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playing bass via pc

J

JackWhite

Apr 2, 2007
98
0
Vienna
#1
hey guys! obviously i need your help. i have NO clue about playing my bass via pc and be able to listen to it amplified. i hope you get what i mean. i did a search tough i didnt really know what to look for really. if this has been asked a lot of times some link would be nice :)

i recently bought a fender jazz 2000 limited edition which is my main bass right now and it's home is in our practice room i visit almost daily. however, i now had the great idea to use my old squier p-bass to practice at home. but theres no amp. so:

what do i need to be able to play the bass on my pc? what would be the cheapest way to achieve that. right now the tone is not the most important thing, i just want to be able to accomplish playing amplified over my pc.

i got some old headphones, a pc with windows xp, winamp/windows media player, and a usual cable for my bassamp. the pc has an onboard soundcard w/ mic, line in, line out. so quite default stuff i think.

what do i need essentially to buy or to do to be able to play without disturbing my neighbours and just having fun in the noon with my little squier?

hope everything can be understood and thank you for your help in advance!

greetz from vienna.
jack =)
 
#2
Hey, I know what you mean man, so here's what I've done.

I don't know if you have a budget, but the easiest thing to do is buy a input device that plugs in via usb and allows you to plug into it and record directly to your computer (they usually come with some free software too). There's a bunch of different brands out there, I use an M-Audio Mobilepre, and it works good for me, though you'd probably be able to get away with a smaller one like the JamLab. [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] is the link for that.

If you're looking to just plug into ur mic input you may run into a few problems, first of all theres no real preamp, so you're not going to get a good sound, and you'll need to buy an adapter that transforms a 1/4" into an 1/8" or special cord with a 1/4" on one side and a 1/8" on the other.

I've never been able to get this to work just right, or at all even myself, but a few guys I know say they've done it a few times, though ur gunna get a really rough distorted sound out of it.

Hope this hel
 
#3
Nope.

The cheapest way is buying a jackplug transmitter from 1/4" (instrument-cable plug) to 1/8" (sound-card plug) and connect it STRAIGHT to the Microphone port of your soundcard. DON'T connect it through the Amp, it might cause damage to the motherboard.

Go to the Volume Control and remove the 'Mute' from the Microphone.

Jaaaaam. :)
 
#4
hey pilonian!

first of all. thx for your fast answer!

hmm. so if i understood the plan on the jamlab page correctly i buy jamlab, and plug it into my usb slot. into jamlab i plug my bass and my headphones and thats it!?

this would be great. altough 79 $ arent really great for me right now. but if it really works well i think ill purchase one of these in the near future. or is the distortion really tooo damn hard? i want to hear my self quite clearly and i want to jam along some tunes!

on amazon.com some guys mentioned that it wouldn work and another one said it wasnt able to record bass+song. only my bass lines.

a recording option would be great too.

any other advice u guys could give me?
thx!
 
#5
now the thing with the mic input would be GREAT!

could i just walk into my local music store and tell 'em i need a cable that im able to put into my mic input @ pc and my bass guitar?

thats everything i'd need? this would be sweet. wont cost that much ;D
 
#6
BullHorn said:
Nope.

The cheapest way is buying a jackplug transmitter from 1/4" (instrument-cable plug) to 1/8" (sound-card plug) and connect it STRAIGHT to the Microphone port of your soundcard. DON'T connect it through the Amp, it might cause damage to the motherboard.

Go to the Volume Control and remove the 'Mute' from the Microphone.

Jaaaaam. :)
Click to expand...

Also - double-click the speaker icon down near your computer's clock to open the Volume control panel.

Click "Options" and "Advanced Controls" - you should see an "Advanced" button appear below the Microphone fader.

Click it. You may need to select the "Microphone Boost" checkbox to make your input signal stronger. I have found this necessary when "going direct" into the soundcard. If you are using a POD or some other sort of pre-amp, you may not have to do this - but if you are just going "direct" - it is more than likely that you will.

Finally - If you are NOT hearing your bass at all, you may have to open that volume control panel again and make sure you have the "Microphone" selected as your "Recording Source".

Do that by opening the volume control panel (see above) clicking "Options" then "Properties" and selecting "Recording" in the "Adjust volume for" area of the Properties dialogue box.

Click "OK".

You will now be looking at the "Recording Properties" control panel that manages you input sources. Make sure that you have "Microphone" selected as your recording source.
JackWhite said:
could i just walk into my local music store and tell 'em i need a cable that im able to put into my mic input @ pc and my bass guitar?
Click to expand...

Do yourself a favor and go to Radio Shack and simply get a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter. Sometimes they refer to the 1/8" plug as a "mini plug" - but it is an extremely common and very affordable piece of equipment.

That's all folks!
 
#7
Hey, ya if you can get it to work, just getting one of those adapters from radioshack will work fantastically. My only problem was I could never get it to work on my old computer, and my laptop I have now doesn't have a built in mic port (just a built in mic). But that could just be that all electronics seem to have plotted together to jsut make my life that much harder for me.

If you go that route theres a couple of software programs you will want to look at. my one buddy uses Audacity I believe. http://audacity.sourceforge.net. if thats the one he uses, he says he loves it, I'll talk to him later tonight though and double check on that for ya.

Hope it works out for you

(Oh and don't forget, if you're going straight in, start with the volume of ur bass at 0, you might get an unpleasant surprise otherwise ;)
 
#8
wow guys. thanks for your really GREAT help. and so damn fast. im starting to love tb more and more ;)

unfortunately we dont have something like radioshack here in vienna/AUSTRIA but theres a shop that has tons of electric/sound/cable stuff. ill give it a try and got there in the near future when i find time =)

damn guys. thx. i cant await playing on my pc with my bass :)
 
#13
ok. so i did all the things mentioned above. right now i have to face the following:

with audacity recording a line all my stuff i play on the bass gets recorded and i can listen to it afterwards BUT i cant hear myself amplified live. u guys know how to achieve that? thx
 
#16
latency? its absolutely live. the only thing is, when i play to an mp3 i have to turn that down really silent, but its still comfortable!

i dont know if its vista compatible. ive got win xp and it works great. should work on my macintosh X too!
 

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