2005/7/19, Richard Hubbell <richard.hubbell@gmail.com>:> 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. A good starting point would be the readme.txt of a/demudi music distroit is on the wiki well start to try to understand jack audio server its the main pieceof a pro-audio linux box its very simple to work with qjackctl (jack control) to record multitrack the best option is ardour. You can plug effectswith lapsca (like vst for linux) to have realtime effects creox or jack-rack no prob with dvd/cd try the agnula live cd to see if everything works. Have to say that isa very stripped down version of this distro. Doesn't includes therealtime kernel.

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.

Richard Hubbell wrote: Perhaps another way to approach the hardware question would be to ask what you would need in a non linux setup, and then look to like for its linux comparison. You seem unsure of using hardware or software to drive the effects you'd like to use. Do you have a preference eaither way? Software will be cheaper, but some may argue, produces less professional results. Personally, I'd go software all the way, and have a studio that is almost entirely software run. The Behringer mixer suggested is an excellent piece of kit and well worth you checking out. You may also want to consider getting a controller keyboard - even if you dont play piano - they can be invaluable. You could have ten or twenty or a thousand little linux boxes each running an effect in your studio, or one monster machine doing it all. I'd recommend the latter because of the noise the former could make may make audio recording difficult. But, thats your call, and if you happen to stumble across a whole load of cheap medium spec machines it may be the best option. If you are looking for a hardware box for each effect type, in a rack like setup,...then it's going to be tough trying to find a list of hardware compatability. Such a list is something that really needs to be put together asap. If there are any specific pieces of hardware you are looking at, give us a shout about them and I am sure people on this list will be happy to help investigate them. Whichever way you go, the Behringer mixer is an excellent suggestion. hope that helps John

On Tue, 2005-07-19 at 04:52 +0000, Richard Hubbell wrote: 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 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 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.) Hope this helps. Good luck. Mike