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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Newbie needs some advice for a recording setup.
Newbie needs some advice for a recording setup.
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WestVirginiaTom
45 posts
Jan 04, 2012
11:06 AM
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I just ordered a new PC, and that frees up my old one to play with. I plan to move the old computer into my home “studio” and use it solely for creating music CDs and perhaps making some YouTube videos of my harmonica playing and singing. I’m not looking to create studio quality stuff; I will just use this for personal use and for long-distance harmonica lessons. What I want to do is play backing tracks on the computer while playing/singing into the mic/amp and create audio and video recordings. I was hoping you folks could give me some tips as to how to begin this project.
Presently, my setup consists of a Shure SM58 mic and a Roland Cube Street amp. I also have a pretty decent webcam. I was planning on using the Cube amp’s headphones jack as the audio input to the PC. To do this, I suppose I will need a “Y” cable and an audio interface. I also suppose I will need some recording software. My PC has Windows Vista as the operating system. This brings me to some specific questions:
1. Is my plan to use the Cube amp’s headphones jack and a “Y” cable as the audio input to the PC interface feasible? Is there a better (low-cost) solution? (The amp has no other output port.)
2. I was looking at the Tascam US-100 USB 2.0 Audio Interface ($70 at Amazon). Will this suffice? Alternatives?
3. The Tascam comes with Audacity software, but I have heard that it isn’t the most user-friendly program to work with. Am I better off spending a little money to buy some software that has a few more bells and whistles and is easier to use? I was looking at Acoustica Mixcraft 5 ($70). Anyone have any experience with this or other inexpensive recording software?
4. It looks like the Acoustica (and other recording software) has the ability to sync the audio with a video signal. Is this a straight-forward process, or will I need to do something special?
Thanks in advance for your help!
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nacoran
5063 posts
Jan 04, 2012
2:53 PM
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Audacity has plenty of bells and whistles. As long as the computer has enough RAM it's a pretty nice piece of software, and since it's free, you can try it out and if you don't like it, nothing lost, move on to a pay program. There are a few little annoying things... you have to manually set the lag correction the first time you use it, and there is a playback setting that is set to a goofy default and you have to download a little .dll file to convert things to MP3's, but you can do all of them in 15 minutes and you are good to go. And, like I said, if you decide it's not what you want you haven't shelled out any money.
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Steamrollin Stan
214 posts
Jan 04, 2012
3:16 PM
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I use audacity and have no problem, you must also download the 'lame mp3 converter' so you can export in mp3 format,there's lots of information on youtube about this, then i upload a backtrack, play to it with the mic into the pc and after a few alterations BINGO!!
Anything i do for public viewing is on the 'harmonica boogie' site...btw...all for free!!!
Last Edited by on Jan 04, 2012 3:17 PM
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Baker
194 posts
Jan 06, 2012
5:40 AM
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I would recommend getting a half decent mic to record with, rather than going straight out of your amp. It will give you some flexibility.
You can record your acoustic sound, vocal, guitar etc. or if you want to colour your sound using an amp you can simply put the mic in front of it, on some amps this will give you a truer reproduction of what you are hearing anyway.
I use a USB condenser mic. It's not studio quality but I've got some pretty good results with it. (If you get a USB one you don't need to worry about phantom power and audio interfaces. Just plug it in and play).
This is the one I use and have pretty good results:
http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-C-1U-Condenser-Microphone-Cardioid/dp/B001QXCYZY/ref=sr_1_1?s=musical-instruments&ie=UTF8&qid=1325856816&sr=1-1
I have heard really good things about this one too: http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Microphones-Yeti-USB-Microphone/dp/B002VA464S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325856778&sr=8-1
I use a MAC so I'm not sure about software, however something like Garage Band might be worth a look too. You can import the backing track (or what ever you are recording over) into one of the tracks and record you part on another track. You'll get a much better quality than just playing the backing track in the background while you play.
Can you do this in Audacity?
Anyway, hope this is some help.
Last Edited by on Jan 06, 2012 5:43 AM
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Steamrollin Stan
219 posts
Jan 06, 2012
6:54 AM
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@Baker, yes.
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Blackbird
186 posts
Jan 06, 2012
5:16 PM
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Tom - you're on the right track - an audio interface will give you far better connectivity and audio pre-amp than plugging into your sound card. Worth the money if you're going to be doing any recording and playback that you want to hear well, or tinker with. The the interface is really only valuable if you want to plug high end mics or instruments into it. If you're primarily just going to be doing some harmonica recording via mic, start checking out some of the USB microphones - they're going to be more affordable, and will do what you want really well.
As for audio players, depending upon the format, Audacity or windows media player or nearly any music player can work. If you want to begin editing with any depth, Audacity is going to be the free minimum tool, and if you want to step up to more capable and complex tools, check out Reaper http://www.reaper.fm/ (free to try, but 60 bucks for the whole thing, I think.)and that will do much of what some of those popular but expensive software packages can do.
When you're ready to have multiple instruments (mic, guitar, etc.) or XLR connected mics, check out audio interfaces. For now, you can get set up really inexpensively with a USB mic and Audacity.
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Epworthslim
42 posts
Jan 06, 2012
6:55 PM
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I use audacity and a tube mp studio v3 to rum my instruments and mics through. this gives me control over the sound and allows direct input into the computer from the preamp. when we record as a band we mic everything up to the mixer and then take the sound from that to the computer. works really well.
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Steamrollin Stan
223 posts
Jan 07, 2012
2:32 AM
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I made a comment on 4th january and stick by it, everyone else has loads of info just to show how to confuse yourself, download audacity, work out the lame converter and away you go, friggin easy!!!!.....its up to you if you wish to get high tech heavy or not.
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