Basic home recording

[dannyboy123]

Hi

So I'm totally new to using my laptop to record, and I need some advice. I want to record quite basically (ie acoustic guitar, vocals and maybe piano or electric guitar as well) but would like to record some instruments smultaneously (ie guitar and vocal together).

I have an M-audio preamp, cubase, a condensor mic and an electro acoustic guitar. What is the best way to do it? I thought cubase, but it does not seem to pick up my mic and guitar.

Basically I'm stumped. Looks like I need help on settings and software!

Hope someone can help,

[tojo]

well if you search around the forums (especially the newbie one) you'll see a lot of people asking what signal chain they need. But generally to record two channels at once you should get a soundcard that hooks up to your laptop via usb or firewire. These devices usually have multiple inputs so you can plug in say 2 microphones. Then they send the signal to the software. You make two tracks on your software, and make one track record the input 1 (which maybe a microphone on your voice) and then the other track you set up will record input 2 (which might be your guitar for example)

so you have an m-audio preamp? that can go into an interface; but it also can go straight into a computer probably. here' what I USED to do

-2 microphones (lets say my m-audio pulsar mic on my acoustic and my at2020 on my voice)
-they are pluggeed into a behringer mixer with phantom power
-then I use a rca cable (red and whit) to a 1/8th inch that goes into my macbooks LINE IN port. So the the stereo output of the mixer is going into the laptop
- this means there are two sound sources being emitted: left and right. (sorry if i'm being overly simple ; or to complex)

-so I take channel 1 on my mixer and pan it hard left. I do the opposite for channel 2. So that means my acoustic guitar recording is going out the left side of the stereo field of the rca cables into my computer.
-the right signal would be the panned right channel for my vox.
-so in your software you want to make 2 tracks like I said before but in this case you don't have a usb or firewire interface this whole explanation about the mixer is a cheaper way to do it. MY mixer cost $50. So you can still achieve two tracks at once without spending $150-500.

now, people will say that using a mixer in the way I have described doesn't provide the greatest quality, and I agree with them. However I haven't noticed much difference, because my macbook did a fine job of converting the analog mixer signal to my software (logic express 8).

but besides, I have a FA-101 firewire audio interface now so I don't have to do that anymore.

I hope that helped, sorry for going ooooooooooooooon and on