NorioDS
So this whole Guitar Idol 2008 thing got me motivated to record myself. I know I won't win but it was the inspiration I needed to take my finger out my bum and give this recording stuff a proper college try.
So I grabbed my Roland 30 + Francis' Ibanez (that I'm borrowing until I can afford to buy it ?) and headed to my laptop in the lounge. And then the fun began.
Audacity is a pretty decent program so I decided to give it a go. It's easy enough to import a backing track, add another track, hit record and just jam. Much like the BR600 in ease of use but without the drums and maybe other stuff I'm too dof to miss ?
Problem comes in that that mic-in on my laptop that I was using to record through is crap. I've read on some Linux forums now that it's "too sensitive" for the output that would be coming from my amp. So here I sit with a recording that has loud, blunt, bad guitar playing all over it ?
I tried all sorts of things to lower the input level of the mic but it just didn't work. I've never tried this in Windows so I have no idea if it's a Linux problem or if there really is an issue with recording using a laptop mic-jack goodie.
In my naivety, I decided to give Ardour a shot. It's apparently much better recording software and, as soon as I opened it, I could see why -- it's COMPLEX! I eventually figured out the basics (add track, select input, arm track, record)
But the same problem was there.
What have I learned? That I should probably get a decent external sound card if I want to record on this laptop, using a direct line from my amp. Oh and Ardour is AWESOME but very complex and will probably take me the better part of five years to learn to use ?
I don't have much dosh to be spending right now so that probably marks the end of my foray into recording for a little while but I'm hoping that this post will inspire someone to download a free copy of Ardour (not sure if it's available for Windows) and give it a go. They say it's designed to be used by pros so my appeal goes out to Alan to try it and give us some feedback ;D
Well, that was fun. Back to work now ?
AlanRatcliffe
There's a huge difference in outputs between mic and line level. Doesn't the laptop have a "line in"? If not, you could also try something novel, like a mic into the mic input ;D
AlanRatcliffe
About Ardour - I don't have a Nix box. So I can't try it out.
Renesongs
What have I learned? That I should probably get a decent external sound card if I want to record on this laptop, using a direct line from my amp.
Exactly right! - But in the meantime try find the control panel for your sound card (I have no idea where it is located in linux) there should be a slider to control the input volume from the mic port, often there is a micg ain booster that can be disabled.
When and if you get your soundcard under control you will encounter latency problems. You play a note, go make a cup of tea while the soundcard converts the signal from A to D and back again. You could give up trying hear what you playing through the Laptop's tiny speakers but the same Mr Latency will get you when you wonder why what you played is not quite in sync to the backtrack. You could ofcourse drag your guitar track 20 to 100 ms back until it sort of sounds in sync with the backtrack or you can try a GNU software utility called Asio4all which will improve but not illiminate the latency issues on your laptop soundcard - goodluck for GI 2008
NorioDS
I was thinking of mic'ing my amp up but all I have is a USB headset and while that's fine for recording ideas, it's not so good for much else.
Will have to wait on some bucks before I carry on with this.
Maybe I can come to CT with my laptop and you can show me how to work this stuff. Then I can post videos here for everyone else.
I think affordable recording solutions are very much in demand.
NorioDS
Thanks Rene ? I've tried everything I know to try in Linux as far as changing input levels is concerned but none of it worked.
I'm not entering GI 2008 any more. I don't want to stress myself trying to record something for tomorrow when I have so much work to do as it is ?
AlanRatcliffe
Norio wrote
I was thinking of mic'ing my amp up but all I have is a USB headset and while that's fine for recording ideas, it's not so good for much else.
I may have an old Shure 515SD (similar to a SM57) somewhere. I was saving it for a good cause (but you'll do ;D). Only thing is I can't remember seeing it for a few years, so no promises. I'll check to see if I can find it and let you know.
NorioDS
Man that would kick ass! I'll hold thumbs that it pops up somewhere ;D
NorioDS
OK, found the soundcard I'll be using for this project. See the "soundcards" topic to see how I found it. (Thanks Mr M!)
Should cost between R300 and R400 and give "good enough" results. Definitely compatible with Linux. And so the fun begins ? ? ?
NorioDS
"Upgrading" from Ubuntu to Ubuntu Studio...
sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-desktop linux-image-2.6.24-19-rt
This upgrades to Ubuntu Studio and installs the real-time kernel, which is pretty important when you're recording.
I rebooted and found my wireless networking was stuffed and eventually found the answer...
sudo apt-get install linux-rt
This installs all the real-time kernel modules. Don't fret (hehe) too much if you don't understand it. Just do it ?
NorioDS
Once you have Ubuntu Studio installed and working properly (remember to reboot after the above), check this link out for some help...
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudio
I'll be posting my own progress here as I go along, but for this in a hurry, go ahead, check it out!
NorioDS
OK, so I have my cable but getting JACK running is proving to be a LOT more challenging than I had expected. The plus side is that I now finally understand what the hell it does ?
JACK allows you to run a sort of patchbay where I can connect the output of a drum machine (hydrogen) and the output of guitar effects (jack-rack) into the input of a recording studio thingy (ardour).
There are a few ideas missing from the above but you get my drift.
Right now, I'm disappointed by the lack of documentation around recording in Linux. If you have the "right hardware" it'll probably work out of the box. The problem seems to come in when you're using a crappy onboard soundcard. Which is the case for me. Fun.
NorioDS
OK! I'm finally at a point where I know EXACTLY what I'm doing and need to do in order for this Linux-recording stuff to work. I've learned a lot about sound-recording (in general) which I'm sure will be useful on any platform and also lots about how sound things best work in Linux.
A quick highlight of how things fit together and where the challenges lie...
jackd - This is an incredibly powerful piece of software which allows you to "patch" the output of one program (or physical source) into the input of another. As described above, you can "plug" your guitar into your effects program, and then into a specific track on your recording software. You can also "plug" a drum machine's output into another track and a synth program into a 3rd track. (Hope I'm keeping count correctly ?)
Problems...
1. INCREDIBLY hard to figure out the first time around. I'm an advanced Linux user/admin, I'd hate to see what a newbie would go through trying to figure this all out!
2. Only supports 1 card at a time. Big problem. This SoundTech LightSnake acts as a soundcard. So, as things stand, I can only record from my cable, or playback something I've already recording. Definitely no monitoring! Huge pain in the ass.
Solution: Alsa (soundcard drivers for linux) supports running 2 cards as 1 virtual card. If I ever get my configuration right, this could work. Although the cards won't be perfectly in-sync, it should be good enough to monitor what I'm playing as I'm recording.
Other than the above issues, I actually love jackd. Powerful bit of software ONCE you figure out all the kinks. (This tends to be the case with Linux software in the beginning. Things usually smooth out once the software gets a bit more mainstream usage.)
ardour - Fantastic recording software! It's modeled on professional software available out there and it confuses the heck out of me but not because it's badly designed, just because i'm new to recording. I finally understand how it works and it's quite powerful. Has nice features like a Click Track and, erm, other stuff I don't understand yet ?
Can definitely see myself falling in love with this software. I could use something simple like Audacity (and I may yet) but I'd like to see if I can manage with something more pro-orientated. I figure it will be good practise for when I'm working on industry-standard software, later on.
hydrogen - Groovy drum machine. Very easy to use. You create "patterns", which are generally single bars of drumming. And then you string them together to form a "song". Very easy to use. You can click with your mouse or use your keyboard. Sounds are very good. Very authentic, to my untrained ears anyway.
ZynAddSubFX - Virtual synth keyboard goodie. Very cool. Plenty of stuff available in the instrument bank. I can see myself creating great backing tracks with this baby. Some of the sounds are very authentic while others are absolute rubbish. No idea, yet, if it supports instrument-bank files available on the net. Will investigate as time moves on.
Jack Rack - Supposed to be a real-time guitar effects (stack-like) program. Haven't had a chance to test it out yet, thanks to my above issues with jackd. Seems to have a wide range of sounds and tweaking available. Time will tell how good this is. User-interface is crap.
Creox - More or less same thing as Jack Rack but much less versatile. I've actually played with this one before but couldn't get decent performance out of it -- this was before I set up my machine to run with a real-time kernel and before I understood anything about jackd. Will post more after I test this properly.
That pretty much covers everything you'd use in the beginning when recording on Linux. I'll post more once I can actually record and monitor what I'm recording. Will also post links to sites that have been helpful.
Comments on the above?
NorioDS
Rakarrack - The new kid on the block. Haven't played with but Francis posted about it a while ago and I totally forgot about it!. Will play as soon as jackd + alsa + my virtual card are playing nicely together ?
http://rakarrack.sourceforge.net/
Renesongs
I hear the Micro$loth is going to stop selling XP this year - So I'm saving this threat for when I migrate to Ubuntu, because I sure as hell never going to use Vista to do music again.
glug
Renesongs wrote
I hear the Micro$loth is going to stop selling XP this year - So I'm saving this threat for when I migrate to Ubuntu, because I sure as hell never going to use Vista to do music again.
It's difficuilt to get a copy of XP. Incredible corruption Don't supply them any more. Then If you can get a copy from another shop you will probably pay double $$$ for XP. Me to will never go for Vista. The other option is win 2000, very stable operation system and no activation required. the last time i used linux was about a year ago when i worked at tangent systems. At the moment i have mandrake, SuSe and fadora installed on virtual machine. this way is the best to check if every things compatible. So no rebooting your pc to switch operating systems.
AlanRatcliffe
2. Only supports 1 card at a time. Big problem. This SoundTech LightSnake acts as a soundcard. So, as things stand, I can only record from my cable, or playback something I've already recording. Definitely no monitoring! Huge pain in the ass.
I have used a few "virtual patch cables", and usually they are duplex (allowing traffic to and from the card). Is this a limitation with the card or the software? If it's the software, then can you run two instances of Jackd?
NorioDS
It's a limitation of the software, I'm afraid. Running 2 instances of jackd seems possible from what I've read but actually looks more difficult than setting up a virtual soundcard in Alsa.
I've posted on the UbuntuStudio mailing list to see if anyone can help me with the configuration of my .asoundrc file. Hey, for all I know, it's right and I just need to reboot. (Not something I do much of in Linux ?)
NorioDS
So it turns out that JACK has no such limitation at all. I was just being a monkey and making the wrong selections in the configuration screen.
So I've got it set up and I've tried Jack-Rack and Rakarrack. The results? Good sounds from both but the cable itself picks up a lot of noise (pickup switching, knobs, etc).
I found a way around this which kills 2 birds with one stone. I plug my guitar into my DS1 pedal and then my pedal into the recording cable. This fixes the extra noises that were being picked up, PLUS I get great tone from my DS1.
Now, using either Jack-Rack or Rakarrack, I can add delay, flanger, play around with EQs and all sorts until I get the sound I like.
With the right amount of tweaking, I'm sure I could get a great distortion (or overdrive, especially overdrive) sound direct from the PC but nothing seems to be killing those weird sounds I get when I plug in direct to my axe so I'd say, as a bare minimum, stick a pedal in the loop and all should be well. Haven't tried it yet but I'm sure running the pedal clean will be fine. (ie using software for ALL my sound, just using the pedal to make it more convenient)
Another note on sticking a pedal in between my axe and the PC is that it makes playing the guitar easier. The STUSBG10 is incredibly stiff and hard to work with so, this way, it stays far away from me and I can get on with playing guitar.
Coming soon: An 101 tutorial on recording a track in Linux.
By the way, I played with Guitar-Rig in Windows and it's great. I get huge latency, even with ASIO4All drivers but I'm sure that, with a few tweaks, all would be well.
Relevance of that is that I think it's EASIER to get a low amount of latency in Linux than it is in windows. Particularly using UbuntuStudio as it's geared towards music production so the realtime kernel, etc, really help!
AlanRatcliffe
The results?
Yes. Where are the results? This thread is worthless without clips ?
I plug my guitar into my DS1 pedal and then my pedal into the recording cable. This fixes the extra noises that were being picked up, PLUS I get great tone from my DS1.
See? For all the talk of true bypass, there
are times when a buffered bypass works better.
Sounds like the cable of the STUSBG is microphonic - sign of a bad cable. Using the output of the pedal feeds it with a buffered low impedance signal, which is not as susceptible to picking up noise.
