Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with USB and recording

What hardware do I need for recording and live mixing?

crookedneighbor — Fri, 04 May 2012 07:05:12 -0800

I need a USB interface to connect 2 mics, a midi keyboard, and an ipod to a computer, for both live mixing and recording. Hope? I have: a mac (desktop and laptop), two mics, a midi keyboard, a piano, and a singer. I want a way to connect all that to my computer for recording, and (ideally) for live performance as well. What software and hardware am I missing?

For recording, one track at a time is fine. My guess is I need something like these USB interfaces. And for live performance, I heard that Apple's Mainstage app was good. Garage band can probably handle my recording needs.

This previous question was helpful, but what's the difference between a $30 and a $500 USB audio interface? Will I notice?

I'd like to do this for under $1000 if possible.

Connecting Multiple USB Microphones to a Mac Laptop

Jamesonian — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 09:33:49 -0800

I need to find the best way to connect more than one microphone (probably two but it could be up to four) to a Mac laptop. I don't need studio quality but will be capturing voices and I'd like them to sound decent. The signal from the mics would need to be seen by Flash, for teleconferencing, and by the basic Apple OS applications (Quicktime, Garage Band, etc.) Is it possible to connect more than one USB microphone at a time, perhaps through a hub? If not, is there a simple external digital mixer that I can use? Is there an on-line store that specializes in this type of audio? And is the a wireless USB option?

Windows XP USB soundcard?

facetious — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 17:23:41 -0800

I want to record LP's using a Windows XP external soundcard. I've searched AskMe, and I've found recommendations for external soundcards for music production & recording, but I think this might be different (?). I just got a Pro-Ject Debut III turntable with a native USB output. I'm not happy with the results I get plugging it into my Win XP SP3 laptop and using the onboard SoundMax soundcard. Can anyone recommend an alternative setup? I'm envisioning an external USB soundcard with some software that's well suited to making good-quality WAV or FLAC recordings of LP input via USB. Any clues?

hopin' mic

threeants — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 10:19:00 -0800

All I want to do is record from my microphone to Audacity. Help! M-Audio Producer USB mike. I got a microphone. It is an M-Audio Producer USB mike which plugs into the computer by USB. Unfortunately, it performs very erratically. Oftentimes, it will record fine, but I can only play it back through the headphone jack in the mike, and then when I unplug the USB, the file is unplayable; Audacity gives me an error message! Now it's being even weirder; when I plug it in it will either record nothing, or record through my internal laptop microphone, which is not what I want. And I'm afraid I've randomly mucked around a bunch with my preferences in Audacity and my Devices settings in my Control Panel, and now it's all messed up.

Help please! Thanks.

USB 2.0 for audio. Does it matter?

lumpenprole — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:07:01 -0800

Trying to buy a mixer with a usb interface. Is 2.0 that much better than 1.0? I'm trying to get a better setup for recording a podcast I'm working on. I've been running a couple usb headsets right into my laptop running audacity.

In short, it sucks. No amount of high pass filter can fix how crappy it sounds. Right now I'm shopping for a small mixer than I can run into the laptop instead.

I've been looking at ones with a usb interface so I don't have to buy two things, and found some cheap ones that are cheap because they are 1.0 and not 2.0. Well, does that matter? Isn't realtime, realtime?

Guitar center tried to sell me a $250 usb interface with 6 mic ins so that I would multitrack it and use audacity as the mixer. Is this a better idea?

Price is really a factor here, so don't tell me I need a $500 rig because it's not going to happen.

Full deluxe duplex

jonathanbell — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 06:30:26 -0800

A computer recording question. What will I need to turn a modern desktop PC into a multitrack studio? I'm looking at buying a new desktop, but everything seems to come with onboard sound (or in some cases not even specifying a soundcard at all). My old computer (2004) was a Dell Dimension 8300. I had to buy a Soundblaster Audigy XS2 in order to do what I understand is 'full-duplex recording' - recording and listening at the same time. After a few years latency problems crept in and were unresolvable, so I haven't really dabbled at all in the meantime.

My question is this; straight out the box, will a desktop like a Dell XPS have this capability? There seems to be something called 'THX TruStudio PC' included with these systems. Is that a soundcard? I'm assuming that given six years have passed my old Audigy XS won't play nicely with a new Windows 7 box, so if a new external USB soundcard is required, what does anyone recommend. I like the look of both the Steinberg CI or the Alesis IO, but are these even soundcards? I am completely confused by the whole process, but any way forwards that cuts down on wire spaghetti (and gives me a compact unit I can also use with my laptop) would be brilliant. Thank you in advance.

How do I record TV programmes using new fangled equipment?

mairuzu — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 05:19:40 -0800

I want to start recording TV programmes at home to use at school, but I haven't used any kind of TV recording equipment since VHS tapes. Ideally what I want to be able to do is record TV programmes from a Freesat box (including iplayer programmes) onto a USB external HDD. Do standard freesat HDD recorders allow you to transfer files to other devices? Or should I be looking at DVD recorders?

All-in-one freesat / DVD recorders look expensive - are there any compatibility issues recording HD programmes onto standard DVD?

Any brand recommendations / avoidance advice?

BTW I'm in the UK.

Any help gratefully received.

Iron Maiden never had this problem.

Schlimmbesserung — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:03:56 -0800

Help this tech-impaired rock star record face-melting multi-layered music on his computer! I've got the basic equipment: my precious Pod X3 with guitar and vocal mic plugged in, a reasonably-mighty laptop (dual 2.0gHz and two gigs of RAM) running Audacity, and the came-with-the-Pod USB cable connecting it all. There's just one problem: massive, tears-inducing lag. Click track or not, everything I do gets recorded about a quarter- or half-second late, which makes any kind of tight layering downright impossible.

I'm brand new at this style of recording, and a hopeless computer user in general, so I bet I'm missing something painfully obvious here. Please be gentle, o hive mind, but help me unleash the rock!

USB audio latency problems?

waxbanks — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:28:51 -0800

How big a problem is USB microphone latency for multitrack musical recording? i.e. How difficult will it be to do tight vocal overdubs with a straight-to-USB mic? What about with a mic->XLR->USB interface->Mac setup? I'm home-studio shopping, starting with a mic; I like the sound (and especially the price!) of the Samson C01U/C01, the former a USB mic, the latter a standard XLR-out mic. I'm going to do vocal/acoustic overdubs in Garageband/Logic on my Mac, and some MIDI nonsense. I gather that I won't be able to directly monitor my vocal performances without a USB/FireWire interface, as USB mic->Garageband->headphones monitoring will result in a maddening latency/echo effect. With a USB/FireWire interface I'll be able to monitor my own performance ('sidetone') before it's sent to the Mac, so that's OK.

So what I'm seeking is reassurance that, all else being equal, I'll be able to synchronize performance through USB audio devices (mics interfaces) as easily as through a FireWire interface. What I'm afraid of is that I'll make a recording, overdub a track, and then have to tweak the overdubbed track some number of milliseconds because the USB cable slowed my musicthaumaturgy down.

Bonus question: are the wicked-cheap Behringer mixers any good?

Side note: as happened with the Internet around 1993-95, the home studio market and discursive realm seems to be flooding with idiots uninterested in learning the technical ins-n-outs required to do a task up right. I hope/think I'm not that; I'd like to become proficient in home recording and audio-tweaking, given time and sufficient income. But I'm starting at rock bottom here, and still getting a sense of how serious these technical requirements of this pastime are, so please bear with me.

Is live-monitoring a USB mic in Audition 1.5 possible?

cortex — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 12:21:19 -0800

Live monitoring a USB mic in Adobe Audition 1.5: can it be done, or not? I'm married to Audition 1.5, and I've been getting along very well with that and a Fast Track USB outboard audio interface. However, I'd love to simplify my kitchen-table setup for the days when I want to start recording now, not in the five minutes it takes to set up my condenser mic and my mixer to power it and the outboard box to feed it into. Current set up works like a dream, but I want to be able to do quick work sometimes without having to do more set-up than plugging in a mic.

So I picked up a Samson C01U on a lark yesterday, and while the mic sounds fine, I find that I can't monitor it live in Audition—no mic sound back into my headphones whatsoever during recording or idle time. Is there some way, either within Audition or with an additional external app, to get this monitoring happening when I'm working in Audition?

(The mic shipped with a copy of Sonar LE, which, along with the ASIO4ALL driver, shows that it can be done in general, though out of the box the monitoring is still noticeably laggy and full of pops to boot—I suppose that might be a matter of buffer-management, but it's all moot if I can't hear it when I'm in Audition. This previous question has some good discussion of the general situation, but not Audition; this one hits up latency stuff as well, but again, no dice for Audition specifically.)

Portable HDs with USB-To-Go support.

beowulf573 — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 05:57:01 -0800

Looking for a portable hard drive with USB-To-Go support and thumbdrive compatibility. Any suggestions? I'm going to a weeklong music workshop next month and before I've used a portable Minidisc recorder. Instead this year I'd like to use my iRiver ifp-799 because I can record these directly as mp3 simply copy the files to my PC. However, I only about a days worth of memory and would like find a portable hard drive that I could use to archive the days recordings each night without having to bring a laptop with me.

Are there any portable hard drives that support USB-To-Go (one click copy) from not only media like compact flash and SD but also a USB memory stick? There's a firmware hack that allows the IFP-799 to appear as a USB mass storage device.