Looking for a gizmo that...

[Al Sim]

I may have missed the answer to this one in the wealth of information on this site, but is there a gizmo designed to act as a front end for a sound card? I've got a PC with what seems to my ignorant mind to be a pretty decent sound card. What I'm looking for is something that will act as a little mixer and send a signal into the sound card's line in. Ideally this gizmo would accept 1/4" guitar jacks, and a bonus would be XLR mic cables. I can always get an adapter for the XLR cables.

While were on this notion, are there any decent studio monitors specifically designed to plug into a sound card's 1/8" speaker jack?

And what about that joystick connector? Is there anything cheap and cool I can hook up to it?

Thanks for your patience with what may be pretty stupid questions.

 

[ola]

Hello,

The answer to the gizmo question is "a preamp" Depending on model, it'll do all that and more. You may need phantom power in the future and most decent preamps do that to.

I don't think that any decent monitors have 1/8" plugs but a simple plug converter takes care of that. If you're planning on running the monitors directly from the soundcard, you need powered monitors. If you're planning on getting passive monitors, you need a power amp for your monitor and they use line signals as input.

What soundcard do you have? A PCI one or one that's built in to the mobo?

Joystick port = midi port with the use of a special cable. It shouldn't cost many $$.

Good luck

/Ola

 

[Donny]

PC recording

Okay Al Sim, this is what I do some times. I've got a Peavey Unity 500 mixer that can be picked up for around $250.00 - $300.00 it has 6 XLR inputs and also line in and a bunch of 1/4" inputs and 48 volt phantom power for thoses net condencer mikes. It has RCA stereo output and single mono outs. It has an okay EQ. Gain control for the 6 main inputs, FXs in and out, also the 6 main inputs have insert for compressor or what ever. All an all it's a nice little unit it's very quite unlike some other Peavey Mixers. I go from the RCA out to a 1/8" stereo line in on the sound card that came with the computer. Another nice thing is that all the controls, in's and out's are all right up front the only thing in the back is the 48 volt switch. I use it on live gig's to mix our drummer it's a tought little unit. They make a smaller one for about $100.00 less only 4 XLR in's. If ya want to go straight into your sound card this is a good way to do it. Later, Donny!!!

 

[Al Sim]

Thanks to ola and Donny.

Ola, the speakers that came with the PC aren't powered. They're a pair of monitor-mounting JBLs that get surprisingly loud. How can both powered speakers, and in this case passive speakers, accept that same sound card speaker out as their feed? Are the speakers that came with the PC just ultra sensitive?

It looks like my sound card is built into the mother board; it isn't in a PCI slot, judging from looking at the back of the PC. The PC is a Compaq Persario 5185, if that means anything to anyone. The Contol Panel settings for the sound card include stuff for Yamaha wavetable sythesis and it supports higher sampling rates than the card in my HP.

Let me throw this idea out there: How about using a 4 track ministudio, like the Tascam 414MKII, as my preamp? It has all the mixing capacity I'd need. Could I use the line out or effect sends or something to send the mix to my PC? And could I use it as simple mixdown casette deck by sending the final stereo mix from my PC to the first two tracks? Would this tape be playable in a standard cassette deck, or are they incompatible in transport speed or something?

Thanks again to ola and Donny and everyone who responds to this post. This forum is fantastic. I did a lot of home recording back in the old days, about ten years ago, and man I wish there was something like this then. Would have saved me tons of trouble. If there was something like this back then, don't tell me because it'll turn my hair gray.

 

[drstawl]

Well I started out using my Porta-07 as a preamp, but it was pretty noisy compared to a halfway decent soundcard.

One "front-end" solution is the USB428 from TASCAM. Using a USB port it sidesteps your crappy soundcard and comes bundled with Cubase VST.

http://www.TASCAM.com/products/us428/specs.cfm

 

[ola]

Al, if you think that computer recording will sve you trouble - think again You'll have at least the same amount of troube with computers as with "normal" recording gear.

The sound card you have is crap I hate to break it to you so crude but all built-in soundcards are cheap crap. Get a decent sound card that goes in a PCI slot and you'll get much better quality. $50 will go a long way if you only need two simultanious inputs/outputs, which is often enough if you plan on recording one or two tracks at a time or use an external mixer and just record the main mix. Search the forum for decent cheap cards. If you need more simultaneos inputs and/or outputs to be able to record many instruments on separate tracks at the same, you need a more professional card and then you're looking at a couple of hudered bucks and up. How many tracks do you need to record at the same time? Remeber, on a computer, the total number of tracks and the number of tracks you can record at once is not the same. I presume it's comparable to bouncing tracks, but without the bouncing

The PC speakers are pretty sensitive and as we are not talking about any high effects, they can run directly on a line signal. Sure, they can get loud but the quality isn't really too good is it? Passive computer speakers are just a cheap excuse for speakers but they are good enough for computer "boings".

How are you plannig on using the PC in your recordings? Do you plan on mixing with some software or are you planning on using it more like a recording media and do the mixing externally? The former is the most common and probably the best way if you're going to involve the computer at all.

/Ola

 

[Al Sim]

Drstawl, thanks for the link. Any thoughts on the Tascam US428 versus the Roland U-8? The Roland unit seems the better to me, since it provides effects, but I'm ignoring much of the technical specs since I don't understand them yet.

Ola, thanks for the warnings. No, I don't expect PC recording to be intrinsically easier, I just expect it to go more smoothly with the resources offered by this site and others. It was mostly trial-and-error for me in the old days. The only equipment I could get decent feedback on and real help with was the stuff my friends had, and they didn't have much.

I was planning to use the PC as the mixer. But as you can guess from what I wrote above, I'm considering blurring the disctinction (if I understand the equipment correctly) with either the Tascam US428 or the Roland U-8. Either unit takes care of the crappy sound card problem, and lets me take my recording setup to any PC I can install the software on. To answer another of your questions, I don't need to record multiple instruments at once and it would be years before I'd even consider it. Any thoughts on how well these two units would address my needs?

Thanks again to everyone.

 

[ola]

I'm missing something here because I don't quite follow your planned setup. How would you get around the problem of poor quality soundcards by using a porta? What you need is (i.m.o.):

1. A decent soundcard with as many channels as you plan on recording at once - In your case only two, which means any PCI soundcard. If you you want much quality for the money and am prepared to buy a "prosumer card" look into Hoontech's DSP24 MKII. It's 2 I/O at up to 24/96 quality. I have it's predecessor and am happy with the quality. I bought mine here. You can get a cheaper soundcard and "settle" for 16/44.1 quality. Then $50 should be all it costs.

2. Preamps as most soundcards only accept line signal input. The ART tube preamps are popular and I think they cost $100 for one channel. Please correct me if I'm wrong. You can get a small mixer with more inputs per dollar but quality will most likely suffer. However, the benefit of a mixer would be that you could close mic an entire drum kit and mix it down to stereo before routing it to the soundcard.


A DSP24 MKII and two ART preamps will cost less than $500 (including recording SW) but you'll get pretty good quality. Most likely better than any porta or cheap mixer at that price hooked up to your soundcard.

If you want to move your music between computers, burn a CD. If you want a truly portable recording setup, then computer recording is of course not the answer (Although laptops are picking up quickly...)

Need more coffee

/Ola

 

[Al Sim]

Sorry, ola, what I wrote was unclear. By "as you can guess from what I wrote above", I meant above in the same post, not my previous posts. I'm considering the Tascam US428 versus the Roland U-8, both of which connect to a PC through a USB connection. If I understand them correctly, these units are essentially software-controllable digital mixers with the built-in equivalents of high-quality sound cards. They come bundled with Cakewalk or Cubasis, so if I buy one of these things, I believe all I'll need are some decent monitors and a good mic. One of the advantages as I see it is if my computer dies, which is not an unusual experience for me, I can just move the unit and software over to another machine and I'm ready to go. That's my version of portability in this situation.

 

[AlChuck]

Be aware that the USB channel will only be able to pass two channels (maybe four in some cases,supposedly) of audio at once.

 

[ola]

Sim, I was not familiar with those units so that's why I didn't get what you were aiming at. I took a quick look at the Tascam and it seems as it gives you 4 in + 2 out at 24/48 over a USB connection. Can it do more? Like interact with your SW, such as using the faders for setting the track volume in the SW? That would be neat. It lacks phantom power though and I wouldn't trust the preamps to be of too good quality.

/Ola

 

[Al Sim]

Does anyone know anything about the Aardvark Direct Mix USB3, due out in December? A link to their web info on the unit appears below.

http://www.aardvark-pro.com/direct_pro_usb3.html