Home recording

[Knottyhed]

What'd be a minium setup for getting half decent tone and hassle free recording of my guitar? I'm not looking to spend alot of money, really I just want to do it for a bit of fun/as a practice tool.

 

I've tried plugging my POD direct into my laptop sound card via an adapter and the lag is unbearable. My recording software isn't sophisiticated enough (or my knowledge of it isn't) to correct the lag post recording either.

 

So what do I need/what do you guys use?

[Dubb]

I've tried plugging my POD direct into my laptop sound card via an adapter and the lag is unbearable. My recording software isn't sophisiticated enough (or my knowledge of it isn't) to correct the lag post recording either.

Latency was a big issue for me, too. I eventually figured out the latency controls in my cheap recording software and played with the settings until I got it virtually lag-free... it took a good 2 hours . I eventually realized that the key was in a feature called Latency Compensation or something. Since it was basically impossible for me to get the latency down to a usable level on my PC (it's going on 5 years old, which is like 80 in "computer years"), I had to just get it as low as possible and then calculate what the offset was in milliseconds, and use that feature to set the software to automatically adjust to that number of milliseconds whenever I inserted a recording. I'm not at all familiar with other recording programs besides what I have (a program called Live - it sucks), but you may try poking around for a similar feature in your software. You may also try some new recording software. I'm sure you could use Bit Torrent to find some professional level recording software (but you didn't hear it from me).

[Dubb]

By the way, you might try the Recording forum.

[Knottyhed]

By the way, you might try the Recording forum.

I thought about that, but I get the impression those guys are quite serious/interested in recording whole bands; I just figured the sort of advice i'm after I'm probably more likely to get in here

[6mmSid]

Guitarport works great, IMHO. Get one from Ebay for $60-70, download "Audacity", which is free, and you'll be recording yourself in about an hour.

 

EDIT: I agree with whoever said that your sound card is probably the problem, since lots of people get good recording results using the POD. Guitarport functions as your soundcard, so that may be a solution.....

[wololoh]

What'd be a minium setup for getting half decent tone and hassle free recording of my guitar? I'm not looking to spend alot of money, really I just want to do it for a bit of fun/as a practice tool.

Same here . I think it would be fun to record myself now and then, but by no means do I need the best stuff to do it, I just want to fool around with it a little (For the time being).
In my research I spotted the line6 TonePort GX, it's really cheap, and looking at the rest of the TonePort series, I think it'll work just fine for me... Does anybody have experience with this little machine? (It also comes with all the gearbox software and stuff, just like the rest of the series)

[blueEbola]

Wierd that you're getting a whole bunch of lag. I suspect the culprit is the soundcard, not the POD.

I've got my PODxt plugged into an MAudio Audiophile soundcard. The results sound pretty good, considering the soundcard only costed like $100. For a laptop though, you'd probably have to get an external soundcard.

[yermej]

You might not need an external sound interface. The real culprit is usually the drivers for the sound card. The regular Windows drivers typically have crap latency. Try ASIO4ALL. If it works with your hardware, you can probably get the latency low enough for recording with Audacity or whatever. A lot of laptops use SigmaTel audio chipsets and it seems to work pretty well with that...I think I have about 12ms latency with ASIO4ALL on my Dell with SigmaTel.

Oh, this all assumes you're using Windows.

And this probably would fit a lot better in the Windows forum. There's a lot of talk there about recording software, hardware, settings, interfaces, blah, blah, blah.

[bigboy_78]

I bought a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter and plug my strat straight to the "line in" on my imac, using Garageband. There is a a millisecond latency but its barely noticable. I wouldn't record a CD this way, but for making backing tracks or getting idea down on "tape", it suits me fine.

[Knottyhed]

Wierd that you're getting a whole bunch of lag. I suspect the culprit is the soundcard, not the POD. I've got my PODxt plugged into an MAudio Audiophile soundcard. The results sound pretty good, considering the soundcard only costed like $100. For a laptop though, you'd probably have to get an external soundcard.

 

 

Almost definately the laptop sound card - it is an onboard POS. I've seen a number of external sound cards, a number of which connect by USB, I can't imagine that the latency is great going through USB either?

[Dubb]

USB 2.0 (what most PCs come with nowadays) is actually extremely fast. My old thing only supports USB 1.0 (which is still pretty quick), so I don't have firsthand experience, but theoretically 2.0 is 10x faster, and so I imagine it would be perfectly suitable. Read some of the reviews for some USB cards and see what people say about the latency.

[sleepymike]

I'm using a Tascam US-122 external interface connected to a USB 1.1 interface on my PC and it works fine. Definitely look into getting a better sound card/interface.

Warning: once you start playing, you will go far beyond just noodling around and get sucked into a whirlpool of increasingly-complex compositions and more sophisticated gear acquisitions. There be dragons...

[Knottyhed]

EDIT: I agree with whoever said that your sound card is probably the problem, since lots of people get good recording results using the POD. Guitarport functions as your soundcard, so that may be a solution.....

Sounds like a Guitarport is what I want then!

[mcmurray]

Sounds like you need an external interface with ASIO drivers. Lag will always be a problem with factory sound.

[tcaptain]

What sort of lag are you talking about?

 

Forgive the dumb question, but I'm fairly new at it and by coincidence, I recorded myself for the first time yesterday on my laptop. I used Reaper (which so far seems pretty easy to use) and plugged my guitar straight into the mic-in jack of my laptop (there's no line-in) and got OK sound....I mean sure I wouldn't release anything recorded like that (I'd get a desktop and better sound card first) but I figured it sounded pretty good. I didn't notice any lag, but I figure it might be a case of "not knowing any better"

 

I do have USB 2.0 and Firewire and the lappy itself is pretty powerful so I've been wondering what kind of hardware I could get...but that's for the future.

[yermej]

What sort of lag are you talking about?

 

 

All music hardware has some sort of latency -- that is, there is some amount of time between when you press a key, press play, turn a knob, etc. and when the sound is actually effected. In hardware synths/samplers, the latency is in single digit milliseconds and isn't noticeable. In software, latency can be much greater, sometimes more than one second, though with fancy drivers such as ASIO, you can get the latency down into the single digit milliseconds and then it's not an issue.

 

If you were just recording everything at once and not monitoring the recording (listening to what the software was recording as you were playing it), you wouldn't notice latency no matter how much it is. In your case, if you went back into Reaper and recorded another track over your original guitar part, you might notice the latency. You would probably be listening to the original track while recording the second one. When you went back to listen to both tracks together, the new track would be behind the original track and probably sound pretty bad. By behind, I mean timing -- if you meant to start a lead line on beat one, it might have actually been recorded on beat two (or somewhere else) because of the latency.

 

With some built in sound cards, you can use ASIO4ALL (try Google) and get latency low enough to use the on board sound with no problems. I use it with the on board sound in my Dell laptop and can get the latency down around 8ms, I think. Something low enough so that it isn't noticeable. Give this a try before you buy a new USB/Firewire sound card -- unless you just need the preamp, line ins, more ins/outs, better sound quality that those solutions offer.

[gennation]

One thing that helps is to free up system resources. All those little icons in the system tray (lower right hand corner on most PC's) are each loaded into memory waiting to be used IF needed. Many get installed there through software loads without even asking you whether you want them.

 

Shut those things down, get them out of there (which gets them out of memory). Also, many computers will give the network card priority over resources, so disable you network adapter during recording.

 

These are common tricks that help the "latency" issue.

[seth_blackwood]

Try a Zoom H4 recorder. This thing is very useful. I can plug directly into, use the mics for recording acoustic, or even the full band. It can be plugged into your computer using the USB. And you can use it as a four track.

And it is portable!!! Best thing I ever bought to record with.

[pipelineaudio]

If you were just recording everything at once and not monitoring the recording (listening to what the software was recording as you were playing it), you wouldn't notice latency no matter how much it is. In your case, if you went back into Reaper and recorded another track over your original guitar part, you might notice the latency. You would probably be listening to the original track while recording the second one. When you went back to listen to both tracks together, the new track would be behind the original track and probably sound pretty bad. By behind, I mean timing -- if you meant to start a lead line on beat one, it might have actually been recorded on beat two (or somewhere else) because of the latency.

 

 

I think most decent apps have recording latency compensation (different than PDC) to deal with this. I know Vegas and REAPER do.