reality bites

[Vantage455]

This Newbie has been looking at the bulletin boards for weeks trying to find the cheapest way to get sound (electric guitar, and a drum track) into my PC for jamming along and practicing my chops (they need it). I have finally realized I need to spend some dough and get eother a decent sound card or an external device. I'm leaning towrds the M-Audio Audiosport Duo as it has two line inputs and out puts and two mic jacks PLUS its own preamp for $260. I hate laying out this kind of money and don't want to make a mistake so, I welcome comments from you experienced folks about my impending purchase.

[fldrummer]

Does it come with software for mixing/editing too?

[Massive Master]

If it doesn't, I've been hearing awfully decent things about this...

http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/index.php - FREEware

John Scrip - www.massivemastering.com

[Vantage455]

John I just want to thank you for your selfless time and patience with us Newbies. You know so much about recording its amazing. Kudoos to you.

[Massive Master]

Aw, you're making me blush now -

Just keepin' the Karma clean, you know? Ear breaks and file renders can take a lot of time... I wish these (forums) were around whe I was getting into this biz.

I was just "chatting" with Blue Bear (by far one of the ultimate masses of quality brain matter in the forum - personally, I wish I had two-thirds of his technical knowledge...) about how this forum is unique in that it has such a wide variety of users - EVERYONE here can learn things. There are a few forums that I stopped hanging around at because of how they treated "newbies" - That's just not cool... We were all noobs at one point or another - I even got FLAMED at one forum for actually answering "stupid" questions. Can you imagine?

I feel very... "blessed" for lack of a better term, to do what I do - I have two essentially full-time jobs in this industry. I work for a municipally-owned performing arts center as an audio & theatre technician. There, I get to work with some of the finest artists/musicians in the world. Broadway mega-vocalists, Grammy winning instrumentalists, highly awarded symphonic orchestras, all the way down to some of the best local talent in the area. A lot of this crosses over into recording, live recording and mastering of some of these acts, and it gives me a chance to work on technique that I can apply to other aspects. The other job, if you couldn't guess, is mastering. I still produce and engineer in the studio here and there, but my passion lies in manipulating the stereo mix.

I didn't mean to type my life story here... Sorry...

Anyway, when there's some time to kill, I feel that the least I can do is try to help inspire others a bit, and I'm very big on doing what you can with what you've got.

I can't remember where the quote came from... "A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle."

John -