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S.O.S. for low budget home recording

#41
Charling, you're right of course. Having patience and letting go of fear are essential in this process. It does seem, however, that in trying to get started with it, after you've held your breath through the most recent crisis, the next, unrelated one pops out from behind the bush.

After three frustrating hours of loading, registering, activating, downloading plug-ins, updating, downloading, registering, activating, and downloading plug-ins (no typos here), I could not
1) get the hardware to show any signs of life beyond a power light, despite the manual's cheerful assertion that all I had to do was plug it into the USB,
2) import a song from my iTunes library into the DAW so that I could practice the bass line I want to learn (apparently this product does not permit that -- the ONLY reason I bought the thing)

I think by then it was more anger than fear driving me.

There is an unbroken chain of ignorance embedded in this concept of audio interfaces and DAWs: from the well-meaning but inexperienced salesman, to the online reviewers who have only tried one product, to the manuals written by engineers with insufficient empathy for the uninitiated, to the hapless user himself (me). At the very least there is an unmet opportunity for providers of this product to hire people who have tried and failed to use the product successfully. They are the ones who should contribute to the marketing copy and write the manuals.
 
#43
music fun said:
(snip) activating, and downloading plug-ins (no typos here), I could not
1) get the hardware to show any signs of life beyond a power light, despite the manual's cheerful assertion that all I had to do was plug it into the USB
Click to expand...

I can't make recommendations about your specific equipment. I have one rather generic suggestion that may be helpful. Your new audio interface becomes, in effect, your computer's new sound card. But, just plugging the interface in and installing drivers does not tell your computer to stop using your old sound card. A computer can really only use one sound card at a time. Otherwise, the computer gets confused about where signals are coming and going. It's usually best to turn off (disable) your old sound card. Then, your computer only has one sound card to deal with. You can always turn your old sound card back on, if needed.
 
#44
nick98338 said:
I can't make recommendations about your specific equipment. I have one rather generic suggestion that may be helpful. Your new audio interface becomes, in effect, your computer's new sound card. But, just plugging the interface in and installing drivers does not tell your computer to stop using your old sound card. A computer can really only use one sound card at a time. Otherwise, the computer gets confused about where signals are coming and going. It's usually best to turn off (disable) your old sound card. Then, your computer only has one sound card to deal with. You can always turn your old sound card back on, if needed.
Click to expand...

True.
I have two soundcards, a meh one that however has decent midi sounds, and a nice one with no midi sounds. I switch between the two as I need... so it may be that you need to go to The audio settings in the control panel to select the new device.
 
#47
If I may butt in to assist a little. This adjustment to your computer will eliminate resource robbing programs that linger in the backgrounds of Win Vista.

1. click the "START" button and then click "RUN"

2. type in "SystemPropertiesAdvanced" then click "OK". If your User Account Control is on click "Continue", if not, continue to instruction line #3.

3. Now you should see a box titled "System Properties" with the "Advance" tab selected. You should also see a section titled "Performance" and a "Settings" button, click it.

4. Now you should see a tab titled "Visual Effects" and 4 choices to choose from, choose "Adjust for best performance" then click "OK"

5. Now your back to the page titled "Systems Properties" click "OK" again to exit. Your done.


This little adjust should free your computer of unnecessary task to focus more power to your recording task. This procedure is completely safe and you can always reverse it whenever you wish by running "SystemPropertiesAdvanced"

Hope this helps you out.
 
#49
This adjustment to your computer will eliminate resource robbing programs that linger in the backgrounds of Win XP.

1. In "Control Panel" dbl click "SYSTEM"

2. Click the tab "Advanced"

3. With the "Advance" tab selected. You should also see a section titled "Performance" and a "Settings" button, click it.

4. Now you should see a tab titled "Visual Effects" and 4 choices to choose from, choose "Adjust for best performance" then click "OK"

5. Now your back to the page titled "Systems Properties" click "OK" again to exit. Your done.


This little adjust should free your computer of unnecessary task to focus more power to your recording task. This procedure is completely safe and you can always reverse it whenever you wish by following the steps above.

Hope this helps you out.
 
#50
good god, save 50 $ and grab an m-audio interface and be done with it! This stuff is not and should not be this hard. I started out on the very first Digi system and have kicked my computer around many a times, if you want things to work halfway decent you just have to get something decent, it is not worth the headache..IMO USB sucks bad, I have never had good luck with it, but to record one track it should be no problem, you can find used M-audio 2 input interfaces cheap and, you will still have problems but not this much!
 

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