I want to upgrade my PC..I NEED HELP!

[threed]

Ok..any time I record I get an OVERWHELMING hiss sound and I have bought a new mic, that's not it. I am wondering what I should do but in any case, I think I need to upgrade my sound card. Let me start by telling you what I do have.


I have a NEC PC with an Iomega Zip burner and a Toshiba CD-Rom.

I have a Soundmax Integrated Digital Audio card. I don't know much but I never heard of this product. This sound card looks like it on the motherboard if that makes sense. LOL! I don't know much about this stuff so beat with me.

My PC runs a 500 mhz Pentium 3 with 128 MBs of ram.

I have a Fostex x-55 4 track recorder. I have no damn idea how to hook this up to my computer or if I even can.

Now, I have a budget...so don't get too outrageous with your suggestions. But I do have some money to spend so I need advice.

I do quite a bit of recording and this hiss is HORRID! And all Cool Edit 2000's noise and hiss reduction do are reduce the quality of my accapella before I mix it. I am looking for clean sound and I will spend some money to get it. BTW, could the fan for the hard drive be causing this?

I guess what I am asking is this...

What are your suggestions for upgrades and what products should I purchase?

Or should I just give up?

Thanks..

 

[Sound Cracker]

Need more info sonny!

Don't get your shorts in a group just yet! You haven't provided the whole story for us to hear.

How exactly are you hooking things up to your soundcard?

What kind of mic are you using?

It actually DOES make sense that you may have a "integrated" sound card on your motherboard. Do the input/output jacks connect directly to your motherboard? Or are the jacks on a PCI card? The card would hook up to your motherboard too, but would be removable.

Let us know.

 

[threed]

All I have hooked up is my microphone. That's it.

I have a Labtec microphone. It was only like 20 dollars but I tested my friend's Shure mic on my PC and I still got the same hiss.

I cant really tell you if the jacks are directly connected to the motherboard or on a PCI card because frankly I don't know. This computer was a gift. All I can tell is that the mic input, speaker output and another input are all in the same spot, in a vertical column of three on the left if you are looking at the back of the PC face on.

If you need more info, just ask. I'll try to help you the best way I can.

Thanks

 

[Diragor]

Are you running into the mic input of your sound card? The mic input on most PC sound cards sucks. You'd probably be better off plugging the mic into the 4-track machine and running the output from there into the line-in of the sound card (basically using the 4-track as a mic pre-amp). All you need is the proper cables and adapters to run from the line-out of your 4-track (probably stereo RCA jacks or 1/4") into the 1/8" mini-plug line-in jack on your sound card. You can get that stuff at Target, Walmart, etc. Even then, regular PC sound cards are very noisy compared to real recording input devices like the stuff from MOTU, Event and other companies mentioned on this board. If you want totally hiss/noise-free recording you'd have to buy something like that, but those things can be really expensive. I don't know enough about the cheaper 4-channel ones to make a recommendation, but I'm using a MOTU 1224 8-in/8-out (plus some digital connections) and I love it. That one runs over $1000.

 

[kennedy connor]

I had a lot of problems early on with an onboard soundcard but my recordings were so noisy that I finally adjusted the windows sound/volume/that little speaker in your tray and found the recording options. Cakewalk has an excellent tutorial at their site on adjusting your recording options. The sound I was getting was very faint and extremely hissy until I found the proper settings. Your computer is powerful enough but even when the sound card is working properly you should make cleaner recordings then you could on say a four track. A well configured system and a soundblaster card or ensoniq/creativelabs would be a cheap investment that makes reasonably good recordings. Check information on how to disable onboard card in your system BIOS. To connect your 4-track would require a mixer or multichannel sound card for seperate simultaneous tracking...very expensive...once you get your system running you'll never need use the 4 track again. Hang in there...once you make a clean digital recording you'll be amazed!