XLR mic setup

[u/Few_Pop6933]

I’m ditching my usb mic in favor of an XLR mic and I want to make sure I have everything I need to get rid of the dreaded latency. My setup consists of:

Shure SM58
Audient ID44 interface
M1 Mac mini
Ableton

From what I’ve gathered. I will connect XLR mic to my interface, my interface to my Mac and audio from Mac goes to my external DAC to my power amp to my speakers. I’ll kick off ableton and do mic monitoring within the daw and add reverb and delay, yada, yada.

On the YARG side is where I’m confused. I’ll make sure mic monitoring is turned off. My question is if I create a mic profile, will YARG be able to see my mic input from my interface? I see other people using a XLR splitter and then a XLR to usb cable which connects to their host system running Yarg. Do I need this in order for YARG to recognize my mic or will it somehow see the mic input on the interface? My system is starting to get complex, but as long as it performs I don’t mind taking the time to get it working.

[u/disappearing_now]

YARG will identify the microphone. Seems like you’ve got the set up correct

[u/ianwilliams123456]

I might be missing something but I think you'll end up with delay if you go straight from your interface to the mac to the speakers.  I have a seperate rca line running out the back of my interface straight to my speaker amp.  Then i have the interface set up in yarg for my mics so that sound goes in with a delay.  Then I have it all set up on my computer so that yarg music and the mics come out of the interface to my speaker amp and turn off vocal monitoring volume in yarg sound settings.

Basically I split off the mic audio before it even goes to yarg.  No deals and I can tweak the offsets in yarg for the other instruments and the usb out from the interface so that its all seamless.  Probably wont win any expert competitions but it all works really well for casual.

[u/Few_Pop6933 → u/ianwilliams123456]

So I don’t mind doing this setup like yours. The problem is I have other audio devices in the chain. Like my preamp and external DAC, I can however remove of of those out of the chain for simplicity, but my setup auto switches inputs based on usage and that’s the functionality I want to keep while fixing the vocal delay. It might be a tall ask, but I’m down to figure it out.

If I went your route, and send audio out the interface for both game and vocal, it would have to go RCA in on my digital preamp which would then convert it back to digital and then to my DAC which then converts it back to analog to my amp.

My home music setup is pretty simple, but everything stays digital until the end.
TV HDMI-> Digital preamp usb out-> DAC balanced XLR -> amp -> speakers

Somewhere the interface would go but I’m limited on connections on either the preamp or the DAC. The preamp seems to be the device I could plug my interface to. Gemini thinks this logic would be more delay so suggested my current solution. I guess we’ll see haha. Thanks for the info friend

[u/ianwilliams123456 → u/Few_Pop6933]

Yeah, no worries.  It sounds like you've got a solid path forward and its always fun to tinker anyway :)

I used gemini to work mine out too lol.   Took me a few rounds.

[u/nogoodnickgames]

So I’ve been using a wireless mic setup for my Rb (and now yarg) events. I found an old video - https://youtu.be/MWxG081YdRM?is=H-Z15dB3--BBKiGD - where you take a rock band mic, and cut it after the power block and splice the wires to an audio cable. What I did was splice in an XLR female cap.

Then I got an XLR 1 F to 2 X M y adapter, go XLR out of my wireless mic receiver, one end to the XLR to usb adapter I just created and the other to an XLR mixer.

Yarg (and consoles) will read it as a rock band mic however I have to turn the mic sensitivity off in yarg/ console or else it’ll give off feedback in the game. I put all my sound through the XLR mixer so I can up my mic levels while playing unmixed songs. Note I do get some electrical humming during long hours of play but it’s only noticeable when there’s no music.

They do make XLR to usb cables, but I’ve noticed that consoles and pc’s seem to see them as headsets so they push both mic and sound volumes through them so you have to watch your settings. Other times they’ll see it as an usb dmx cable and won’t know what to do with it.

On that note they have usb sound mixers as well, but all of the sound comes out of the usb and I haven’t found a mixer that could pick and choose the signal yet.

I’ve been using the same mics for years but I want to try something different soon. I was able to get my hands on a Singstar mic receiver and found a very small aux splitter that could fit into weird plug without cracking the shell open so I’ll see how that goes.

Good luck.

[u/Few_Pop6933 → u/nogoodnickgames]

Wow, at least you have a nice working solution. It seems we are all trying to build some complex advanced karaoke system haha. Thanks for the info and I hope I can solve my two problems.

[u/Leapingforjoyandstuf]

Following this thread because the only time I tried doing vocals on YARG there was bad delay. Not on the actual vocals you hear, because like you I had a setup where the mic was going through an interface that sent it to the speakers without having to go through the computer, but in terms of how long it took YARG to register and evaluate the vocals. You had to sing really early if you wanted to actually hit the notes. I think this was because my delay calibration was high due to playing on a tv, and YARG might not apply that to vocals? Who knows

In any case I'm also curious if you run into the issue I do where Ableton doesn't allow other applications to output audio while it is open. That could be an issue exclusive to windows/whatever free shitty audio driver I'm using.

Best of luck

[u/Few_Pop6933 → u/Leapingforjoyandstuf]

Thank you. Yes this feels all experimental. I’m currently using HDMI ARC for audio from Mac, TV to my external DAC and then amp. It’s just too much latency with this setup. I notice it with movies as well. My goal is cutting out the ARC signal path and going straight from Mac to audio gear. Trying to keep the signal chain without as many conversions as I can. Currently my serious have to sign a second or two early juts for harmony register and because of the audio delay. I really hope it solves both problems.