I picked up a 6' male to male wire (both ends are the small end protruding that you'd stick into a cd player for example) for 7 bucks or so at Future Shop yesterday. I went home and recorded some stuff onto my computer directly from guitar and bass, and I found that a lot of E and A string stuff that was played was coming through very buzzy and crap sounding, but it doesn't come through the amp like that (I also run my bass through an ME-50b if that matters).
I can alter the sound a little bit of the low end stuff in the program I use (n-Track got it for free), but the quality of the recording suffers a little bit.

Do I need a better program, better wire, better tone, better guitar/bass (was using my brother's 7yo strat and my 1.5-2 yo StingrayHH. Does it come from low action?

Sorry if this has been covered a lot before, this is my first venture into this forum.

like, how did you record 'directly' to your computer? Describe the chain and the software used.

my first guess is that you need is a preamp.

FYI, Most cables are male to male...

Uhh.. I have a little jack thing that I plug the one end into and plug that into my guitar. Like what the end of any patch chord looks like, that's what the little jack thing looks like.

Then I plugged directly into the microphone slot of my computer with the other end.

The program I'm using is n-Track Studio and I dunno. I just hit record and started playing from there.

I don't quite recall how my friend and I figured out how to do it 2 years ago which is the problem.

When you say microphone slot of your computer, I'm going to assume that the little 1/8" stereo mini jack on the sound card.

You need a preamp. the signal that comes out of your bass is not mic level and it's not balanced. You can record the way you are doing it but it's going to sound like crap (as you've noticed).

So preamp... do you have a bass amp? these usually have a line-out (or you can use the effects send for a line level out if you have that). Try running from that to the line-in (not mic-in) on your computer and see how that goes.

Good luck.

I'll give it a whirl when I get home from work. Thanks :)

Plug into line-in!

Plug into line-in!

Well, that depends. If I use the Mic input, I have an option to boost the signal in the advanced properties, which is an onboard preamp built into the soundcard. It's not a great one, but it's okay. Line In expects a stero input and expects it to be powered. You can plug mono in and generally get it one channel okay and then just record it as mono.

Well, that depends. If I use the Mic input, I have an option to boost the signal in the advanced properties, which is an onboard preamp built into the soundcard. It's not a great one, but it's okay. Line In expects a stereo input and expects it to be powered. You can plug mono in and generally get it one channel okay and then just record it as mono.
Don't boost! My experience is that a guitar or bass has plenty of level for the mic input. Generally when I go direct into my computer I'll use the mic in (all my laptop has) without the +20 dB boost and with the recording level (not the same as the mic play-through level!) as low as it goes. Anything else clips.

I don't have much (any) tonal control when I do this, but it sounds just fine for a quick recording. This is on the laptop. I recall my Soundblaster Live! sounding worse, but I haven't compared them lately.