Re: [linux-audio-user] where to begin or where's the beginning begin?

On 19/07/05 05:52:16, Richard Hubbell wrote: Are you intending to DI the guitar or are you planning to mic the guitar amp? For DI you could just try making a lead to connect the guitar to the line in of a normal sound card, i.e. connect it to one channel and see how you get on. If the quality is not good enough you'll need to invest in a "Pro" sound card. OK, for this you'll need a decent microphone. The big choice is between dynamic, e.g. the Sure SM58 that is commonly used live and which give a punchy sound and condensers which give a more accurate and detailed sound. There shouldn't be any Linux specific problems with Mics so go to somewhere like www.recording.org and see people there are using. The only thing to watch out for is that if you get a condenser mic you'll need to look for a sound card/audio interface or pre-amp that includes phantom power (most good ones do). Connecting a mic to the mic-in on a normal PC sound card is very unlikely to yield acceptable results for serious work as the built-in pre-amp is usually noisy and the mic-in is unbalanced wheras all pro mics have balanced outputs, so you'll either need to use a separate pre-amp to raise the mic's output to line level then use the line-in, or get a sound card/audio interface that has a mic pre-amp built in. You could even get a separate mic pre-amp and a pro sound card. Regarding sound cards/audio interfaces you have a choice of USB or PCI. If you're intending to do all your recording with a single PC then PCI is probably better as it seems to have more stable support and lower latency. If you need to frequently move the interface between PCs, e.g. you desktop and laptop then a USB interface may be more conventient. You also need to decide how many channels - if you're going to record one track at a time then one of the two channel devices will be fine. I needed an interface I can carry around and got a USB TASCAM US-122 which seems to work quite well though the drivers in Linux seems to have only become stable since kernel 2.6.12. This has two channels in/out and MIDI in/out and the inputs can be either mic or line/guitar and it can do phantom power. For close miking the noise performance is fine, but for miking large enembles at a distance the mic pre-amp is a little too noisy. There is a direct competitor to the US-122, i.e. the Edirol UA-25. For the PCI cards I'll let people who've got them describe them. Some of the PCI cards have a separate "break-out" box to which you connect your inputs and then a cable that connects the breakout box to a connector on the back of the PCI card. If you get a card that has line level inputs only then you'll need a separate mic pre-amp. Many people are suspicous of built-in mic pre-amps on anything and would recommend the two box solution anyway though I don't have the experience to comment. Once you got a decent mic, sound card and maybe mic pre-amp I'd see if you can do everything else you need in software before buying any other hardware. There's ardour as a multitrack recorder and LADSPA for effects pulgins all connected together with jack. For wave editing you've got audacity. There's jamin for mastering, cdrdao for writing CDs and other choices too. LADSPA effects include compressors, expanders, filters, eq etc. HTH, Steve.