Next week, the Consort is going to begin recording material for at least one new CD. So I've been making preparations — making sure we have enough microphone stands, double-checking the mixing consoles, downloading and applying the latest Cakewalk patches...

One thing I didn't like about the first CD was that we had very little control over the tracks once they were laid down. Mike, our recording engineer, only used two tracks (left and right), so we could do very little balancing of the voices and instruments afterwards.

However, since we're doing this one completely digitally, using Cakewalk recording software, I decided to set things up the way I want them, and one thing I wanted was one track per instrument or voice; that way, after the recording is finished, each part can be tweaked for the final mixdown. Unfortunately, the SB Live! will only permit recording from one source at a time (microphone, line in, aux, etc.), and Cakewalk Home Studio can only handle two channels per sound card (left and right).

There are sound cards out there with more inputs, but Cakewalk wouldn't handle them anyway. So, since SB Live! cards are dirt-cheap, I looked into adding a second one into my machine. Creative Labs said it couldn't be done; trying to use the same driver for two cards would create a conflict. However, I found the kX Project, a set of freeware audio drivers which, among other things, will permit the use of multiple cards, even identical ones.

So, thanks to the magic of the kX drivers, I've got four working input channels. However there was a slight problem: I could only monitor one card at a time through the headphones.

After a number of failed attempts to coerce Cakewalk into sending out a monitor signal of all four channels, I pulled apart a CD audio cable I wasn't using, cut off the plug from an old pair of headphones, soldered them together, and connected the line-out jack of my "slave" card to the Aux In connector on the "master". This doesn't affect recording, since the source is set to Line In, but the auxiliary input is passed through to the Line Out, making it possible to monitor all four channels while recording.