|
Dear Dragon: I want to record my Karaoke singing on a CD. I have a laptop
PC which has a Pentium II 233 MHz chip, 4 Gigabytes of hard drive, etc.
I tried to take the output of my CD player and connect it to the input
of my PC. Then I used the Sound Record program on the PC. It worked, except
that it would only record 60 seconds and it quit. I presume that I can
take the output of the Karaoke machine and input it to my PC.
Sure, just make sure you use the Line Input on your sound card, not
the Mic Input (also see this article
and this one too), and make sure
the level meter never goes anywhere near the top because if you get
digital distortion it will not only sound really bad but can wreck your
speakers!
However, how can I record more than 60 seconds? I presume that if I intend
to have 16 songs to record on my hard drive, edit them, and then record
them to the CD, then I could easily use up 2 Gigabytes of hard drive space.
Is that going to be a problem?
Only if you don't have that much space free! Anyhow, if you're really
tight on disc space and you're making a regular audio CD, you can record
a song at a time to CD, erase the WAV files for that song, and repeat
until the CD is finished. Note: this will not work if you're
trying to make a duplication CD master...such discs must be
written in "disc-at-a-time" mode in a single session.
I guess my main question is how to record more than 60 seconds at a time?
Get Cool
Edit 96 at http://www.syntrillium.com.
The free version only lets you enable two of its many features at once,
but one can be "save" and the other "normalize",
and that's all you'd need. If you want to spend money on a really good
program though, you might look into Sound
Forge Audio Studio from Sony -- it's tons better (although it doesn't
have as many features, it's a lot easier to use) and only around $50.
In fact with those programs you wouldn't even need the karaoke machine
because they let you add reverb and such after recording! There are
numerous other free and shareware sound programs at http//www.winfiles.com
also.
-- Dragon
Reader Feedback on Digital Recording
I use the Roland VS-840. I bought it a year ago now and wish I'd waited
for the VS-880ex, but then a year ago the 840 at about a grand was an
unbelievable deal. It's $750 now. I go back to the dealer I bought it
from for tech support. They are great. I guess the units are similar except
for track count and the number of effect patches that can be used at one
time (1 versus 2). I love it but, the frequency range on analog tape was
greater and I miss the highs on acoustic sounds. Editing ease and undo
offset this loss, however. You don't have to worry that hitting the wrong
button will destroy an entire song.
-- Tom Paul (TomPaulMPA"at"aol.com)
- Guerrilla
Home Recording
by Karl Coryat
-
- Make your small home studio sound huge! Guerrilla Home Recording is
a revolutionary approach to getting great sound in a home or project
studio.
- Practical
Recording Techniques Book
by Bruce and Jenny Bartlett
-
- This hands-on practical guide is useful for all aspects of recording,
and is ideal for beginning and intermediate recording engineers, producers,
musicians and audio enthusiasts. Filled with tips and shortcuts, this
book offers advice on equipping a home studio (both low-budget and advanced)
with suggestions for set-up, acoustics, choosing monitor speakers, and
preventing hum. This best-selling guide also tells how to judge recordings
and improve them to produce maximum results. Extensive coverage of digital
recording technology and techniques, including computer DAWs and optimizing
them for best performance.
-
|
|
|
