Re: Recording SOftware

"Bam" <bam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:463352ee$0$19406$4c368faf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hey gang.

I have been looking for some recording software, so I can plug into my
computer and record.
I have been playing for over 20 years, but computer recording is something
new to me.

It's a good time for this as there is a *lot* of inexpensive hardware now,
that would have been outrageously expensive - if you could get it at all -
only a few years ago.

Now, 2 things come to mind. First, if my guitar has a preamp, that takes a
9V battery, and I plug into the line in on my sound card, is there a
chance of blowing the card??

No, but the levels will probably be off and results won't be very good. At
least get a small mixer. Behringer makes some that start around $50.

Just take the main outs from the mixer to the line in on the soundcard.
Use a stereo RCA to stereo 1/8" cable, and RCA to 1/4" adapters.

On the other hand, the sound card and its drivers may not be suitable, so be
wary.

Second, I have come across software called...
Acoustica Mix Master. I have been using this by using the mic on my
headset. It works well, as far as the software goes, just too much crap
background noise. Is this software a good program to use??

If it actually records properly and you like the interface, and allows you
to mix down to some format you can use ... that's what matters. For now,
anyway.


But I am really concerned about the sound card as stated in the first
question.. I just don't know if I should use a special type of pci card
for guitar or something. Any help would be appreciated.

--
Thanks,
Jeff Ferren
433-0386

I'd suggest that a good place to start is Audacity, free multi-track
recording software, with the hardware you have. Then, you can move on to
better hardware, much of which comes with "light" versions of quite good
software.

There are a lot of good hardware audio interfaces now, some quite
inexpensive and others... not inexpensive. Many connect via USB, are easy
to use and give great results. These range from boxes you plug into to
mixers with mic preamps with phantom power. You can also get FireWire
devices, but you will pay a premium for this. Finally, there are PCI
cards.

Most of the external devices will only record a maximum of two tracks at
once - left and right. If you need to record more than that, for example
micing a string quartet or a drum kit to individual tracks, you will need to
use different hardware. For the most part, it's a lot more expensive to do
that, and for the most part, you won't need that feature.

For all of these devices, though, drivers are critical. Most will come
with low-latency ASIO drivers, and it can take you a few minutes of paying
attention to get them working right. If you don't get this part right, you
will find an annoying delay when recording and monitoring. So, just be
sure you've taken this into account. You should only have to do this once,
when you configure the recording software to use whatever hardware you get
and the ASIO drivers. The manuals should explain how to do this.

Many ordinary soundcards don't have low latency drivers, and results will
suffer for this. Some newer cards *do* have the ASIO drivers and are
reasonable. For those, you just have to do some electrical level shifting,
and that's where the small mixer will come in.

I personally have a number of M-Audio products, which have been around
CND$200 or so, but they have some that start far lower. The JamLab is
close to the size of a deck of cards and is perhaps CDN$70 retail. I
prefer to use external devices as they are more flexible - you can move them
from system to system.

Many of these devices also come with software that emulates amps and
effects. You'll find that to be very useful as plain guitar signal can be
very... dry.

Some links:
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.family
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.list&ID=guitar
http://www.yamaha.ca/content/computermusic/products/audiointerfaces/MW10/keyfeatures.jsp

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

And the small mixer:
http://www.behringer.com/502/index.cfm?lang=ENG
Note that this model doesn't have phantom power. A better choice is to go
to this one, which does:
http://www.behringer.com/802/index.cfm?lang=ENG

HTH
-pk








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