Cheap, easy recording setup

alex1fly

alex1fly

Well-known member
I need an easy way to record riffs as they pop into my head. Here's what I have: MacBook with GarageBand, Line 6 Spider III (has a record out), and a PC with an Audigy 4 sound card. I'm not looking to make demos or professional recordings, just little 10-20 second mp3 clips of one or two tracks. I also have a "borrowed" version of Cool Edit Pro 2.0 for PC.

I tried going directly from my guitar to the Macbook, as well as the record out into the macbook for use with Garageband, and it sounded really, really, bad. Do I need some sort of recording interface?
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

I'm wondering about this as well. Can I just mic my amp and plug the mic into my computer straight, or do I need special software or a console?
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

You need some kind of guitar preamp and speaker simulator. Electric guitars must have speaker simulators.

I use a Vox Tonelab in a similar situation. Sounds awesome and really flexible.
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

The POD XT runs about 300 bucks... is this about how much I would expect to spend?

I mean, I really dig my LIne 6 Spider III, so I have been considering more Line 6 stuff since I'm not much of a purist.
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

Okay, I checked out the TonePort UX1 on musiciansfriend... 130 bucks, 18 amps... can anyone tell me a little more about this? It seems like what I'm looking for - some modelling, recording capabilities, and not a bad price. Is it easy to use? Ease of use a big deal for me - I like to just plug, play, and go.

Or other suggestions still... direct in to the computer just isn't cutting it for me anymore. I edit my requirements - I'd like to be able to eventually record full songs, but thats not a necessity.

Any tips or gear suggestions are greatly, greatly appreciated! Thanks everyone!
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

alex1fly said:
Okay, I checked out the TonePort UX1 on musiciansfriend... 130 bucks, 18 amps... can anyone tell me a little more about this? It seems like what I'm looking for - some modelling, recording capabilities, and not a bad price. Is it easy to use? Ease of use a big deal for me - I like to just plug, play, and go.

Or other suggestions still... direct in to the computer just isn't cutting it for me anymore. I edit my requirements - I'd like to be able to eventually record full songs, but thats not a necessity.

Any tips or gear suggestions are greatly, greatly appreciated! Thanks everyone!
Click to expand...

They're great, easy and very good sound.
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

mackie onyx satellite for hardware :D - firewire, sick on mac, great also on PC

guitar rig 2 or 3 are great guitar modellers,
ezdrummer's great for drums,
cakewalk sonar or cubase are good sequencers/multitrackers, but the onyx comes with traction!
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

cant he just use to line out on his line6 amp? any amp with a line out these days must have speaker emulation. my out is an XLR that i run into an audio buddy and then into the computer's mic in. sounds really awesome
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

rashayritto said:
cant he just use to line out on his line6 amp? any amp with a line out these days must have speaker emulation. my out is an XLR that i run into an audio buddy and then into the computer's mic in. sounds really awesome
Click to expand...

That's kind of what I'm wondering. It has a line out, but going straight from line out to my computer sounded like mad ass. Would something like your "audio buddy" be what I need?
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

going out the spider's line-out and running it through a DI box with a speaker sim (behringer's got one for 30 bones) would be OK. the one sim on the amp's line out (if present) is probably not that great (if it's like my flextone's), and adding a second one only helps. you could further apply a speaker sim in your computer program, but it wouldn't be super crucial. don't forget, when you run direct, you really need to play around with the settings - bass on the amp goes way down, treb and mid are often raised, gain comes down.

if you're just doing snippets, just plug right into the input (maybe using a imic USB soundcard, it's cheap) and apply an amp-n-cab sim on the mac. I don't know what garage band's capabilities are with respect to VSTs, but there's a lot of freem amp sims for the PC, so I would think there's a few for the mac out there too. I'll have to find out soon cause we're getting a mac. I might just drop the cash for Revalver for the MAC though, not sure yet.
 
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Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

I had a Spider III for a total of 3 days, then traded for a PODxt.

The spiders effects were useless, and it sounded really bad when recorded.
The PODxt definitely takes some tweaking, but can get decent results.
I imagine a UX1 would be similar, just more limited.
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

Yeah I guess I would like to be able to use a parametric EQ to tweak my distortion into something decent. I have some EQ pedals - can I use those w/ direct recording?
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

out from multi effect -> line in on PC -> audacity has always worked for me for that purpose. Only cost the price of the cable (already had for running MP3 player to cd in on multi for praticing)
Good enough to listen to on CD player (burned mp3 to audio CD)
Sounds decent
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

You will always have a certain sound quality if you use your internal soundcards on both machines, those are the weak links.
 
Re: Cheap, easy recording setup

innerdreamrecords.co said:
You will always have a certain sound quality if you use your internal soundcards on both machines, those are the weak links.
Click to expand...

There are good and bad onboard sounds and good and bad PCI soundcards. The DFI Lanparty boards, for example, carefully integrate a good soundchip, using a shielded module and other helpers.

Creative Labs on the other hand puts out some real junk all the time, and that's assuming you ever get a working driver from them.

Extra soundcard doesn't equal better quality. I went through a whole stack of cards before I found one that would record correctly.

Some guitar amplifier emulators have SPDIF out, then you can ignore the soundcard quality as long as it has (working) SPDIF in.
 
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