Attn: Cheapskates

  • Thread starter Thread starter Seanmorse79
  • Start date Start date
Sean,
Let us know how overdubs work out. I think that's where you may find some trouble.

Queue
 
Slack: I'll give it a try tonite (hopefully), and post a screen capture at the 2 minute mark. I did a quick test and checked the 3 minute mark, and it looked (and sounded) good, but I didn't zoom way in, so I'll do that tonite.

Tom: I was expecting to have to screw with drivers until the cows came home, but for some reason, with this particular set of cards, they just worked. I had some hassles with the "bundled" mixer program that came with the cards, but other than that it shows up as CMI , CMI(2), and CMI (3) in Control Panel and in Sonar and SoundForge. They've actually got SPDIF in and out's too, but I don't have any digital sources to record from.

Queue: Doh! I bet you're right. Hopefully, if I overdub or punch using the same inputs, it'll still line up. I'll let you know when I try it.
 
Im all for the experimenting with what you have.... In fact.. I have a similar story..

I once made a microwave by putting 2 clock radio's in my oven.... I had the stations set to 102.9 KLITE Fm.. (elevator style music)...

The food cooked, and the plate never left it's cool-to-touch state.....

I was going to have it patented, but Sanyo came out with a smaller one with a defrost feature and a nice woodgrain cabinet finish..

I still had one up on them.. my clock was an analog dial type... and there fancy digital clocks still flash 12:00 in 90% of american households...

I attribute the success of this experiment to the fact that FM frequencies will cook food... and the style of music can alter the wave.......

102.9 KLITE FM Elevator music station , cooked nice right through without over-browning the crust...

Seriously, No bullshit here.
 
Man, you ARE a cheapskate! :)

My hat is seriously off to you, though. Was that a typo, or did you say $16 per card? For someone with very little money to spare, at least what you have put together is functional. Too bad guys like Bruce can't appreciate this kind of thing. There is definitely a level of satisfaction involved in pulling something like this off. Sometimes it can even be more satisfying than actually buying something nice in the first place. How much effort or creativity is involved in just walking in and buying a nice sound card?
 
Nope, no typo. It was $16 and some change for each card I got at a local 'mom & pop' computer shop. As satisfying as it may have been to have accomplished the king 'o cheapskates workaround, I'll still be glad when I can get a good multi card. But for now, this'll do me :) I get the impression that Bruce is a guy who really does know what he's doing, and he's usually right when it comes to stuff like this. He has a real studio ...I'm just a hobbyist, and I do appreciate input from guys like that (even when it's not what I want to hear :)

Well, the results are in, and it looks like Slack was right (see attachment).

There is a hair of drift at the 2 and 3 minute marks. Keep in mind, the waveform you're looking at is a fairly staccato closed hihat sound zoomed wwwaayyyyy in. I'm not sure how many milliseconds that is, but it's not much. Even at 3 minutes, the drift is inaudible. I think that it'll still be good enough for my purposes, as I'm not recording anything over 5 minutes anyway, and I can do a quick slice & dice or 2 if need be.
 

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Does sonar have a timeline? That looks like a lot of drift between the first and third card ...like a 1/8 to 1/4 of a second?

I'd recommend that you make sure to keep instruments seperated between the cards. In other words, don't use more than two mics on any one instrument, and make sure no instrument gets split between two cards. It could be an interesting effect though. :)

Slackmaster 2000
 
Sonar does have a timeline, but it's zoomed in so close that none of the ruler marks are in view. I circled the time at the top of each screen to show where the time is at. It's nowhere near 1/8 of a second, though. The waveform is one staccato hihat hit, and I can't hear any of the drift at all at 3 minutes. I'll check it more closely when I get home tonite, and figure out how many milliseconds it is.
 
Cool experiment!

The obvious answer - don't record anything except Ramones songs - 3.5 minutes max!
 
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