Simply put, this mic pre sounds as good as your DAW. It is not the best drum recording you’ve ever heard, but it is in stereo.įor the curious, here is the gear used in the drum demo:ĬEntrance MicPort Pro – a 24-bit, 96kHz ADC with a high-end mic pre and plenty of gain. Here is a demo to prove the concept: a stereo recording of a drum kit using two USB mic preamps. Needless to say, you’ll have to be careful about matching gain levels on the two channels, especially if you’ve used two different brands or models of USB preamp. Now go into your audio application, such as GarageBand, and select the new aggregate device as your input. (Click the screenshot to see the image in full size.) Now you can open the Sound Preference Pane (within System Preferences) to see and select the new aggregate stereo device, which will be listed with whatever name you gave it back in the Aggregate Device Editor. These show up as separate lines in the device listing.

Some USB interfaces have both inputs and outputs. In the lower half of the window, select the two inputs you want to aggregate. (Click screenshot to see the image in full size.)Ĭlick the + button to create a new aggregate device. Under the Audio menu, select Open Aggregate Device Editor. (You’ll find it in either the Applications folder, or in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder.) The OS doesn’t care about the brand name of the input device. It is not necessary to have two matched USB mic preamps to record in stereo! In the demo below, I used a CEntrance MicPort Pro and a Shure X2U together with great results. Some interface manufacturers warn that USB audio input devices should not be plugged into USB hubs, as they won’t get enough bus power for proper operation, so for best results plug the interfaces directly into the computer. Plug two USB mic preamps into two available USB ports on the computer. Here is a video tutorial showing exactly how to do it: Mac users have no need for custom driver software - the OS will aggregate multiple mono sources into a stereo input with no additional software. Note: it doesn’t work for Vista, as of this writing. If you use Windows, the only sure bet I know of is to buy a pair of MicPort Pro interfaces, and use the CEntrance Universal Driver for Windows to aggregate them into a single stereo input device. Following are the simple instructions, a video tutorial, and a video demo of recording a drum kit in stereo via two USB mic pre’s. Using Mac OS X, it’s not only possible, but easy. Is it possible to use two USB microphone interfaces to record in stereo? Any sort of field recording or concert taping, and many acoustic instruments, would benefit from being recorded in stereo. While working on the USB audio interface review, I got to wondering about recording in stereo.

Usb audio input mac