Using a Kaoss Pad with Audacity

Special Interest Groups Recording Equipment
1

Hey all,

I’m fairly new to audio Audacity / synth usage / Audacity in general. Thing is, I’ve got this new Korg “KP3” Kaoss Pad, and it’s a nifty piece of equipment. In addition to its sampling and synth capabilities it is a very useful effects processor. At this point I’m greatly enjoying running my mp3 player through it and manipulating my songs. The thing is that when I make a sound I really like with the Kaoss Pad I have no means of recording it for posterity. I was hoping that Audacity would be able to help me out in that regard. The KP3 is USB-capable but I’m not entirely sure it is capable of working with Audacity as an audio input. I could take the needlessly long way out and route the headphone output from the KP3 into the microphone input on my computer, but I was hoping there would be a more intuitive way of going about it.

If anybody has any idea of how I could work this out, I would love to hear them! Thanks!

(by the by, I am running with a 1.3x version of Audacity at the moment, if that makes any difference)

2

That is basically the direction you need to look, except that the headphone output will overload the microphone input. You need to use “Line” out from the Kaoss pad, to “Line in” of your sound card.

If you are using a laptop PC, you probably do not have a “line in” socket, in which case you may be able to get it to work through the microphone socket (though it may distort and may be in mono and is far from ideal as there is a risk of destroying the microphone input). USB sound cards with line level inputs are available from as little as about $40 new.