I am trying to record audio from my digital piano, Yamaha P-80. Now I have an audio cable that can be connected to the line-out connections of the piano, and on the other end it has a 3.5mm audio jack. So I connected this cable to my laptop, which sadly has only a combined headphone/microphone audio jack, which is apparently not a line-in if I am right. So I played a track on my piano, and tried to record it using the microphone option in audacity (version 2.0.5). However, this option uses the in-build microphone of the laptop, apparently. I also tried other recording options in audacity, like microsoft sound mapper and stereo mix, but that also didn’t work. So I checked some system settings of my laptop (windows 8.1), and I see that the sound from the piano is seen as speaker sound:
I tried to find something in the windows settings that could help me, I checked the internet and the forum here, but still I cannot record anything from my piano using this cable. Am I doing something wrong or is it just impossible to record audio from a digital piano in this way?
Combined headphones/mic jacks are usually TRRS. Even if you have an adaptor or suitable cable to connect to it, it will probably distort a line level signal from a keyboard.
Recording the keyboard with the internal microphone will give terrible quality.
Look on the “Recording” tab of Windows “Sound” instead of the “Playback” tab. Right-click in empty space, choose “Show disabled devices” then right-click again and check “Show Disconnected Devices”. With the cable connected, does that give you an input device for the external mic input? If so, right-click over it and choose “Enable”.
Then restart Audacity and choose that input in Device Toolbar .
You can only record the cable from the speakers if on the “Recording” tab, you right-click over the external mic input, then choose “Properties”, then if there is a “Listen” tab, set the mic input to play through the “Speakers” device and record using Stereo Mix. That should give slightly worse quality than recording the input directly.
Hmm, the recording tab only gives me Stereo Mix and the regular microphone, it doesn’t say anything about an external microphone input. It does show disabled and disconnected devices, so it mainly seems that it just does not recognise that there is a cable from the piano to the computer and when I try the stereo mix, I only get a rather annoying beep. So it’s kinda weird, since a guy from the shop assured me that I really didn’t need anything else to record the piano.
So apart from the USB thing there are no other solutions? Cuz then I would rather buy a condenser microphone I think, that’s cheaper than such a device…
Is it a TRRS (four-position) connector that only accepts special headsets and if so have you actually got a TRRS plug or adaptor? You can check in your computer Manual about what type of connector it is and how to make it recognise an input. If you don’t have a Manual, search for “ manual” online.
You would have to make the computer recognise the input in the first place and then use “Listen” to send it to Speakers before stereo mix could record it.
Please look online. You did not give your computer details so we cannot do it for you.
Yes you could use a USB microphone to record acoustically. If you look in the P-80 manual you will see that it will send MIDI output over USB. You could use other software to record that MIDI output, or the P-80 has its own built-in recorder (which appears to be MIDI format, maximum 10000 notes).
and when I try the stereo mix, I only get a rather annoying beep. So it’s kinda weird, since a guy from the shop assured me that I really didn’t need anything else to record the piano.