Paul E wrote
Well, you could just go directly into your "mic in" on your laptop straight from the mixer line our. I've done that before, it works and then you can set the different levels of everything on your mixer and just record a one track with everything premixed on the mixer.
You can also use audacity, which is free.
It's not the most high quality route, but it won't cost you anything, you can use what you have and you can start recording.
If you have R1500+ to spend, look for an interface as suggested above. ?
In delving a bit more into both the topics above (audio interface vs. onboard recording), I would like to offer the following:
Firstly, audio interfaces....
In choosing an audio interface there are a few thing to consider before buying one, namely the requirements of
what you intend to record, and
how you plan on doing it. Depending on what mixer you have and it's features, there are a many number of different ways you could go about doing it. Also, there are a huge variety of audio interfaces available and buying the right one to suits your needs is pretty important. You may indeed end up needing to expand later on as your skills progress, and buying one that outlives it's usefulness will hamper the process. It's a can of worms, for sure.
However, that being said, if you intend on merely capturing a stereo mix from your mixer at 24-bit resolution, that will most definitely work, provided a few things are also taken into consideration before you attempt it.
An onboard soundcard indeed captures audio at 24-bit and up to 48kHz (if it is an AC'97, the most common) and I know that some of the Asus motherboards have good converter chips that can clock at speeds up to 192kHz, given the right design. But, in the case of computer sound, the performance of the design and the resulting audio quality is, in large, affected by the circuits' analogue components and the codec used to process it. The analogue inputs and outputs of the onboard soundcard are calibrated to the -10dBV, unbalanced consumer standard and your mixer, even if it's a Behringer, will output
balanced audio at the +4dBu, professional reference level standard at it's main outputs. Without going into the maths, this is about an 11.8dB gain discrepancy.
So, what does this ultimately mean?
That the audio coming from your mixer's main outputs will be seen 11.8dB
higher in level at the soundcard input than what it's meters say, therefore running you the risk of overloading the input. This inevitably means distortion woes.
One solution for this is using the recording output, provided your mixer has one. Some mixers have them in RCA format and they are usually calibrated to the unbalanced, -10dBV standard. You would simply plug a normal iPod cable (RCA -> 1/8" mini-jack) into the recording outs (RCA) and the other end into the input of the soundcard (mini-jack).
If you tell me what mixer you have I can advise you further.
Assuming you have a Windows laptop, the next step is to obviously get some recording software (like the free Audacity and Reaper) and get ASIO4ALL, a free program that allows your onboard sound card to emulate an ASIO device (Audio Input/Output Stream), which is used by pretty much all Windows-based recording software.
You can get it here:
www.asio4all.com/
If you're on a Mac...it's a whole different story.
Cheers ?
