sounds really, really good.

Whistle
1

I assume that most of you have computers at home, that are of decent quality. how else would you be here using this forum.

Some of you may already know this, but for anyone interested in adding a really nice and warm reverb to your whistling while you practice or just play around, the sound blaster sound card have real time effects that you can add.

for this, (and this is the biggest catch/cost) you need a half ecent microphone, and a sound blaser sound card (sound blaster live or better)

you can get sound blaster live for around $50 (canadian) nowadays, and you can get a decent enough mic that’ll do the trick for about the same.
but the more you spend on a mic, the more better sound you’ll get, obviously.

with sound blaster you can add many effects to whatever come out from your speakers; flanger, chorus, pitch changers, and most imprtantly reverb. adn you can customize it to sound how you like. cavernish, like a large concert hall, auditorium (these are all pre-sets).

I have rally nice sennheiser headphones, and a very nice studio projects microphone, and i find that there are few greater things in life than singing, playing guitar, pan flute, Irish whistle, or whatever, into the mic with headphones on and having it sound like you are playing in a concert hall.

just some advice, if you’re looking to spend a few erxtra dollars, or if you already have good speaker, or soundblaster, or a mic setup to your computer.

it beats buying thousands of dollars worth of pro recording gear.

onward and upward,

quentez

2

Does anyone have a decent mic that can be used with a Mac Powerbook G4 (titanium)? The internal mic is really pretty decent, but I’d like to use something that at least has a cord. I got a MacAlly iMic, but it has squat for gain, and no matter where I am, it sounds as though the sound is far away, and the sound is pretty thin.

TIA, Charlie

3

I’m really happy with the SoundBlaster 2 Audigy sound card on my computer. It has a Creative Wave program that works better than Goldwave. I hooked my Sure 57 mike into a pre amp and then into the soundcard. What I use it for primarily so far is just to record myself playing whistle for playback and review. The playback is so superior to that on my Sony cassette recorder. I can also save and convert to MP3, wav etc. and send.
Lot’s of other capabilities I haven’t gotten to yet. Thanks for the heads up.

Regards,

PhilO

4

I use semi-pro quality recording equipment in my home studio but haven’t yet got into recording direct to computer. That’s a bit of a nuisance when it comes to recording sound files to share as many people do here. Also friends who’ve tried to turn my 16bit CD mixes into mp3s have noticed a marked and disturbing drop off in quality after conversion, I’m not sure why. I’d be very intrerested if anybody can guess why this happens.

One thing that puzzles me is why someone would want to record themselves playing and/or singing without a decent mic. Whether the recording is to share or just for the purpose of self analysis and criticism, you need decent sound reproduction to get an accurate picture.

Oh, BTW, when it comes to using effects I rarely use anything but a small amount of room reverb on any accoustic instrument or voice. I use panning and equalisation a lot to get separation and clarity. I really only use enough reverb to restore what you would get if you played in a room with good warm accoustics since I tend to dampen the natural reverb as much as possible when recording as any sound engineer would. Each to their own though.

5

The Apple Store (http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore/ type “microphone” in the search box) has a Logitech USB desktop mic, but I don’t know how good it is. I am tempted to try one, though.

6

What bit rate are they converting to? Also, if there’s a lot of high-frequency information, that’s where MP3 is weakest. What artifacts are you noticing?

Not ANY sound engineer! Although I agree with using very little artificial reverb (the old “playing in a cave” effect gets old fast) getting a little natural reverb when recording can be very effective, if you control it correctly. It’s especially useful if you’re recording all the instruments at once, which also gives a much more “live,” cohesive feel, and helps the intereaction and energy of the musicians.

Or another trick I love is to get a “dry” signal from each instrument (close-miking it in a fairly dead space), but then using an “ambient mic” far away in a more reverberant space simultaneously. Then you can mix in as much of the natural reverb as you want, although you have to time-shift it back a bit so you get reverb, not echo, which s a lot easier to do on a computer. Or you can record “dry,” and then play the “dry” sound over nice speakers in a lively room, record the reverb that way, and then drop it into the mix – in my opinion, it’s a lot less “sterile” than artificial reverb.

7

Thanks for the tips. I actually don’t know the answers to your questions. I haven’t tried it myself and the freinds who’ve tried on my behalf haven’t played teh results back to me. I’ll check it out.

Of course, you’re right. I haven’t got into the use of ambient mics yet because my equipment favours direct to desk recording and it’s easiest recording accoustic instruments one by one. This isn’t just a matter of avoiding bleeding; I only have two unbalanced inputs for mics which makes recording several instruments at once hard if you subsequently want to edit them separately. Yes, I know that labels like Blue Note recorded whole bands with supposedly cruder equipment and got amazing results, but I think their methods would have taken a lot of refining, a lot of experience and considerable luck with studio accoustics. I wonder, too, if they could be duplicated with digital equipment.