On 7/19/05, Mike Jewell <mj405@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Tue, 2005-07-19 at 04:52 +0000, Richard Hubbell wrote: > > Very new to sound input and linux. I've listened to music on linux > > but recording and manipulating sound is all new to me. I'm just > > going to put into words what I'd like to do and take it from there. I > > have an electric guitar and I'd like to record riffs and then apply > > software filters (right word? maybe software effects?) to the riffs > > to give them a different sound. I'd like to be able to edit them, > > save them and record them to disc (cd/dvd). I'd also like to be able > > to record singing and sound effects. I have read the archives a bit > > and I saw a July thread about hardware but the original poster had his > > thread hijacked and it went a little astray. > > > > You sound a lot like me a year and a half ago. > I built a Pentium 4 PC for the experience and so I'd know it inside and > out but most would just buy one. Someone had given me a Fedora Core 1 > distro on CDs which I struggled with, having had little Linux > experience. Then I did some web searches and discovered Planet CCRMA I looked at this and it seems to be a great idea, will probably try it out. > and my life changed. They hold your hand and walk you through setting > up a first class Linux audio workstation. I know there's pros and cons > to all distros but for a beginning Linux audio user, it's hard to > imagine a better start. > > I first was using the sound "card" built into my motherboard. It is, of > course, just two channel (stereo) in/out using the AC97 (codec?) but I I have a PCI SBLive (EMU10k) and the MB has a Via AC97 which I think is disabled but I'll have to try it out, I think at one point ALSA didn't handle multiple cards well or maybe it was the linux kernel.... > got pretty darn good results. My setup was pretty simple and included a > V-Tech VTND3 condenser mic which can run with a battery OR phantom > power, sounds great and is only about $80. I ran that into one of the > little Behringer mixers like the UB802 which has two built in mic > preamps and about 6 other phone jack inputs for about $60. I used this > for micing vocal and my acoustic guitar. But when I tried running my > electric guitar into it, it sounded really bad (very dead) until I > guessed that it was an impedance mismatch thing so I bought one of the > very simple and cheap Dinosaur Direct Boxes which does impedance > matching and unbalanced to balanced conversion for $25 and makes a huge > difference in the electric guitar sound. Radio shack actually has > little inline adapters that do the same thing for about $18 (without a > few of the Dinosaur features). I run the XLR balanced line out of the > direct box into one of the mic inputs on the Behringer. (I've since > bought 3 more of those little mixers so I can have 8 fully separate > channels going into my computer.) > > For software, it seems to me that the only logical choice for a beginner > is Audacity. You don't have to learn the complexities of JACK and the > program is extremely intuitive and easy to learn with some amazing > editing features. (And, of course, it is part of the "Instant CCRMA" > experience. 8^) > > Later, I figured out that two (stereo) inputs is pretty restrictive, so > I bought a Delta 1010LT 8 track sound card which works great with my > Linux box (now running Fedora Core 3) but that little piece of hardware > was over $300. (Well worth it, though.) You've given me plenty of good info, as have others, now I have to try and digest it all. If you want to see a pretty neat setup, on the "Once upon a time in Mexico" dvd there are some extras and the filmaker shows his audio recording setup, very nice. > > Hope this helps. > Good luck. > Mike > > > >
