Recording to Pc

G-Man

I'm in the process of recording a song using Ubuntu Studio, its ok so far with the 2 guitar tracks , but I'm also planning on doing the bass track as well. I'm recording from guitar and pedal straight to the sound card with no amp on a Dell Optiplex's onboard card. Is that ok to do without popping the card? Should I be using my amps headphone jack to the card and playing that way? Will the bass be ok to play straight through as well? I don't have the spare $$$ atm unfortunately for an interface so I figure this is my only option. The sound quality isn't a huge issue as there is plenty distortion anyway but I just want to make sure before I bugger up a working pc. ?

Any tips?

AlanRatcliffe

Just keep an eye on the input level meters, make sure you don't clip the input of the onboard card - you don't want to blow the input with too much level.

BMU

The prime reason to get a semi-decent soundcard is latency, not quality so much..not at first. If that doesn't bother you, you'll be ok, just follow Alan's sensible advice.

G-Man

Ok cool will do that, I have noticed a 'real time' lag while using audacity when I record and ask it to playback simultaneously. I think I have a pci card somewhere maybe I'll give that a go tonight. (doubt if it'll be any better but it supports 7.1 so maybe it'll have more 'processing' oomph)

ezietsman

Seeing that you are using Ubuntu, it may help tremendously if you use the JACK sound server. You can install it by installing the qjackcontrol app from the app store. This will install the other stuff it needs to work. That can bring down your latency a lot. I did that with my laptop's onboard soundcard and latency was around 10ms. I use Ardour for recording instead of audacity but audacity supports JACK too.

So when you want to record stuff, you start the qjackcontrol program and your recording app, then qjackctl allows you to connect the inputs and outputs of various programs to each other. pretty nifty.

G-Man

Ok sweet I'll try that for sure, Ubuntu Studio has ardour and qjack etc by default so Ill play around with everything as I go! Thanks man

RobK

G-Man wrote Ok cool will do that, I have noticed a 'real time' lag while using audacity when I record and ask it to playback simultaneously. I think I have a pci card somewhere maybe I'll give that a go tonight. (doubt if it'll be any better but it supports 7.1 so maybe it'll have more 'processing' oomph)

You'll still have the lag. I had a 7.1 card (on Windows though) and could only get the delay gone after installing an ASIO driver for it. ASIO allows your application to talk directly to the soundcard, instead of going through the OS to get to the hardware. Allows for lower latency and eliminates the lag you hear.

Don't know whether there are any ASIO drivers for Ubuntu available. If there are, they'll help more than a new sound card.

BMU

ezietsman wrote I did that with my laptop's onboard soundcard and latency was around 10ms.

Wow, 10 ms is perfect.

"Don't know whether there are any ASIO drivers for Ubuntu available. If there are, they'll help more than a new sound card."
Yep exactly. My first recordings I used some Soundblaster cheap junk card, with a hacked ASIO driver I got off the 'net somewhere, worked perfectly.

G-Man

I think I may have to go the windows xp /asio driver route as my little desktop just isn't cutting it with Ubuntu, its chugging just opening my recording apps let alone worrying about latencies ☹

I could use my gaming rig but I'm loathe to fry anything on it. One good thing about xp is that at least in the audio mixer you can have direct feed coming from the mic with hardly any lag , (I even used to do that on an old windows 95 laptop before I got my first amp hehe) I'm battling to do the same in Ubuntu (I was messing with it into the wee hours of this morning)

So its going to take some tinkering still. Thanks for all the tips and advice, really appreciate it. ?

RobK

You don't need to get rid of Ubuntu, if that's what you're thinking. Maybe try run what you need under WINE - I think there's an ASIO driver that runs under WINE as well.

G-Man

I found this site, www.asio4all.com , I could try that under wine. Has anyone else used it? I'm not at home for the next night or two so I'll only be able to download it when I get back. I'll keep the Ubuntu, just going to play with gparted and dual boot. ?