20 Oct
2007
20 Oct
'07
6:28 a.m.
Hello everyone,
I'm trying to get my electric guitar connected to my sound card.
Keeping the card's input gain low keeps away the noise, but
produces a very low signal. I can put Jamin right after that and crank
up the input gain, but there's a maximum to it and I'm not sure whether
that's the right approach.
Turning up the card's input volume increases the gain, of course, but it
delivers a lot of very ugly noise as well. If I connect a microphone to
the port, I get a high-gain signal without noise.
The card's an SB Live! Platinum, and the mic port seems to be the only
capture port usable by Jack. The cabling for the guitar is all new.
I can provide samples of the input signal at the various settings if you
wish.
Leslie
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20 Oct
20 Oct
6:48 a.m.
On Saturday 20 October 2007, leslie.polzer(a)gmx.net wrote:
Hello everyone,
I'm trying to get my electric guitar connected to my sound card.
Keeping the card's input gain low keeps away the noise, but
produces a very low signal. I can put Jamin right after that and crank
up the input gain, but there's a maximum to it and I'm not sure whether
that's the right approach.
Turning up the card's input volume increases the gain, of course, but it
delivers a lot of very ugly noise as well. If I connect a microphone to
the port, I get a high-gain signal without noise.
I'm not an expert by any means. What sort of pickups does the guitar have,
and is the noise you are experiencing similar to mains hum you might hear
through an amp?
It could just be that the signal from the guitar is too low, or generally
noisy and the digital gain on the card just magnifies the noise. I have a
Terratec DMX 6Fire (has a built-in pre-amp) and have to turn up the pre-amp
quite a way to get a useable signal.
Maybe you could use an external pre-amp and/or noise gate effects pedal before
the signal goes into the card?
--
David Haggett
6:57 a.m.
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb leslie.polzer(a)gmx.net:
Hello everyone,
I'm trying to get my electric guitar connected to my sound card.
Keeping the card's input gain low keeps away the noise, but
produces a very low signal. I can put Jamin right after that and crank
up the input gain, but there's a maximum to it and I'm not sure whether
that's the right approach.
Turning up the card's input volume increases the gain, of course, but it
delivers a lot of very ugly noise as well. If I connect a microphone to
the port, I get a high-gain signal without noise.
The card's an SB Live! Platinum, and the mic port seems to be the only
capture port usable by Jack. The cabling for the guitar is all new.
I can provide samples of the input signal at the various settings if you
wish.
Leslie
You cannot do that in a sane way - the output of a guitar pickup needs to be
modified (amplified and converted to high impedance) before, otherwise the
signal will suffer (treble loss). A guitar amp with line out, or certain guitar
FX processors will do, or you can try to find some cheaper device, look for at
least a impedance converter(transformer), or an active (battery powered) D/I box
with built in amplifier.
Edgar
7:40 a.m.
You cannot do that in a sane way - the output of a
guitar pickup needs to be
modified (amplified and converted to high impedance) before, otherwise the
signal will suffer (treble loss).
Does that still hold if I use the Line-In instead of the Mic-In?
A guitar amp with line out, or certain guitar
FX processors will do, or you can try to find some cheaper device, look for at
least a impedance converter(transformer), or an active (battery powered) D/I box
with built in amplifier.
Any recommendations for a cheap device that just does the job nicely?
Leslie
8:04 a.m.
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb Leslie P. Polzer:
Yes. I was speaking of line in, that's where you need a preamp, on mic in your
pickup signal might be a bit to hot already, but in any case the impedance of the
guitar pickup is too high (sorry i wrongly said "converted to high", meant
"to low"
above, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DI_unit for a good explanation).
not really; any active DI-Box will do, e.g.Behringer has cheap ones. Personally I
use either my Roland GR-33 guitar synth (has built-in speaker simulation too), a
cheap and small marshall valve-state guitar amp or an ancient Roland analog synth
with pitch to voltage converter(P/V synth SPV 355, great stuff :)), or the (also
ancient) Ibanez DM1000 12bit 19" delay processor for my electric guitars, and a
Fishbone Preamp for the piezo pickup in one of my classical guitars.
Edgar
You cannot do that in a sane way - the output of
a guitar pickup needs to be
modified (amplified and converted to high impedance) before, otherwise the
signal will suffer (treble loss).
Does that still hold if I use the Line-In instead of the Mic-In? A guitar amp with line out, or certain guitar
FX processors will do, or you can try to find some cheaper device, look for at
least a impedance converter(transformer), or an active (battery powered) D/I box
with built in amplifier.
Any recommendations for a cheap device that just does the job nicely?
11:17 a.m.
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb Edgar Aichinger:
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb Leslie P.
Polzer:
Actually most (all?) DI-boxes I know aren't the right thing here, because they
convert line-/instrument-signals to mic-level with symmetric (balanced) XLR
connector. And if you own a card that has a XLR-input the same cards most
probably has a instrument-in too.
Worth mentioning: the SBLive doesn't have a symmetric mic-input...
But any cheap (or not so cheap) guitar effects box will do. You don't have to
use the effects (if you don't want to) but still use the impedance
conversion.
Arnold
--
visit http://www.arnoldarts.de/
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Any recommendations for a cheap device that just
does the job nicely?
not really; any active DI-Box will do, e.g.Behringer has cheap
ones. 
21 Oct
21 Oct
1:08 p.m.
On 10/20/07, Leslie P. Polzer <leslie.polzer(a)gmx.net> wrote:
Don't do that. You want a box with an instrument input and a line
output. I second Dave's suggestion for an M-Audio AudioBuddy. I have
one and it works great (I've seen them as low as $60US). It's a
small, cheap, two-channel mic-pre with instrument (a.k.a. DI) inputs
and line outputs (balanced, which should still work fine with the SB).
Many single-channel mic pres also have instrument/DI inputs, like
those ART tube units (as low as $30US).
A regular DI with output a low impedance mic level signal, which would
still not give you the output signal you want.
Actually most (all?) DI-boxes I know aren't
the right thing here, because they
convert line-/instrument-signals to mic-level with symmetric (balanced) XLR
connector.
I found a bunch of DI boxes with asymmetrical outputs at a popular
auction site.
Guess I'll get me one of those.
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
6:03 p.m.
Don't do that. You want a box with an instrument
input and a line
output. I second Dave's suggestion for an M-Audio AudioBuddy. I have
one and it works great (I've seen them as low as $60US). It's a
small, cheap, two-channel mic-pre with instrument (a.k.a. DI) inputs
and line outputs (balanced, which should still work fine with the SB).
Many single-channel mic pres also have instrument/DI inputs, like
those ART tube units (as low as $30US).
A regular DI with output a low impedance mic level signal, which would
still not give you the output signal you want.
I bought a distortion pedal -- hope it'll do the job.
Leslie
22 Oct
22 Oct
10:18 a.m.
On Sunday 21 October 2007 21:03:42 Leslie P. Polzer wrote:
I use a homebrew fuzzbox to adapt instrument levels to line levels. I can set
it clean with a lot of gain, and get fairly good quality from it. Of course,
giving it *lots* of gain and going all crunchy and distorted tends to work
well for me too...
Gordon
Don't do
that. You want a box with an instrument input and a line
output. I second Dave's suggestion for an M-Audio AudioBuddy. I have
one and it works great (I've seen them as low as $60US). It's a
small, cheap, two-channel mic-pre with instrument (a.k.a. DI) inputs
and line outputs (balanced, which should still work fine with the SB).
Many single-channel mic pres also have instrument/DI inputs, like
those ART tube units (as low as $30US).
A regular DI with output a low impedance mic level signal, which would
still not give you the output signal you want.
I bought a distortion pedal -- hope it'll do the job. 
26 Oct
26 Oct
11:09 a.m.
Hi
I had the same problem a while back, I solved the problem with a unit
made by M-Audio called the Ozone which is a small midi keyboard with
audio card built in, it connects using usb which seems to work with some
distro's using madfu.
The features which made it useful to me where the guitar preamp and mic
preamp with phantom power so you can use a condenser microphone to
record vocals / acoustic instruments, also it has a switch that passes
the input strait to the output so even it you can't get the USB working
you can feed the pre-amped guitar/mic to the input of your internal
sound card, the midi keyboard also has a standard din output too so that
can be connected to your sound cards midi in, and the 8 control knobs
output controller info (very useful for softsynths), I find it very
useful for general music production, there is model with a larger
keyboard and 2 stereo in/outs called the Ozonic, but this uses firewire
and I think that really is a pain to get working with Linux.
The list price when I got my Ozone was about £160 but I think you can
get one for about £100 now.
To sum it up what I needed was
1. guitar preamp,
2. XLR mic input,
3 midi keyboard,
4. rotary midi controllers,
and the Ozone had all these!
I hope that info was of some help
Graham
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MAudioOzone-main.html
http://usb-midi-fw.sourceforge.net/
On Mon, 2007-10-22 at 13:18 +0100, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
On Sunday 21 October 2007 21:03:42 Leslie P. Polzer
wrote:
I use a homebrew fuzzbox to adapt instrument levels to line levels. I can set
it clean with a lot of gain, and get fairly good quality from it. Of course,
giving it *lots* of gain and going all crunchy and distorted tends to work
well for me too...
Gordon
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
Don't
do that. You want a box with an instrument input and a line
output. I second Dave's suggestion for an M-Audio AudioBuddy. I have
one and it works great (I've seen them as low as $60US). It's a
small, cheap, two-channel mic-pre with instrument (a.k.a. DI) inputs
and line outputs (balanced, which should still work fine with the SB).
Many single-channel mic pres also have instrument/DI inputs, like
those ART tube units (as low as $30US).
A regular DI with output a low impedance mic level signal, which would
still not give you the output signal you want.
I bought a distortion pedal -- hope it'll do the job.
20 Oct
20 Oct
1:06 p.m.
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb Arnold Krille:
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb Edgar Aichinger:
Aaargh. Trapped. Of course, this is true, most DI boxes come with XLR output
sockets because they are supposed to hook up with analog mixers. I can easily
build an adapter cable to drop the reverse phase signal, but to assume that
everyone else can was silly... sorry for that.
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb Leslie P.
Polzer:
Actually most (all?) DI-boxes I know aren't the right thing here, because they
convert line-/instrument-signals to mic-level with symmetric (balanced) XLR Any recommendations for a cheap device that just
does the job nicely?
not really; any active DI-Box will do, e.g.Behringer has cheap
ones. connector. And if you own a card that has a XLR-input
the same cards most
probably has a instrument-in too.
Worth mentioning: the SBLive doesn't have a symmetric mic-input...
Hmm, my M Audio 1010LT comes with two XLR inputs but no instrument inputs. You can
jumper them for different input gain, but that doesn't help with impedance.
But any cheap (or not so cheap) guitar effects box
will do. You don't have to
use the effects (if you don't want to) but still use the impedance
conversion.
Arnold
1:32 p.m.
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb Edgar Aichinger:
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb Arnold Krille:
:-) That is why I said "most". From my experience with three high(er) quality
soundcards, those with XLR- and line-inputs also have instrument-inputs.
Maybe I should reword it: If your card has mic- (XLR) and Line-level inputs
for each channel, it most probably also can be driven by instruments. :-)
Have fun,
Arnold
--
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connector. And if you own a card that has a
XLR-input the same cards most
probably has a instrument-in too.
Worth mentioning: the SBLive doesn't have a symmetric mic-input...
Hmm, my M
Audio 1010LT comes with two XLR inputs but no instrument inputs.
You can jumper them for different input gain, but that doesn't help with
impedance.
28 Oct
28 Oct
2:46 p.m.
On Sat, Oct 20, 2007 at 10:55:40AM +0200, Edgar Aichinger wrote:
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb
leslie.polzer(a)gmx.net:
I believe you, but I'd be grateful if someone could explain to me how
one would know that the treble will suffer? I mean, we were talking
about real impedancies, and to determine how the line will react with
respect to certain frequencies we would need the complex part...
So if anyone knows, that'd be nice.
Leslie
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Personal homepage: https://viridian.dnsalias.net/~sky/homepage/
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys DD4EBF83
I'm trying to get my electric guitar connected to my sound card.
You cannot do that in a sane way - the output of a guitar pickup needs to be
modified (amplified and converted to high impedance) before, otherwise the
signal will suffer (treble loss).
29 Oct
29 Oct
12:04 p.m.
On 10/28/07, leslie.polzer(a)gmx.net <leslie.polzer(a)gmx.net> wrote:
On Sat, Oct 20, 2007 at 10:55:40AM +0200, Edgar
Aichinger wrote:
http://www.whirlwindusa.com/tech03.html
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb
leslie.polzer(a)gmx.net:
I believe you, but I'd be grateful if someone could explain to me how
one would know that the treble will suffer? I mean, we were talking
about real impedancies, and to determine how the line will react with
respect to certain frequencies we would need the complex part...
So if anyone knows, that'd be nice.
Leslie
I'm trying to get my electric guitar connected to my sound card.
You cannot do that in a sane way - the output of a guitar pickup needs to be
modified (amplified and converted to high impedance) before, otherwise the
signal will suffer (treble loss). 
30 Oct
30 Oct
9:16 a.m.
On Sun, Oct 28, 2007 at 06:45:54PM +0100, leslie.polzer(a)gmx.net wrote:
The impedance of a guitar PU is mostly inductive, i.e. it rises
with frequency. So if you load this with a low impedance the
effect is that of a low-pass filter. That's the simplest case -
in practice the inductance can resonate within the audio band
when connected to a cable (which is capacitive) and this is why
guitar cables can have a distinctive sound.
Anyway, for a guitar you need a high-impedance input, not a
microphone input.
Ciao,
--
FA
Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica
Parma, Italia
Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa.
You cannot do
that in a sane way - the output of a guitar pickup needs to be
modified (amplified and converted to high impedance) before, otherwise the
signal will suffer (treble loss).
I believe you, but I'd be grateful if someone could explain to me how
one would know that the treble will suffer? I mean, we were talking
about real impedancies, and to determine how the line will react with
respect to certain frequencies we would need the complex part... 
31 Oct
31 Oct
11:46 p.m.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
On Mon, Oct 29, 2007 at 10:52:15PM +0100, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
On Sun, Oct 28, 2007 at 06:45:54PM +0100,
leslie.polzer(a)gmx.net wrote:
The impedance of a guitar PU is mostly inductive, i.e. it rises
with frequency. So if you load this with a low impedance the
effect is that of a low-pass filter. That's the simplest case -
in practice the inductance can resonate within the audio band
when connected to a cable (which is capacitive) and this is why
guitar cables can have a distinctive sound.
Anyway, for a guitar you need a high-impedance input, not a
microphone input.
My audio interface has a switch with two settings: "instrument" and
"line" for its XLR/TRS jacks. No "mic" setting, surprisingly.
I'm guessing that would be "line". It also has a "pad" switch for
dealing with hot inputs.
- -ken
You
cannot do that in a sane way - the output of a guitar pickup needs to be
modified (amplified and converted to high impedance) before, otherwise the
signal will suffer (treble loss).
I believe you, but I'd be grateful if someone could explain to me how
one would know that the treble will suffer? I mean, we were talking
about real impedancies, and to determine how the line will react with
respect to certain frequencies we would need the complex part... -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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1 Nov
1 Nov
10:56 a.m.
Hi,
Am Donnerstag, 1. November 2007 schrieb Ken Restivo:
My audio interface has a switch with two settings:
"instrument" and "line"
for its XLR/TRS jacks. No "mic" setting, surprisingly.
No, that isn't surprising me. The switch is only for the impedance of the
TRS-jack, the XLR is always mic-level and -impedance. (The only mics with
TRS-jacks I have seen are worse then the cheapest mic with XLR...)
Arnold
--
visit http://www.arnoldarts.de/
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20 Oct
20 Oct
6:58 a.m.
Hi,
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb leslie.polzer(a)gmx.net:
I'm trying to get my electric guitar connected to
my sound card.
Keeping the card's input gain low keeps away the noise, but
produces a very low signal. I can put Jamin right after that and crank
up the input gain, but there's a maximum to it and I'm not sure whether
that's the right approach.
Jamin is not the right tool for playing live through it. It has a builtin
delay of >10ms which adds to jackd's latency. Use jack-rack for the effects
you want.
Turning up the card's input volume increases the
gain, of course, but it
delivers a lot of very ugly noise as well. If I connect a microphone to
the port, I get a high-gain signal without noise.
The card's an SB Live! Platinum, and the mic port seems to be the only
capture port usable by Jack. The cabling for the guitar is all new.
1) There is an electrical difference between mic- and line-inputs/-signals. It
is _no_ wonder it sounds strange and distorted. You have to use a line-input
or even better an instrument input. And the SBLive has line-ins as well and
they are usable with jack. And with a LiveDrive you get even more...
2) The mic-input on the SBLive might be better than a mic-input on
onboard-cards but it is still crap.
3) Guitars do output a lot of noise. That is way the combo-speakers have a
limited frequency-range. :-)
The best bet is to use some external (guitar-)effect that has instrument-in
and line-out and connect that line-out to the line-in of the soundcard.
And if you use hw:0,3 for playback and hw:0,2 for record in jack you get 16
ins and outs and you only have to find the right ones (with meterbridge for
example).
Hope that helps,
Arnold
--
visit http://www.arnoldarts.de/
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7:30 a.m.
Jamin is not the right tool for playing live through
it. It has a builtin
delay of >10ms which adds to jackd's latency. Use jack-rack for the effects
you want.
Thanks for the hint; I was just using it for testing.
1) There is an electrical difference between mic- and
line-inputs/-signals. It
is _no_ wonder it sounds strange and distorted. You have to use a line-input
or even better an instrument input. And the SBLive has line-ins as well and
they are usable with jack.
So running jackd with default ALSA backend settings (i.e. hw:0) just
provides the Mic in as capture ports?
And with a LiveDrive you get even more...
What's that?
The best bet is to use some external (guitar-)effect
that has instrument-in
and line-out and connect that line-out to the line-in of the soundcard.
Can't I use a software noise gate or other software filters?
What's a piece of hardware got that I can't do with software?
And if you use hw:0,3 for playback and hw:0,2 for
record in jack you get 16
ins and outs and you only have to find the right ones (with meterbridge for
example).
Why are there 16?
And is there a way, read program, to show all available ALSA devices?
Thanks a lot so far!
Leslie
11:26 a.m.
Hi,
Am Samstag, 20. Oktober 2007 schrieb Leslie P. Polzer:
No, it gives you the standard record-input of the AC'97. In the hardware mixer
you can select any channel for recording.
An additional 5.x" device that connects to the soundcard and provides more
inputs and outputs: 2x stereo line-in, 1x phones out (also center/sub), 2x
digital in and out (spdif and optical) and one mic-input. And midi-io...
You can't change the (electrical) impedance and its resulting distortion in
software. That is why you need some hardware. If that effects-box you use has
an additional noise-gate and/or compressor you are of course free to use
it. :-)
Why not?
It provides more ports than there are in hardware because some of the channels
are the ones leading to and from the dsp. Which you can try to program with
linux-tools too.
1) There is an
electrical difference between mic- and
line-inputs/-signals. It is _no_ wonder it sounds strange and distorted.
You have to use a line-input or even better an instrument input. And the
SBLive has line-ins as well and they are usable with jack.
So running jackd with
default ALSA backend settings (i.e. hw:0) just
provides the Mic in as capture ports? And with a
LiveDrive you get even more...
What's that? The best bet
is to use some external (guitar-)effect that has
instrument-in and line-out and connect that line-out to the line-in of
the soundcard.
Can't I use a software noise gate or other software filters?
What's a piece of hardware got that I can't do with software? And if you use
hw:0,3 for playback and hw:0,2 for record in jack you get
16 ins and outs and you only have to find the right ones (with
meterbridge for example).
Why are there 16? And is there a way, read program, to show all
available ALSA devices?
qjackctl lists all devices. "aplay -L" lists all devices.
Arnold
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12:34 p.m.
On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 09:35:43 -0400
Dave Phillips <dlphillips(a)woh.rr.com> wrote:
leslie.polzer(a)gmx.net wrote:
Hmmmm.
1 OpAmp
4 Resistors
4 Capacitors
1 PP3 battery
About a couple of squids :)
--
Will J Godfrey
http://www.musically.me.uk
I'm trying to get my electric guitar connected
to my sound card...
You need a preamp. The M-Audio Audio Buddy is inexpensive and works well.
Best,
dp
22 Oct
22 Oct
10:18 a.m.
On Saturday 20 October 2007 15:34:35 Folderol wrote:
On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 09:35:43 -0400
Dave Phillips <dlphillips(a)woh.rr.com> wrote:
And two back-to-back diodes between the opamp output and ground! Make it
*fuzzy*!
Gordon
leslie.polzer(a)gmx.net wrote:
Hmmmm.
1 OpAmp
4 Resistors
4 Capacitors
1 PP3 battery I'm trying to get my electric guitar connected
to my sound card...
You need a preamp. The M-Audio Audio Buddy is inexpensive and works well.
Best,
dp
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days inactive
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days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
24 comments
12 participants
participants (12)
-
Arnold Krille -
Dave Phillips -
David Haggett -
Edgar Aichinger -
Folderol -
Fons Adriaensen -
Gordon JC Pearce -
Graham Franklin -
Ken Restivo -
Leslie P. Polzer -
leslie.polzer＠gmx.net
-
Paul Coccoli