Really basic laptop recording gear question

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pussel

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Hi everyone,

I have a really basic gear question. I have a cheap laptop with a terrible sound card, and I need to be able to accomplish two simple things:

1) I need to record live sound of my band practicing. This isn't for release, just to work on songs. I will probably be recording with Audacity: when it's time to put out a cd, we'll definitely be heading to a real studio. Also: we play loud.

2) I have a bunch of old tapes, and I need to bump these down to mp3. The tapes are recordings my sister and her friends made while in college: some music, but mostly talking and laughing.

I have tried to use my laptop for these tasks, but I get a really weird electronic distortion. My laptop is cheap, but it has 3 gb of memory, so it's not getting overloaded. it's just the sound card that is weak, weak, weak.

So my question is is there an inexpensive external sound card that will let me do what I want to do? I've found some online for about $50 (lexicon lambda usb, for example). But will these do what I want them to? I'm pretty broke, so I don't want to throw money away, nor do I want to spend much more than 50-60 bucks.

Thanks for any advice you can give.
 
Lexicon Alpha. $60. Used it for exactly the same purpose. I ended up using the rehearsal space pa mixer to send a few more signals to the Lexicons two inputs. Worked fine for rehearsal work tapes. Your sound quality will be way better by using an external interface for dumping tapes in to your lappy. Did that with the Alpha as well.
 
Looks like the Lexicon would do what you want it to do. You can record your band with a couple of mics in the room at rehearsals or you can take the line outs of the desk. Recording the tapes, you'll have to get a tape deck with line outs, but any separates tape deck will allow you to do that. The sound card will also let you do more recording things later down the line, so if you do go into a studio and record the basic band tracks you can do some overdubs at home.
 
I personally would stay away from used interfaces from strangers. It is just too important to me, to have a warranty on a device that is responsible for all connections to the computer. Plus a new one will come with Cubase LE5. Way better than Audacity. Tho Audacity will probably be the easiest to get started with.
 
Oh, just to let you know, Cubase would need a Steinberg MP3 upgrade patch for $16 to export MP3's. Audacity includes it. I think. I can only assume the Cubase conversion may be better. I know its better than a lot of them.
 
Awesome - thanks for all the advice, everyone. I was thinking of getting a used one, but you're right. It's not worth saving 15 bucks to get one that has been soaked in beer a couple times.
 
@ Spare Dougal: Very true. Just giving options to remove the extra step as he stated he has a bunch of tapes to dump in. I once made the mistake of offering a friend to dump down his collection. Man was that a tedious, time consuming endeavor. I threw away the tape deck after that 4 days of work. :D
 
Oh, one more note. Dumping down cassettes is one of the few times where 'normalize' function is useful. As I found that instead of adjusting the recording level for every song/piece to as hot as desired, I set the level fairly low and normalized after import. I found that many of the cassette recordings my buddy gave me were improperly mastered local bands stuff that varied in levels throughout. I kept having to start over when an abuse of reverb on a tom bash was clipping the hell out of Cubase. Friggen 80's bands. lol.

Just throwing it out there.......
 
jimmys69 said:
@ Spare Dougal: Very true. Just giving options to remove the extra step as he stated he has a bunch of tapes to dump in. I once made the mistake of offering a friend to dump down his collection. Man was that a tedious, time consuming endeavor. I threw away the tape deck after that 4 days of work. :D
Click to expand...

Yeah very true. That one extra step is going to increase time over a load of tapes. I did a load of vinyl dumps once... that was so f**king tedious I never wanted to see a vinyl again.

jimmys69 said:
Oh, one more note. Dumping down cassettes is one of the few times where 'normalize' function is useful.
Click to expand...

Yes, Yes, Yes. definitely do it this way.
 
You'll need a mic that can handle a high SPL (loud volumes) to avoid distorting at the mic. The MXL604 can handle 137 dB (ear splitting loud) at 0.5% distortion - which is audible but quite tolerable. A pretty good deal for $89. You'll need a preamp with phantom power so you may have to use your mixer in between the mic and the soundcard.
 
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