Audacity Forum

cwaugh18 wrote:Hey, could I use a preamp? If I were to increase my budget and buy a preamp for 150 bucks... and a microphone.... could I connect the preamp to my laptop via usb sound card and then connect my mic and guitar into the preamp? Then when i sing and play the guitar it should send a digital signal into my computer correct? Would audacity work for that?

should work fine
mike to one channel and guitar pickup to second one

i note in passing that this isan option i suggested earlier
that you gave me so much grief for mentioning

plug the guitar pickup into one channel
plug the mike into the other
some guitar sound will get into the mike channel
but you could , in theory, remove it by subtracting the otehr channel

if you mike a cabinet up close
and play away from it
with a close mike on the voice
you will get some leakage from each into the other channel
but not enough to be a problem

cwaugh18 wrote:Will Windows 7 recognize my preamp as a recording device

Obviously none of us have paid much attention to the link I posted earlier
Here's the link again: http://www.artproaudio.com/products.asp ... =13&id=132
The first line says "*** Windows 7 Users - Please read this FAQ ***"
That line is a click-able link.

I don't want to record Skype... I want to use the preamp to play my guitar for my friend over Skype. I also want to use it to record onto my laptop using some kind of recording software. Audacity if it works. I've never seen anything not compatible with windows 7 if it works on Windows at all. Are all you guys Mac fans?

-Chris

cwaugh18 wrote:I've never seen anything not compatible with windows 7 if it works on Windows at all.

I'm not really wanting to get involved in this part of the discussion, but we've seen a lot of sound card driver problems on Windows 7, though I'm not sure that it is particularly relevant to USB sound cards (other than the issue highlighted on the ART web site). The "big number one problem" is that support for "Stereo Mix" has been dropped on very many (internal) sound cards. It's not totally clear if this is because of faulty/incomplete drivers, or whether it is a deliberate policy due to concerns over DRM. The evidence would suggest that it is a bit of both.

There was a similar situation when Vista was first released, because, as with Win 7, the technical details required by the hardware manufacturers were not available until a very short time before the OS was released. This meant that manufacturers had to rush out drivers for their sound cards within a very tight time scale. Not surprisingly, the initial drivers frequently had problems. Hardware drivers are not generally transferable from one version of Windows to another. There are significant differences between the sound systems on XP / Vista / Win 7, which has required new drivers to be written from scratch when the later version of Windows was released. Manufacturers do not tend to write new drivers for hardware that is no-longer in production.

The situation for USB devices tends to be different in that most USB sound cards are designed to work with generic Windows drivers, so they should (and in most cases they are) plug & play. The main problem for users of USB drivers seems to be that Windows 7 has default settings that frequently cause the input to be mono, and the recording level to be massively too loud or too quiet. (read the link on the ART web site for how to fix that). The other problem is that unlike XP where the recording settings were usually quite accessible, in Windows 7 many of the important settings are buried in the Windows Control Panel. I think the assumption is that people no longer make their own recordings and just download MP3s from Amazon, which for the vast majority of users is probably true.

(My main OS is Linux, though I also use XP and Vista, and I've used Windows since 3.1).

Here's the guitar test...
http://www.kozco.com/tech/MicTests/Logi ... icTest.wav

And here's a picture of the "studio"...
http://www.kozco.com/tech/MicTests/Logi ... gitech.jpg

I'm the antidote to Bruno.

Koz

Have a go at effects. I imagine anyone should be able to get rid of that last little hiss and since it's predominantly a vocal microphone, it will have a presence haystack around 3K or 4K and a drooping bass.

I just plugged it in and selected it in the input system preferences and Audacity. The file is 44100, and 32-floating mono WAV.. That's the raw file.

I wonder how many people wondered what the frog I was doing in the exec conference room with almost no lights on (thou shalt have no noisy lights) at 1930.

Koz

Yes I can do significantly better after getting rid of the haystack and gently boosting down to 100 and then drop. However, Noise Gate doesn't seem to like this show file at all. It causes significant damage and it's asymmetrical.

It wouldn't take much work. If the hash in the -50 range drooped to -60 that would take care of the noise.

I will admit to doing one thing many people can't do. So far, and after a lot of looking, this is the quietest room in the building. There is little or no air conditioning noise and because of the construction of the facility, this room has nothing on top but gravel and blue sky. No pounding pumps. It's not obvious how quiet it is until I leave.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:Here's the guitar test...

Well you can't complain at that for under $20.
The noise level is low enough to respond well to Noise Removal, then a bit of Eq to bring the bass up.
The frequency response is obviously designed for speech, but as long as you don't need any frequency extremes it does a remarkably good job for the price. (the bass rolls off sharply at about 100 Hz, so there's no way that anyone is going to be able to record low bass with it).

kozikowski wrote:I'm the antidote to Bruno.

(OK, I'll not comment on the playing, other than to say it's a similar standard to my guitar playing).

Here's the sample after some noise removal and Eq.

Two items:

-- You should get rid of the haystack at the top, too.
This is one classic example. It makes the guitar sound much more pleasant without the strident vocal boost. I would pull the stack down frequency a bit and take more out. More 3K and less 10K. Of course, none of this is applicable if the microphone is being used live. Then you get what I got.

I own one of these and the company owns one. That one is in a videoconference setup in San Clemente, CA. A digital supervisor uses it nightly to talk down her teams in the other offices. Her's started out being mine. I loaned it to her for testing and it's still there. We just left it there and the company bought me the one I have.

-- How come the Noise Gate failed? I like the way that tool works -- gently without having to worry about oddball sound quality damage. Not this time. It caused very serious distortion to the waveform.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:How come the Noise Gate failed?

I don't know, but if you post what settings you used I'll check it out. (I presume the sound sample that you posted is the one to test on?)