Recording question

You can do it on the cheap with the builtin card. The adapter chord should be easy to find. You'll need some recording software too, I like Audacity (Freeware). See this thread for info on how to get better results: Look here for Recording thread

What type of guitar? Acoustic or electric? If Acoustic Amped? Or is running it through a DI box an option?

For most guitars an SM57 is an all around good option, for voice it will emphasize your low end so make sure you roll that off a bit and possibly try to give it a presence peak about 4k-8k? I cant remember off hand if the 57 needs that or not.

Another option for unamped acoustics is a cheap Large Diapraghm Condenser mic, which I have heard sound very well, and could double on voice good as well. Of course you will need phantom power for this so an external interface that supports it. If you are looking at this route definitly look at the other thread and substitue in your mic options.

Seablade

This is how I would deal with a cheap as possible dilema:
Assuming you already have a basic two track recording software on your computer if not go check some freeware software on the popular software info places like cnet,ect,Now,run all vocals,guitars thru a mixing board,After you have mixed on the board,Send to stereo mix out,run the signal out from board to computer sound card line in,now record to your computer.

A mixing board is cheap as possible?

Seablade

PS There are lots of reasons not to use an onboard sound card for good results, especially in notebooks, but even a lot of consumer desktop cards, they tend to induce noise into things.

Sea whoever you are,If you have a Better solution without Antagonizing,Then give him a Positive solution.

>Sea whoever you are,If you have a Better solution without Antagonizing,Then give him a Positive solution.

Actually look above your posts, I am making suggestions and trying to help. I also like to have a little fun when I can. The part you got pissed about in my post was mainly intended as a joke, but also to point out that it is not always the cheapest solution.

But the reason I posted that was because the impression I get is that the person doesnt have much in the way of sound equipment past rehersal gear(Amp etc) so a mixing board would be far form the cheaper solution. If that is not the case great, but even so I wouldnt record into an onboard soundcard if I had a choice, it WILL induce noise into it, typically with onboards to much to be worth it, sometimes you can get away with it on PCI consumer cards depending on the quality of the card, or go with some of the better interfaces out there made for this stuff.

It all comes down to exactly how good a recording you want and how much money you are willing to invest. Typically an outboard sound card is not a bad way to go for things like this because it can be reused for other purposes, and a good one can be picked up relatively cheaply for recording equipment, or consumer ones probably even cheaper.

Seablade

I think there's alot of details left out by the original poster that makes making a good recommendation difficult.

I personally record everything digitally and only use mics for vocals. I don't mic any of my instruments because I can get decent guitar tones with my pedals/pedal board and through VST filters in cubase.

I think the easiest solution would be to record with a program like Audition straight from an effects board (assuming the guitarist has one) to the computer audio line in- no mics in that equation.

You can also run the mic for vocals through a guitar pedal board but it's going to be pretty hard to get it sounding good, but you'll have effects like delay and reverb. If you can get the mic running cleanly to the computer's line in it would be better not to do that and use Audition's effects instead.

Just to clear up, dont take a mic into a line-in port, it doesnt work so well Take it into a mic port if anything at all.

But yes you are correct they are still details missing to make a truly good suggestion, but at least advice can still be given.

Seablade

Yes then the 57 would be a good choice for the guitars, though there are better choices for the vocals, it could be something to start on at least, as investing money for recording purposes quickly snowballs into avalanches.

The USB audigy is definitly better than most onboards, and since it is usb you will have less problems with noise than say a PCI card might be. It is probably good enough to start on if you want to go as cheap as possible though and plug your 57 into that to record your guitars, and maybe pick up a 58 for vocals? Plus youll have the added advantage of those being the two most common mics for live use as well If you decide to gow ith a better sound though I can start making suggestions on mics that are a little more expensive but can probably get the job done.

Seablade

I dont know if plugging (with adapters) your SM57 into the side of the laptop is going to work well, if at all... I would bet that you will need a preamp.
ALL PC based recording is easier with a mixing board (of any size) in the bargain. Latency is a bummer! (Delay between the time you make sound and when you hear it.) Laptops due to many factors are very hard to tweak to a very low latency. With a mixer, you can monitor the sound of the pre recorded tracks AND the new guitar/vox tracks @ the board while recording = no latency. AND then you have preamps too.

Good luck with it!

Jake

Sorry I have to correct some things here. Latency can show up in different ways, sometimes in your playback, sometimes in your recording, depending on how you set things up, and you will never get zero latency.

Having a mixing board run into your soundcard wont really help this any more than running a mic directly into this as long as you are still using said sound card and the same setup and doing playback off the same unit.

It isnt possible to get zero latency on a computer currently. Just due to the wayt computers play audio, the lowest I think I have ever gotten a computer to is 9 milliseconds, which is pretty dang small in all honesty. If your are doing analog recording I suppose it would be possible to get even closer to no latency, but there would still be a small amount just because electricity is not instantaneous. But for all intents and purposes when you are talking small millisecond numbers you are talking faster than human response time anyways and it becomes a moot point.

And yes you can plug a 57 into a standard sound card with a Mic in, those sound cards already have a preamp on them for dynamic mics, though they are probably expecting much lower grade. Do a google search on plugging professional mics into a sound card and you will find many sites on this, I believe the main part of it is to switch to a TS connector and disconnect one side of the balanced signal if I remember right, but I havent done it in a LONG time.

And in all honesty, if you want to get a good sound you dont want to use a consumer sound card at all, thus why an enternal preamp interface is a better solution for you, since it sounds like you will only be doing a couple of track recordings you should be fine, an MAudio firewire solo for instance would treat you well, lay down your guitar track and then come back over it with vocals. Plugging a mixer into your soundcard still causes noise to be injected into it from your soundcard, which for builtin and consumer sound cards is almost always more than what you will find from a semi-pro to pro external interface.

So really if you dont want to get an external sound card/Preamp interface, your best bet is in fact to just run straight into your computer and save yourself the money. any cheap mixer wont give you all that good preamps(Behringer for example) and to go with the better mixers for this type of work(The Mackie Onyx for example with the firewire interface card) would be quite a bit more expensive(You would be looking at around a thousand dollars depending on your exact setup)

Seablade

mixers solve latency problems like this:

if you need to monitor your signal the mixer is definitely the way to go. You can hear what you're doing without latency ever becoming an issue- you monitor off the mixer rather than off the soundcard. The only time you need to monitor the signal via the PC is when you're using effects plugs that define your sound (eg. Amplitube or NI Guitar Rig...)

Get a decent outboard box like the Spike or the Mbox and you're laughing, too, as these have direct monitor options. It's pretty common on many decent prosumer PCI cards, but that's not really relevant to this forum...

Considering the most common method to record anything these days as to track it, and not record it all at once, you will still have latency issues. Typically though latency doesnt become a real problem until you are dealing with better than your home recordings really. And mixers can add new levels of complexity that your average home user doesnt know about or need to deal with. Between the two for someone starting off I would say it would be better to get the interface and not worry about accounting for latency, especially when you are only talking about small track projects that will be done with interfaces. Youll get a crapier recording from the noise of a builtin with a mixer attached than you will from a recording with unaccounted for latency of some milliseconds.

Now if you are talking about atttaching a mixer into the interface that is something else and yes that can be better, again you will still deal with latency on any playback out of the computer though, just the nature of the beast, and have to invest more money to do so. Better quality recordings typically require better quality equipment which typically means more money.

Its all a question on how much you want to invest vs how good you wanna sound.

Price, Time, Quality Triangle. Good rule to live by, anyone know who the heck actually came up with that one?

Seablade