Audacity Forum

Hi all,

I have been using Audacity for a while now, but it has always been for crappy, off-the-cuff rehearsal CDs for my singers (I'm a choral director). I would like to start improving the quality of my recordings, and also overdubbing myself so I can sing 4-part men's arrangements.

I am running Audacity (latest version I think) on an IBM ThinkPad with a 1.8GHZ Pentium processor, 2 GB RAM, XP Pro, and 150 GB hard drive. The sound card is the factory original (am I correct in assuming this is lousy for my purposes?). I'm using a Mackie mixing board and nice studio mics - KSM27.

Is the most important first step getting a better recording interface? I've seen the Berhinger (sp?) USB interfaces mentioned - is that something I should get? Is that actually a replacement for my current soundcard? Basically what I'm asking is - what is the weakest link in my audio chain? If I get a better interface, is my laptop up to the task otherwise?

Last question - when I overdub myself, it starts off being lined up, and gradually gets more and more off. Is this a crappy sound card issue that would be fixed by getting a nicer USB one? Is it latency (which I'm just beginning to understand)?

Thanks!
Dan Kreider

Can we assume you can listen to the Mackie with headphones and you have exactly the show you want to record?

I would have thought that the Lenovo machines would do better.....

Anyway, most Windows laptops will not connect directly to your Mackie. I couldn't find the spec for your particular IBM, but in general the connections are terrible on a good day because they're incompatible, not necessarily broken.

Yes, that internal sound card could be causing the show time drift as well. The show is record with one set of technical specifications and played back with a different one, slightly off. It's pretty common.

All these problems should vanish with an external USB sound card. The computer has to be powerful enough with clean, high speed USB connectors.

Singing to yourself generates other problems, so we need to see how you get on.

Koz

If you do consider an external soundcard, then have a look at this sticky thread which has reviews of external souncards that we know work well with Audacity: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=9477

WC

Thanks, that info is helpful.

I am connecting the mixer to my laptop from Main out (mono) to line in. What do you mean by the connections being incompatible? It works, it just doesn't sound great.

When I overdub, I have been plugging the headphones into the laptop line out and singing along with (so then I can't hear myself through the microphone, but I don't need to). If I had an external soundcard, would I run line out from the soundcard to Tape In on the mixer so everything is coming out of the mixer, and keep my headphones plugged into the mixer?

What other problems are you referring to when singing with yourself?

Thanks!
DAn

<<<Main out (mono) to line in.>>>

Is it Line-In? Really? Most laptops have mono microphone connections, not stereo Line-In. Rare laptops have both. Do you have both a pink and a blue connector?

Plugging a Powerful, Stereo, Line Level signal into a sensitive, delicate Mic-In usually results in significantly degenerated quality (usually garbage, sometimes not).

If the connections match, the quality should not be awful. Maybe slightly noisy during quiet passages.

What about the current setup sounds funny? Peak distortion? Noisy? Can you describe it, or I did it hit it already in the above comments?

Koz

Koz,

Well, I dunno. There is only one input - it's red. So I guess it's mono, eh? But I'm already taking a mono signal from the mixer, so it shouldn't matter, should it?

I don't know what you mean by the connections "matching." The sound is not bad - it just seems that the quality should be better considering the microphone I'm using. It does distort a little when it peaks. I DO have to cut the level waaaay back... ahh, because it's supposed to be mic-level, not line-level! Why didn't I think of that!! So an external sound card would fix that.

My main beef is with the delay during overdubbing. And it's not just a constant delay across the whole track - it varies. It will start out basically lined up, and by the end it's horribly off. So time shift doesn't help.

Thanks
Dan

<<<because it's supposed to be mic-level, not line-level! >>>

It's only a thousand to one mismatch. Do you have high tension power lines over your house? That's the difference between those and a flashlight battery.

You need to dig in the specifications of each device. That's why we posted them. I think most of them will provide a place to put Line-Level audio, left and right. That should also help a lot with the speed difference between record and playback since the relatively high quality electronics inside the USB device are doing all the work.

As far as overdubbing and creating your own Andrews Sisters or Mills Brothers performance, you are going to run out of Audacity 1.2 almost immediately. Audacity 1.3 has tools to fine-tune and adjust some delays associated with overdubbing production.

It's never going to come out perfect during the live performance. There will always be One Computer worth of delay no matter what you do and you will need post production to make it perfect. This process will be worse if your computer has to struggle with a fragmented hard drive or other speed problems.

Live Audio (and video) production isn't for wimps. The computer suddenly has to work in exactly real time with no delays to search for files on the hard drive or other housekeeping, maybe for the first time in its life.

Many computers go toes up when called on to do this and, of course, Audacity gets blamed for it.

Koz