New User Question

[DunklerVagabund]

I am going to order an Asus Eee 1000HE (Netbook) sometime soon, and run EeeBuntu Standard on it as my operating system. I will be attending college as a music major and really want to use Audacity for my recording projects. My dad uses Cubase Studio 4 and has a pretty elaborate home studio that he records full bands with. My question is, I am not really looking to record more than one track at a time, so I am thinking with a decent USB condenser mic and the setup I described I will be ok to produce decent sounding .Mp3's. Am I correct in assuming this or not? Does anyone here record acoustic music with Audacity? How does it compare with something like Cubase? Anyone using a netbook?

Thanks!

PS if you cant tell, I am not the hugest fan of windows...

[allencmcbride]

My understanding is that Audacity just captures the sound samples that the sound card gives it. Any basic audio recording utility would do the same, as long as it supports the sample rates/formats that your sound card can deliver (and Audacity has no trouble there). So all that matters for quality is the mic, the sound card, and the interface between the two. The software is irrelevant, as long as you're not trying to do anything fancy like recording multiple tracks at once. With simple mono or stereo input, the differences between Audacity vs. Cubase will be in what they can do with the audio after it's recorded. (I haven't used Cubase, so I don't have any insight beyond that.) --Allen

[DunklerVagabund]

What about running straight into the computer with no preamp interface and doing all the EQ and other things with software? Like say record vocals and acoustic guitar through a USB condesor mic straight into computer using Audacity?

[kozikowski]

<<<Like say record vocals and acoustic guitar through a USB condesor mic straight into computer using Audacity?>>>

Certainly. In that case, you're limited only by the technical limitations of the "microphone." I want to call it something different since it's a lot more than that, but that will have to do.

USB Microphone
http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/USB_Microphone.html

Be aware that a constant complaint with USB microphones is how to make them louder. Because you can't change the electrical volume ahead of the digital converter (its buried inside the microphone) they can't make the performance as loud as you're used to. Overload is fatal, so performances automatically come with one more production step than a regular microphone in a small sound mixer.

I hope you have a nice quiet computer because the longest microphone cord is the length of a USB cable--rarely over six feet.

Audacity will handle one USB microphone per computer. I don't know of any cheap USB microphone mixers.

You may be stuck with a less than satisfactory digital bit rate. My microphone in the above illustration only runs at that bit rate and depth -- barely up to quality audio (it's a communications microphone).

And there have been complaints of cheap USB condenser microphones that actually work worse than conventional analog microphones because of high background noise level right out of the manufacturer's packaging.

And there isn't squat you can do about it because it's all built-in.

Koz