![]() ![]() This can be good for quick recordings of groups, including live music situations, but they're expensive and not as good on the digital side as the dedicated interfaces.Ī set of studio reference monitors. ![]() You can do much better, but you can also do much worse, and for the price it's excellent in features and sound quality it's basically an outboard sound card, with hookups for two mics or line sources, a MIDI source like a keyboard or drumpad, and up to four output channels, two of which can be volume-controlled directly from the unit, as can a pair of headphones and the mix they receive between playback from the computer and the direct inputs.įor more inputs at one time, you start getting into the range of USB-capable mixers, like the Allen & Heath ZED series, which will do a mixdown of whatever you have connected, creating a stereo input to the computer. ![]() On my desk at home right now is the Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which I arrived at after much research on features and transparency versus cost. Better yet, invest further in a USB, Firewire or Thunderbolt audio interface that has the ADC built in and sends the digital signal directly to the OS. You will at least need a mic preamp designed to accept an XLR input, that will boost the gain to line-in levels that the sound card can then convert to digital. The mic input on most is designed for a computer microphone, which has an unbalanced signal with power sent over the "ring" terminal of the plug to the mic's electret. Computer sound cards, no matter how good, usually can't take an XLR input. You can buy these in a "Studio Essentials" kit including shockmount and breathscreen for about $400.Ī good "interface" to your computer or digital recorder. LDCs as a rule don't handle "off-axis" sources as well as SDCs do, and they don't respond as quickly to transients, so they're not as faithful on things like drums and "percussive strings" like guitar and piano, but they do work for these sources, and they're excellent for vocals, bowed strings, and ambient setups capturing more room tone. My current faves for acoustic guitar on a budget are the Rode M5 matched pair of small-diaphragm condensers they have the fast response you need to capture the fine detail of an acoustic guitar's sound, and they're half the price of Rode's flagship NT5 pair (the go-to for many, unless you have the money for a $1600 Neumann KM184 matched pair), while only being noticeably inferior at the extremes of their performance envelope (a little more self-noise, a little less sensitivity and max SPL).įor a do-it-all microphone, check out the Rode NT2a it's a multi-pattern large-diaphragm condenser, good for vocals, guitar, just about any single source you want to point it at. It'll work for guitar, but I recommend a condenser especially in a studio environment.įor condensers, which are best for moderate-volume instruments and high-detail studio vocals work, they run all over. I would start looking around the $100/mic range for a dynamic mic, with the SM57 being a mainstay for high-gain sources like speaker cabinets, horns and mid-pitch drums, and not bad for vocals (the SM58 is more vocals-oriented, with a "mid-hump" in the 2kHz-6kHz range to emphasize diction). You don't need a Neumann, but that $15 Radio Shack desktop mic ain't gonna cut it either. You will never get a natural sound out of the piezo element of your guitar alone even the best ones sound plastic-y. The absolute essentials for home studio recording are:Ī good mic. If you decide you need something more or different, you can sell it and buy a different one later. Reviews will generally mention this.īuying audio hardware is kind of like buying guitars - you probably won't get exactly the right one the first time, but you'll probably get one that's plenty good to use while you get used to what your personal needs and preferences are. There aren't a lot of "absolute crap" devices out there for simple home recording, save for the occasional device whose drivers are so bad they crash. Specific product recommendations aren't that helpful since the market changes every year or so, but you can search any online music retailer and sort by price, find something that looks like it'll work for you, and then check out reviews online. In general you'll plug your mic's XLR cable into the interface, which then plugs into the computer. Many audio interfaces have USB connections and should work with Audacity. The "USB adapters" that you've seen are simple audio interfaces. At a basic level, you need an audio interface, AKA something to get the audio into your computer and, for acoustic guitar (or for recording the sound of an electric guitar amp/cabinet), you'll need a microphone of some kind. ![]()
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