Recording a demo, which one?

D

dynammikk

New member
So I'm about to record a demo using an average mic. It's mainly an acoustic guitar and some vocals. I've got two options here sound card-wise:
My HP laptops built-in sound card and a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX.
Which one would you choose and why?
The reason for asking is because I can't hear much difference between the two and wanted to know experts opinion on this.
Thanks :)
 
"I can't hear much difference between the two "

No surprise there. Neither is made for music work and both have a few cents worth of components doing the A-to-D conversion.
Save up some money and get a USB audio interface. Read the sticky posts at the top of the Newbies section of this forum about computer recording.
 
"Average mic": Gonna need more info. Brand/model? Are we talking about a proper mic with XLR output or some cheap thing that came with an old computer?

Does either sound card option provide an XLR mic input for a real mic, and does either one provide low- or zero-latency hardware input monitoring? If not then you need a proper audio interface.
 
Thanks for answering guys, guess I have to save some money and buy the proper shit.
Anyway here's something else that happened, I recorded couple of vocals and guitars, added drums and copied the mixdown to my phone for testing. But the weired thing is that the vocals won't play on the phone's speaker! I have to use a headphone to hear the vocals. It's like an instrumental version of the song. BTW I'm using Live 8.

Would be nice if you could help.
 
Mix down to a file on your computer. Listen to it. Are the vocals there? Sound alright, everything balanced? Then send that file to your phone. Listen on speaker, listen on earphone. Report back.
 
On the computer and earphones I can hear the vocals. but on the phone's speaker, no i can't.
Also on my laptop's speaker the vocals sound panned to left even though in my DAW they're hard centered!!! It's well weird this :)
 
What happened was you probably recorded the mono vocal signal onto a stereo track but somehow one side (left or right) got its polarity inverted. So when you listen on a mono speaker (combining left and right) the two opposite versions of the vocal cancel out, but when you listen on headphones they stay separate so you can hear them, but they probably sound diffuse and unfocused. I'm not sure why the vocals sound panned left on the laptop but it's no doubt related.
 
If you're just recording a demo, then it doesn't need to sound great as long as the ideas are there. That's the point, isn't it?
 
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