performer and the recording engineer (of course these
can be the same person!).
In order that a Microphone used for recording a vocal does not pick up any of the already recorded sound
tracks of, for example drums and bass back into the vocal track, headphones are usually used by the
vocalist. A 'monitor mix' is sent to the headphones of the live microphone sound together with the previ-
ously recorded material.
If there are monitor loudspeakers in the recording room, the signal sent to these should be disabled during
recording. This prevents the microphone from picking up the sound from the loudspeaker which would oth-
erwise result in feedback. The LINE OUT LEVEL control (see page 9) is used to control the level of the
signal going to the powered speakers. With control over the output level to the loudspeakers in this way, it
is very quick to switch between listening to a recording (after for example a new vocal has been added) to
reverting to a Headphone monitor mix for recording another vocal take.
In a typical setup, a separate audio mixer would be required to mix the signal from the live microphone
with the material already recorded. Since the SpeedIO provides independent HEADPHONE LEVEL, LINE
OUT LEVEL and MONITOR controls, an external mixer is not necessary.
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