Last July the big music chain store in the area had a sale and I picked up an E-MU 1820. It has phantom power and preamps built in to it and two hi/low inputs. It seems to have everything that I might need to get the job done of recording just my guitar and voice. I'm not really looking for a lot of extra bells and whistles. It came with some Cubase software.

Unfortunately, I'm having difficulty with figuring out the how to aspects of this new gear. What I had hoped would make the process easier and better has only made it more complex. I think I'm able to get sound into the program but can't hear anything that I've recorded via my headphones or speakers when playing the recording back. So, I'm uncertain as to what if anything is being captured.

One question I have is, do I need to also use a mixer inbetween this interface and my mic, or, will the mixer just muck up the signal?