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Favorite Recording Setup


ryema22

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What is everyone's favorite setup for recording their guitar?

-Mic-ing the amp? What mic, and how are you placing it?

-Direct to a soundcard? What preamps and settings?

I'm more interested in the "getting the sound into the computer / recording equipment" half of the equation than the actual recording software and hardware.

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Good stuff. My previous recording experience has just been taking backing tracks and recording solos directly into my SoundBlaster card's mic input, which leaves something to be desired.

I'm getting a mac this summer and I'm super excited about messing around with Garage Band. I may continue to record direct and get a small M-Box unit but I'm also considering trying to mic my amp. Are SM57's pretty much the consensus pick or does someone have another pick? (without going well past the budget of an SM57)

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I believe Cake recorded nearly every part of their last album with SM57's. I believe there may have been a few exceptions, but if it's good enough for them, then it's good enough for me. :D Of course their guitar player uses a $50 Fender amp too. :D But I would guess you're not going to beat the SM57 with anything close to its price range.

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Pod Pro -> Soundblaster Live Platinum (with front panel connections) -> Cubase 5 -> Decent audio drivers for inaudible latency (the most important part).

Haven't done any serious studio recording for about 10yrs & my home office can't take too much recording gear so the Pod & cubase work fine for what I need. Groove agent is also a great asset for knocking up some decent drums fast. I had a digital 8-track for a few months but I found the computer to be much easier to use.

The trickiest part about recording on a computer is latency. Even with dual-core processors & gigabytes of RAM you'll need decent audio drivers to get low latency. Search the net for good ASIO drivers for your card & don't go straight for the ones from the manufacturer. My card is several years old but thanks to support from 3rd party drivers it still performs just as well as the more recent models.

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The latency problem with my soundblaster card is probably the biggest problem with my current setup. I can't monitor the input without a good 1 second delay between what I'm playing and what I'm hearing. Where did you get your 3rd party drivers from and did they have any adverse effects on the card's other operations?

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I use a V-Amp Pro into an MBox with Pro Tools. At times I will mic my Carvin SX300H amp with a Carvin M68. For vocals I use a Carvin CM87S Large Diaphragm Condenser mic.

As for latency, I have not experienced any with the MBox. That is one of the reasons I wanted to go external. Pro Tools is a great setup but for those of you considering it, do some research first and make sure your system will run it. Vista is not supported yet but will be soon. Some Motherboards are also not supported. It is requested that you use two hard drives. Pro Tools on one and Projects on the other. I had errors running on one hard drive. RAM Is Key! Get as much as you can afford. Pluggins eat resources like Roseanne Barr eats twinkies.

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I'm using drivers from KX Project: http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/

The interface is a bit funky but once you've got things setup it works a treat. Read through the help pages & allow a little time to get things working right. My card is basically the same as the normal soundblaster live's but it also has an additional front panel box for extra optical & digital ins/outs. By using the KX driver & Cubase I can potentially record through all 16 inputs at once, mapping each one to a seperate channel. The driver has a built in patch bay which you can use to re-route the inputs & outputs making it a very complex piece of software.

There are other drivers also available, some people have had problems with the KX one, it all depends on other hardware but I know of two others that also use them with no problems.

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I tried the KX Project drivers with my Soundblaster Audigy MP3+... no luck. After first attempting to update the drivers and then completely uninstalling the card and starting from scratch I couldn't get them to work. Oh well, I'm building a new rig in late July when Intel cuts the price on their quad cores, I'll upgrade to a recording-oriented sound card then.

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The trickiest part about recording on a computer is latency. Even with dual-core processors & gigabytes of RAM you'll need decent audio drivers to get low latency. Search the net for good ASIO drivers for your card & don't go straight for the ones from the manufacturer. My card is several years old but thanks to support from 3rd party drivers it still performs just as well as the more recent models.

Interesting...

On my desktop (which isnt even that new...) I get almost 0 latency... its completely un-noticable, yet on my laptop ( much newer with twice the spec) I get a noticable latency

I'll try and find a 3rd party driver

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I tried the KX Project drivers with my Soundblaster Audigy MP3+... no luck. After first attempting to update the drivers and then completely uninstalling the card and starting from scratch I couldn't get them to work. Oh well, I'm building a new rig in late July when Intel cuts the price on their quad cores, I'll upgrade to a recording-oriented sound card then.

A friend can't use them either with his audigy, it's a motherboard issue apparently. He says that he uses the latest creative ones & has 7ms latency which is inaudible...anything under 8ms is undetectable to the ear.

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