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Connecting a Bass to your computer

A

Acrimonus

Jan 18, 2010
57
0
#1
This isn't so much a question of as to how, since I already know that, but there were certain things I did before that I have come to learn were wrong.

I connected my headphone out to my line in on my sound card, that was wrong apparently, and could have possibly damaged my sound card due to the amount of power coming out of the headphone jack (the amp was a 200W amp). How extensive do you think the damage would have been? It would have been used that way for no more than two days and only an hour or two each day.

I also connected my bass directly to my sound card via both line in and mic in using a quarter inch to eighth inch adapter but apparently this was also wrong because a bass has a high impedance output and the line in is a low impedance input. This also makes sense since I had to turn my system volume up to nearly maximum and turn down the music player volume to be able to hear the bass.

So the solution is a DI box (since my amp does not have a line out jack), my bass is a GSR205, would the Radical Pro direct input box be a decent choice for this? This is just for practice and messing around currently, I really don't care too much about tone and coloration of sound and whatnot. Not at the moment anyway.
 
#2
Does your sound card still sound OK?

There are a number of pre-amps with or without amp modelling & effects which are designed for guitar and/or bass.

The Korg Pandora PX5D and the Digitech RP355 (both of which have built-in drum machines etc, etc and a USB connector for recording into a computer) come to mind.

The PX5D is very a portable headphone amp designed for both guitar and bass but the guitar-oriented RP355 has the real time controls and connectors for stage use as well as home practice/recording.

What's your budget?
 
#3
#8
I plug my bass into my effects, my effects run into my amp, my amp has a line out which I run into into a tascam mixer, the mixer has a line out which I run into my computer, my computer has a good M-Audio sound card designed for musin and not games, Then I use Roxio software to make mp3s.

Invalid Link Removed
 
#9
Acrimonus said:
I connected my headphone out to my line in on my sound card, that was wrong apparently, and could have possibly damaged my sound card due to the amount of power coming out of the headphone jack (the amp was a 200W amp). How extensive do you think the damage would have been? It would have been used that way for no more than two days and only an hour or two each day.
Click to expand...

Don't worry it will almost certainly have had no effect, a line level input should be easily able to take a headphone level signal, unless you wear some seriously big headphones :) The amp is 200w but you can be sure that no-where near that power is coming out of the headphone jack! That rating is for the level of power coming out of the SPEAKER outputs.

Acrimonus said:
I also connected my bass directly to my sound card via both line in and mic in using a quarter inch to eighth inch adapter but apparently this was also wrong because a bass has a high impedance output and the line in is a low impedance input. This also makes sense since I had to turn my system volume up to nearly maximum and turn down the music player volume to be able to hear the bass.
Click to expand...

Though thats correct, its the line level input you used that meant you had to turn up full! A line level input is expecting a signal a lot higher than a bass, and does not have enough gain to get it to a decent volume normally. Thats why people use preamps, this takes the instrument level signal and 'amps it up' to line level, ready to go into a line level input!

The impedance is wrong as well as you say, this will cause a number of undesirable effects on the tone you record, strange eq curves etc.


Acrimonus said:
So the solution is a DI box (since my amp does not have a line out jack), my bass is a GSR205, would the Radical Pro direct input box be a decent choice for this? This is just for practice and messing around currently, I really don't care too much about tone and coloration of sound and whatnot. Not at the moment anyway.
Click to expand...

Not quite, a DI will fix your impedance situation (the tone side of things) but a di is not a preamp and will not stop you from having to crank the line input!

Try and find the gain on the system control panel for the mic in, even a stock soundcard mic in SHOULD have just enough gain to record a bass at a decent level. Actually, it sounds from your post that you haven't experimented with the input gains yet, which you will need to do WHATEVER gear you use. It on the sound cotroll panel, there will be a slider or similar for line in and mic in, thats the control for the 'amp' in these inputs. Turning up the system volume is not going to help get a good signal in, its kinda like plugging into a bass amp, turning the gain right down and the volume right up!

Once you have that working you could consider a DI to improve the sound a bit, however a stock soundcard's not going to sound great at the best of times, and spending a fair bit on a very good DI might be a bit missplaced. I'd spend the same on a little interface first.

However, the Radial is a great little DI and will find a use at gigs and recording situations for many years, so you can'tgo wrong if you DO buy it.
 
#11
Charling said:
Don't worry it will almost certainly have had no effect, a line level input should be easily able to take a headphone level signal, unless you wear some seriously big headphones :) The amp is 200w but you can be sure that no-where near that power is coming out of the headphone jack! That rating is for the level of power coming out of the SPEAKER outputs.



Though thats correct, its the line level input you used that meant you had to turn up full! A line level input is expecting a signal a lot higher than a bass, and does not have enough gain to get it to a decent volume normally. Thats why people use preamps, this takes the instrument level signal and 'amps it up' to line level, ready to go into a line level input!

The impedance is wrong as well as you say, this will cause a number of undesirable effects on the tone you record, strange eq curves etc.




Not quite, a DI will fix your impedance situation (the tone side of things) but a di is not a preamp and will not stop you from having to crank the line input!

Try and find the gain on the system control panel for the mic in, even a stock soundcard mic in SHOULD have just enough gain to record a bass at a decent level. Actually, it sounds from your post that you haven't experimented with the input gains yet, which you will need to do WHATEVER gear you use. It on the sound cotroll panel, there will be a slider or similar for line in and mic in, thats the control for the 'amp' in these inputs. Turning up the system volume is not going to help get a good signal in, its kinda like plugging into a bass amp, turning the gain right down and the volume right up!

Once you have that working you could consider a DI to improve the sound a bit, however a stock soundcard's not going to sound great at the best of times, and spending a fair bit on a very good DI might be a bit missplaced. I'd spend the same on a little interface first.

However, the Radial is a great little DI and will find a use at gigs and recording situations for many years, so you can'tgo wrong if you DO buy it.
Click to expand...

I should have mentioned I have an Auzentech Prelude X-Fi 7.1 sound card, it's shouldn't have any issues sounding bad, connected to the system is a pair of powered speakers (not the cheapie computer speakers you buy at the electronics store!) but you say I need a preamp as well, darn it. So any recommendations for this? I would really like to hook it up to my computer.
 
#13
Hippos Melas said:
I use the Axeport Pro. It's literally a cigar sized tube that you plug your bass in one end and the other goes into a USB port. Nice, clean, simple. Could be what you're looking for.

Invalid Link Removed if you want to give it a look.
Click to expand...

I typically keep away from USB based amps, I have a FiiO headphone amp (and this is all it looks like, a glorified headphone amp that isn't mobile but draws power from USB) and if it is plugged into a USB port I can hear all of the line noise on the USB bus.

Edit: Of course I could be wrong, from what I got reading the specs the output is a 1/8 jack, not the USB port into the computer, does it also interface directly to the computer with the USB port to directly transfer the audio to the computer? Would that not be laggy? USB is notorious for running at less than half its rated speed 480Mbps, and not consistent either. I use a lot of USB devices, it taxes my controller.
 
#14
Hippos Melas said:
I use the Axeport Pro. It's literally a cigar sized tube that you plug your bass in one end and the other goes into a USB port. Nice, clean, simple. Could be what you're looking for.

Invalid Link Removed if you want to give it a look.
Click to expand...

If you want to take advantage of your amp's sound / settings and if it has an XLR interface, this might just do the trick : Invalid Link Removed

basically, it's originally an xlr-usb interface for microphones but, the company says it will work with amp's xlr : «Bonus: If your guitar, bass or keyboard amp has an XLR output, you can plug the MicPort Pro right in. No microphone is needed in this case.»(taken fron site).

Good luck.
 
#15
I just use the amp's FX send into one of a pair of phono jacks I mounted into a spare blanking plate on the front of the tower. They're then internally linked to a spare AUX socket on my soundcard.

Levels are a tad low & I can only record in mono, but it serves for what I need at the moment.

Pete.
 
#16
Acrimonus said:
I should have mentioned I have an Auzentech Prelude X-Fi 7.1 sound card, it's shouldn't have any issues sounding bad, connected to the system is a pair of powered speakers (not the cheapie computer speakers you buy at the electronics store!) but you say I need a preamp as well, darn it. So any recommendations for this? I would really like to hook it up to my computer.
Click to expand...

I'm afraid your soundcard is a good general purpose soundcard, not a recording one. It's audio inputs and driver management won't be comparable to a device designed as a recording interface.

But it should certainly work good enough to get some results. you will need a preamp (which could mean anything from a diferent amp output to a cheap $30 one, to a pre costing $5000!), but if your amp has a line out you'll already have one! Just come out of that into the line in of the soundcard.

Also, the devices like the axe-port mentioned below are simply a small but functional soundcard with a little preamp attached. There are many like it. don't think of them as USB amps, they are not like that they simply have a little pre amp in them to get the signals from mic or instrument level up to line level, this is standard on a multitude of USB, Firewire and PCI interfaces.

Don't worry about USB latency. If you are going for a finely tuned professional setup you may not be able to get a USB interface QUITE as quick as a similar firewire one, but we are talking a couple of miliseconds. NOT a bother for any standard home setup! A standard device will be able to get more than low enough for almost all uses. In this case, its as simple as XLR, 1/4" or 1/8" jack on one side, the usb cable on the other.

Looking at data rates a 16.44 wave file (kinda the lowest you go for decent recording, ideally 24bit), which is roughly 10 meg/minute, you can see that the audio stream is not going to take up very much of the overall bandwidth of USB. In real life useage of course there is loads more to consider, but USB is a tried and tested format for audio interfaces!

Full interfaces take over the on-board soundcard entirely, audio goes to and from the computer via the USB and the interface becomes an audio hub, with headphone and volume controls, and switches for various operations.
 

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