Cool Edit and Sound card

[nick]

Hi everyone. I've been playing guitar for years and someone has give me Cool Edit Pro software for my PC (or laptop). Can anyone give me guidance on what sound card or anything I'll need to be able to plug my guitar in and create music - and also the best source for these products even if it's Ebay. I've never even looked at mixers or sound cards so I'm a complete novice. Ideally I'd like this on my laptop so it's separate from all other home stuff but it's not critical. Any help would be very much appreciated keeping in mind I don't have much of a budget so I wont be buying the best gear just yet.

Cheers

Nick

[jmail]

If your computer has a sound card, you *could* use it, to start with, and get your feet wet. If you have an acoustic guitar, you'd need a microphone and pre-amp. Some older tape decks have microphone inputs, and could be used as a "pre-amp" (since that's what it is...) If you have an electric guitar, you need a pre-amp. Now, guitar amps (some of them, that is...) sometimes have "Line-Out" jacks, that can be used to get into the computer. You'd need a "converter" cable (or an adapter), in order to go from the 1/4" jack of the amp, to the 1/8" mini-jack of the computer. If you use what some refer to as a "mono" mini-plug, the sound will only come in on one side of the sound card. But that's no trouble, if your software has a pan control. A microphone, of course, can also be used to record the amp output with. You will most likely soon outgrow the setup, and start looking for something "better"...

For software, you could try-out Kristal Audio Engine (http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/) and/or Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/), which are just two of several decent freeware programs. You might also be able to find some plug-ins to use at www.KVRaudio.com A trip to the neighborhood public library, for a search of reading material, such as "Home Recording for Musicians for Dummies" and others of its ilk, is recommended, also. As always, remember, this is supposed to be fun...

Post back with any more questions or concerns, or further details of what you have (computer & gear-wise), and what you want to try to do, such as "I'm a lone-wolf, and will only be recording myself for now, however, I do expect a couple of friends over every once in a while, and they'll want to record also." or "Our band's got like a half-dozen original songs almost down cold & finished, and I want to make a demo to try to sell ourselves professionally. I'll need at least 8 inputs, in order to do the drums with"...

[GZsound]

Hi everyone. I've been playing guitar for years and someone has give me Cool Edit Pro software for my PC (or laptop). Can anyone give me guidance on what sound card or anything I'll need to be able to plug my guitar in and create music - and also the best source for these products even if it's Ebay. I've never even looked at mixers or sound cards so I'm a complete novice. Ideally I'd like this on my laptop so it's separate from all other home stuff but it's not critical. Any help would be very much appreciated keeping in mind I don't have much of a budget so I wont be buying the best gear just yet.

Cheers

Nick

The odds are you already have a sound card in your computer. When you say you need to "plug my guitar in and make music", does that mean you have an electric guitar and you simply want to plug the guitar cord into your computer and hit "record"? Normally that would not sound very good, or at least as good as putting a mic in front of your amp.

If you have an acoustic guitar, you need a mic, a mic preamp, etc. to get the signal to line level that will work in your soundcard. You may have a "mic" input to your soundcard, but it would be high impedance and that means you need to get a Radio Shack computer mic.. uugh.

You most likely have a "line in" on your laptop soundcard. You could buy an inexpensive mixer from Behringer, Yamaha, Samson, Soundcraft, etc. and take the "line out" of the mixer into the "line in" of the soundcard and hit "record"..

Personally, I think you should buy an inexpensive mixer, buy a USB interface and then pick up a decent microphone or two and use your Cool Edit software to record multiple tracks.