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Practicing with a laptop?

D

Da LadY In Red

Dec 3, 2003
354
1
St. Louis, Missouri
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#1
Hello, I need some help. I thought I had everything figured out and when it comes down to it I don't.

I'm heading to college and just got a new latop. I got some decent headphones (HD201's) and was wanting to get my laptop worked out so that I could just plug my bass (using a regular TRS cable with a 1/8 inch adaptor into the mic input) into my laptop and practice relatively quietly in my dorm room to Itunes/a drum machine, which Hydrogen is currently used for. The problem I have now is I can't find a way for the laptop to play in real time what I'm playing on bass.

I've looked in the soundcard settings menu within the control panel and found nothing. I have no problem recording things on audacity and playing them back, but I need to hear an amplified bass signal while I'm playing for practice to be practical on my laptop in the dorm room. The closest I've come to getting what I need is enabling the playback with recording option in audacity. However, this has some severe latency issues so that I get the instant playback more than a few ms after I hit the note, which makes that unusable. I remember I had it worked out on my old computer once where I used my computer as a bass amp, but I obviously have no idea how I did it.

So how can I get the laptop to play back the signal from my bass in real time? Do I need an interface to get that to work? If so, any cheap recommendations? I'm trying to keep this simple and basic and I really want the flexibility/options of my laptop with me while I practice (which is why I don't want to just use the headphone output of my GK head which will be left at the band house anyways). Any ideas?

Thanks for the help guys! I really appreciate it.
 
#2
Am gonna watch this one with interest.......haven't figured it out myself. I was told that I'd need an external soundcard to solve the latency issues........ *subscribed*
I use my laptop to listen to songs through my bass amp to hear the parts (it's playing now!)....and to record lines... but can't hear myself play while recording the lines, just don't have the system for it apparently :bawl::bawl: and no one's been able to tell me what to get to be able to hear/play at same time :)
 
#5
I live in a college owned flat with 3 other people and I do exactly what the OP is thinking of doing, that is when I do not want to make noise by using my 60W Fender amp. I use the ASIO4ALL drivers linked above, and they work fine for me, but I just today bought a Line6 Toneport GX, so we'll see how that goes.
 
#7
I bought a Rockman Bass Ace ten years ago and it really works great. It has an input for the bass, and aux input for your ipod or laptop, and a headphone jack. It sounds great, and I use it for silent practice all the time. It also makes a neat preamp and "poor mans" DI box with the right adapter (radio shack). All from a 9V battery. If you make a trip to radio shack you can also find an adapter to power it.
 
#8
I have had the line 6 toneport GX and I can tell you that it is one of the best solutions to this kind of thing.
It has no latency issues and the toneport ASIo drivers work very good, plus you get the Gearbox software which provides several amps, pre-amps, cabinets, microphones and FX modelling. Right now in on sale on MF Link Removed
 
#10
GreggBummer said:
I bought a Rockman Bass Ace ten years ago and it really works great. It has an input for the bass, and aux input for your ipod or laptop, and a headphone jack. It sounds great, and I use it for silent practice all the time. It also makes a neat preamp and "poor mans" DI box with the right adapter (radio shack). All from a 9V battery. If you make a trip to radio shack you can also find an adapter to power it.
Click to expand...


Hey, I remember those Rockman Bass Ace's....they ROCKED!!!! :D I currently use a Korg Pandora PX4 which allows me to hook my bass up to it along with an 1/8 inch stereo cable from the laptop to the aux in. You can plug a set of stereo 1/4 inch headphones into the output and you're rocking all night long. the only thing people will hear is endless beating and plucking of your bass acoustically. I lived in an apartment for many years and this is the only way I could practice. The headphone amp thing would do the same except you wouldn't have the options (for the money) of changing the amp modeling and cab configuration like you do on the PX4. Look into it. There are lots of options out there. I know you mentioned using your computer, but with all the different operating systems out there and the new drivers for all your devices it tends to be a bit combersome to keep up with your computer to ensure it will work when you want to practice a groove. Case in point - that Rockman is probably still working great, as is my PX4. I have gone through 3 different computers in the time I've owned my PX4. Just something to think about. :D
 
#11
If money's tight, do what I did. Buy a cheap, tiny mixer (Behringer,etc.), 2-4 channels, and run the audio out of the laptop into the mixer and plug your bass in another channel. It makes a great cheap practice amp with plenty of headphone volume and you can blend the sound however you need to. It also takes up VERY little space. If you want to record your bass, just take the output of your mixer to the input on the laptop and use whatever software you have to record.

I bought my small mixer for around $40 on ebay. You can get them cheaper if you look. I also bought the 1/8" to RCA cables from monoprice.com for around $2 each.

I do this all the time and it sounds quite good.

Good luck!
 
#12
Bardley said:
If money's tight, do what I did. Buy a cheap, tiny mixer (Behringer,etc.), 2-4 channels, and run the audio out of the laptop into the mixer and plug your bass in another channel. It makes a great cheap practice amp with plenty of headphone volume and you can blend the sound however you need to. It also takes up VERY little space. If you want to record your bass, just take the output of your mixer to the input on the laptop and use whatever software you have to record.

I bought my small mixer for around $40 on ebay. You can get them cheaper if you look. I also bought the 1/8" to RCA cables from monoprice.com for around $2 each.

I do this all the time and it sounds quite good.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

This sounds like a great idea also. See I told you there are lots of them out there, but most of the good ones involve using the laptop as an MP3 player...:hiding: :D
 
#13
I bought a "StealthPlug" by IK Multimedia for this very application. It is a very low latentcy usb 2.0 device for playing guitar or bass through your computer. It is a 9' cable with a 1/4" jack on one end and a usb 2.0 connection on the other end. In the middle of the cable is a small unit with come volume controls and a headphone jack. It's really a great, portable device. The only bummer is that on a PC you can only output audio from the headphone jack, not directly from the computer speakers. On a Mac, its all gravy!

The cable was around $100 CDN. Invalid Link Removed is a link to it.

The package also contains some great software such as AmpliTube Live 2.
 

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