I really need help, please! What lead do I need and which ports should I use to make a recording directly from my keyboard (Roland FP30) to my laptop running Windows 11 (HP 15s eq). ? I’ve tried various leads that I have in various ports and nothing is showing up in Audio setup-recording. Any help very, very gratefully received. Donna
You need a desktop/tower computer with a regular soundcard and line-in (usually color coded blue) or you need a USB audio interface with line inputs. (The Behringer UCA202 is popular and relatively inexpensive.)
You can connect line-out (like would go to an amplifier) or a headphone-out to line-in (with whatever cables/adapters match your keyboard and interface).
The microphone input on a laptop can “work” but a line/headphone signal is about 100 times stronger than a microphone signal so it’s “wrong” and you won’t get good quality. And if your laptop has a mic/headphone combo jack, it needs a TRRS plug (4 contacts) to make the microphone connection.
Sometimes the USB connection works with MIDI and audio but I’m pretty sure yours is only MIDI. (Audacity is not a MIDI application.)
Thank you so much. I am confused because I manged to do it with my old laptop but not this new one. I can’t remember if i used an external amp and took a lead off that. But I only have a phones port on the new one whereas the other had a line-in port next to it.
It’s a combination headphone/microphone jack. A regular plug will work with headphones but the microphone connection needs a TRRS plug.
Line inputs are rare on laptops, but like I said the mic input should “work”. But it’s mono and you probably won’t get the best quality.
I don’t know if your keyboard is mono or stereo. The headphone connection will be “stereo” for sound in both ears but the sound could be “mono” (same in both ears) or stereo (different in each ear).
Hi, DVDdoug,
Thank you so much for taking the time to help! Please excuse my question, but as you see, I’m not very good at the tekkie side of things!
So… this cable has a jack which goes into my laptop’s microphone port. The two coloured leads… where do they go? My keyboard has a computer lead from a square USB that I plug into my laptop when I’m composing in Score Cloud using midi. Audacity, as you said doesn’t support midi, so the lead isn’t recognised.
Aaaaghhhhh!!!
The example I linked to? The pink one is the microphone input. The pink one connects to your computer. Whatever cable/plug you were using on your old computer should work with that.
You can optionally connect headphones to the green one. But there will be latency (delay) if you are monitoring yourself through the computer.
This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.