Recording guitar to computer/general guitar techie questions

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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
What's the best reasonably-priced (ie under £100) equipment to use to record a guitar to a PC? Have seen this, but the complaints about the latency period and the lack of volume gain make me suspicious...

Can anyone recommend anything better?

And what's a good brand of cable to use?

Also, unrelated (I am not very good at this guitar tech stuff), how the hell do I know whether a pick-up is any good, without trying it? ie are there any failsafes?
 
CHAOTROPIC

CHAOTROPIC

on account
Maybe this? The full-size Line 6 POD is supposed to be the standard, really, & you can probably grab one for under £100 on ebay. Robust too.
 
M

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
CHAOTROPIC said:
Maybe this? The full-size Line 6 POD is supposed to be the standard, really, & you can probably grab one for under £100 on ebay. Robust too.
Click to expand...

"Pocket POD is a class compliant USB MIDI device. You will not be able to directly record over a USB connection."

which kinda means that the POD would boost the signal but wouldn't help with the interface that baboon is looking for in order to plug their guitar into their computer I think, though anyone correct me if I'm wrong!

I'll have a look around for you baboon and see if there's anything I can find.
 
CHAOTROPIC

CHAOTROPIC

on account
Ah, soz, I figured you already had an audio interface but wanted a good guitar sound.

Personally, I plug any instruments into a cheap mixer (Behringer Eurorack) & then straight into a USB audio interface (Tascam US-122), record straight into logic & then mess with it there. I'm sure you can pick up a cheap mixer & audio interface from eBay for under £100.
 
M

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
CHAOTROPIC said:
Ah, soz, I figured you already had an audio interface but wanted a good guitar sound.

Personally, I plug any instruments into a cheap mixer (Behringer Eurorack) & then straight into a USB audio interface (Tascam US-122), record straight into logic & then mess with it there. I'm sure you can pick up a cheap mixer & audio interface from eBay for under £100.
Click to expand...

What's the latency like with the Tascam?
 
CHAOTROPIC

CHAOTROPIC

on account
mistersloane said:
What's the latency like with the Tascam?
Click to expand...

You know what? I have no idea. I just play stuff in using direct monitoring & it works fine. Never had any latency problems whatsoever, but then I don't use a click track & never use any sequencing, aside from a loop pedal, sometimes.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
poetix said:
PodStudio GX. Cheap as chips, very low latency, comes with decent amp modelling software.
Click to expand...

OK, I'm a technical dunce. Bought this (and it looks great, thanks for the tip-off), and my guitar is feeding signal into the computer (the levels are moving on the PodFarm programme), but nothing can be heard from my regular computer speakers...
 
nomos

nomos

Administrator
no idea, but you might need to turn monitoring on, either on your device or in the software (or both). also make sure that you have your audio prefs in ableton set to take input from an external device.
 
hint

hint

party record with a siren
baboon2004 said:
OK, I'm a technical dunce. Bought this (and it looks great, thanks for the tip-off), and my guitar is feeding signal into the computer (the levels are moving on the PodFarm programme), but nothing can be heard from my regular computer speakers...
Click to expand...

Are you running it in standalone, or hosting it in a DAW like Ableton Live / Cubase / Logic?

If in standalone, it should be a simple matter of going into the Podfarm preferences and telling it which output / driver to use.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Thanks for the replies, sorry to be late in getting back to you.

The problem is a peculiar one - as the Line 6 gadget acts as an external soundcard, the speakers need to be plugged into this, and not into the hard drive soundcard.

So now I record into Ableton while plugging my speakers into the PodStudio, and plug the speakers into my internal soundcard to play it back. It's fine (love the PodFarm programme), but have yet to get a Y-cable to connect the speakers to both cards simultaneously (one needs to be connected to the auxiliary in, or something?).
 
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massrock

Well-known member
Are you on a Mac or a PC Baboon?

You should certainly be able to leave the PodStudio connected for all purposes. Most likely you need to change a setting in your operating system telling it what audio device to use by default. You shouldn't need to use the internal sound card.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
On a PC.

But if I have the PodStudio connected, then I can't hear anythign when I play back what I've recorded in Ableton, cos there's no line out coming from the computer soundcard. But you're saying that I can play back from Ableton using the PodStudio as soundcard, if I understand? Will check those settings...
 
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