audio recording to CD with mixer

Heh several different topics in that one there

Ok your mixer, when you say it only has speaker wire connections, are these powered connections(Meaning they do not run to an amp, only your speakers, and your speakers do not plug into 110V AC)?

As far as recording on Linux, that isn't to difficult. In fact if you search either the LAU or LAD lists, I forget which, you will come across at least one somewhat recent thread that covers automated recording very similar to what oyu just described.

Recording direct to CD however is a bit more tricky. I would suggest having it record to disk first, and then automatically burn the CD from the disk myself. Of course on the other hand, just doing a standalone CD recorder may be all you need as well, instead of bothering with setting up a linux distro to do this, in fact I might look at this option first.

Seablade

What budget?

I think, of the top of my head, some of the consumer TEAC decks are about $300 or so, up to some of the better decks for professional use which run up to about $1000. The mid-line pro decks are about $600.

But more importantly at the moment would be ensuring you would be able to hook it up. Can you get me the make and model of your audio console?

Seablade

Ahh "Realistic" brand... or RCA... doesn't really matter. Its about the only thing I would consider worse than Behringer possibly(Would have to think on it)

Yea in that case don't bother with make and model as I doubt I could get any useful info on it off the net. It is the old triangle of time, money, and quality. You can have two of the three but not all three. Unfortunately Rat Shack gives you one of the three, fast. It is neither low cost, nor high quality.

Ok honestly, I would say some budget is going to be needed. If you took the rat shack stuff back, what would you need, and how much would be availiable. I can point towards powered mixers if you have speakers, that are much more dependable than anything at rat shack, and likely more capable as well. Note they aren't really pro level, but they are better than crap shack.

Otherwise if you wouldn't have speakers if you took everything back, there are small portable systems that you could look at, depending on how large a space you are filling. It all depends on the needs and budget.

Seablade

By the way, if you went with a computer, would you be providing the computer and all components(AKA would it be free) or would you be spending money on some components?

Seablade

Can you check on the speakers themselves and see what the power handling and impedance are? Likely they are 8 ohm but it is always better to check. Also can you give me the make and model if you can find them, as well as how many there are?

I can put together a basic system to run that and record onto CD based off that. Also check with your home bound folks, I have found that sometimes those folks may not have a CD player and may only be able to play cassette, so it is worth checking.

Seablade

Since alsa-project.org seems to be down, for right now I will assume you already have the Xenyx working correctly under Linux?

Well I can tell you my typical workflow, which is to run the Jack sound system, and then run Ardour on top of it to record and mix audio. I will do my mixdown in Ardour, and export to a single .wav file with a CUE or TOC file that I burn with cdrecord.

You could probably use Audacity instead of Jack and Ardour if you wanted to, I think that will export a bin/cue/toc setup as well, but haven't ever tried.

Under Windows, I would probably look at either Audacity, or Kristal, for doing the recording and mixing. You could also try using REAPER for this as well, while not free it is not to expensive for non-commercial use($50) and the author is willing to support it running on Linux via WINE apparently, obviously it runs native in Windows. Never used it myself but I hear it highly spoken of in various places. Obviously to burn the files you will need an external burner software of some sort, I can't help you to much with that anymore on Windows myself, sorry.

Seablade

Ahh, I had thought you were using the USB capability of that mixer(If I am thinking of the right one). If you are just running out of a send of the board to the internal line in on your computer, yea you just need your internal card working and it is just another signal.


Do you have any experience at all working with audio on a computer? Don't take this as me being patronizing please(You should know me better by now anyways but there is definitely a workflow mentality to get your head around before you will be able to work with ANY audio on a computer for editing purposes. If you already have this, then Audacity should be fairly easy, but specific questions can be answered quickly to get you up to speed.


The following is lots of info that will likely not be to useful for you, but here it is anyways

Well to be honest, if Audacity was to complex for you, ignore Jack and Ardour. One thing I will say, that you are likely aware of but haven't applied to these types of tasks. Linux tends to go for modularity where it can, this means there is more than a few times where to get the workflow you want, you are tying together several different programs to create this workflow. Obviously if you are good on the command line and fully taking advantage of Linux this can create an extremely streamlined process, but isn't for everyone. The same thing applies however in Audio on Linux, so don't be surprised if it seems like there are a lot of apps that could be combined in functionality to create a single. This applies in particular to Pro-Audio on Linux, and those apps that work with Jack, because it is built very strongly from the ground up to allow this and allows for an easier development process for the ecosystem when people can work on individual programs instead of one giant program.

At any rate, Jack is an audio subsystem, not necessarily a program in itself, though programs like QJackCTL can be used to control it and route audio from various pieces of software to hardware and vice versa. It is definitely designed for pro-audio though, so it is very confusing for those coming into it, but it helps to think of it like a patchbay, though in reality it is much more.

Ardour on the other hand is a multi-track audio editor. Again very good at what it does, but can be very intimidating to those not used to working in audio as it is also designed for pro work.

That is why Audacity should be easiest for you. Gimme a shout on what problems in particular you are having. Worst case scenario I can get off my butt and finish rebuilding a Jabber server over here and get on it to give you a hand.

Seablade

As you surmised, MP3Gain is probably a better tool for normalizing like you describe, but not for the reasons you guessed. With Audacity, if you are running one of the copies from their 1.3 line(Not necessarily in the standard Debian Repo), if memory serves they have a batch editor now that makes it pretty easy to batch normalize a bunch of files. MP3Gain however does it only by editing a field in the metadata, it is non-destructive and can always be undone, IIRC. Not to mention it doesn't decompress and then recompress the MP3, resulting in more audio lost from the multiple compressions.

I agree KISS certainly applies in your situation from what I can guess. Along with Audacity there are other programs to look at, but chances are Audacity will do what you want, and is probably got the largest support base behind it as well.

In as far as the best format, any lossless format will do. .WAV is fine for this, and is probably the easiest answer as it is uncompressed as well as being well supported in Linux. Technical discussion surrounding the format it is stored on the CD is probably more in depth than we need to go here, just use WAV

In as far as needing a separate sound card, it kind of depends on the capabilities of your sound card. To be honest, I probably wouldn't use the internal sound card on a computer myself for this type of work, but to each their own(Talk about this in a minute anyways). If your internal sound card has duplex capability(Most do, means you can send out audio at the same time as you have other audio coming in), and if it has a line out as well as a line in, this will work fine for you.

If it is going to be used on stage, I would probably suggest you look at a low end interface. I can call them cheap because I am used to dealing with a good deal of expensive equipment in this regards, but not everyone would agree, so it depends on the person whether or not they are cheap. I would guess they wouldn't be extraordinarily cheap for you if you are using a Behringer mixer. At any rate they run between $100 and $200 at the low end and would give you a dedicated line in and out to use that will be less noisy than your internal, and have better connectors(Even RCA is better than 1/8" for dependability).

Seablade

Audacity is very good .and it it open source

if u want something more powerful and paid..go for nero audio editor(latest version 9)