Fray

Ok, then just buy a preamp. Several models ranging from $40 up have already been mentioned. It's just that if you needed a mixer anyway, which you don't apparently, they usually come with semi-competent preamps.

Maybe you can sometimes get away with that if your mic has a particularly hot output signal -- not all mics are created equal in that regard, some need more preamp than others. I think you're sacrificing a lot of quality doing things this way, because you're right -- when you make a digital recording at low levels, you effectively reduce the bit depth. Play around with a bit cruncher effect and you can hear what lowered bit depth does to your sound: at around 12 bits it's still pretty reasonable but not as clear. At 8, it's obviously degraded. Anything less than 5 or 6 and it sounds totally trashed. And that's only if you're not picking up any noise from the rest of your hardware. Point being, max -- if you care, you could get a lot better sound out of your mic even with a relatively cheap preamp.

Ah okay. Yeah, I think a reasonable "prosumer" preamp will probably be fine. The ones po! linked are definitely better, but the ART in Moseph's post or a Presonus TubePre will be a hell of a lot better than the builtin one on the X-Fi. Trying to jack the volume up after recording an unamped mic is totally unacceptable as you've found -- that's not even an indication that your card is picking up any noise from your case. It just won't work. If you were thinking of getting a mixer anyway, most mixers have pretty competent builtin preamps for the price. Behringer Euroracks for example. It won't have "OMG TUBE WARMTHZ", but they're reasonably quiet. And yeah I think all the inexpensive tube-driven gear popping up lately is getting a little overblown

I'm going to get myself in trouble if I talk about this too much, but -- most gear is designed so that inputs have very high impedance and outputs have very low impedance, which makes matching gear up a lot easier. Because if you have a mismatch the other way (input impedence < output impedence) I think you can end up frying stuff... It has something to do with the direction of power transfer, I think. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will jump in here

How much noise are we talking about here? While the audiophile is superior to the X-Fi, noise shouldn't be an issue with either of them, unless you're using the builtin preamp. But the Audiophile doesn't even have a preamp -- just line level inputs. Either your computer is screwed up or you're confused as to where the noise is coming from. Edit: it could also be that both soundcards are picking up noise from your case itself. If so an external audio interface might be the answer -- one where the A/D and D/A converters are outside your computer case in a breakout box (this is the case for any firewire or USB interfaces).

But he's trying to get a deliberate aliasing sound -- I'd think a cheap pitch corrector would be just fine for doing that. I think you can accomplish a similar effect using a vocoder.

I think Alesis makes some electronic drums that are decent but inexpensive (cheaper than Roland at least).

Agreed. I love both, but hacking and music don't mix. You want to be able to execute your musical ideas quickly so you don't lose your creative flow. Not the time to be horsing around with bleeding edge software unless it actually offers something you can't do anywhere else (ex. a hot new experimental VST). Couple that with the fact that audio interfaces can be fiddly in terms of compatibility even on supported OS+hardware combinations, and you've got yourself an exceptionally bad idea.

Also, depending on how you use it, the physical aspects of the laptop do make a big difference. Apples seem to have better keyboards and touchpads than Dells -- not an issue if you're planning to use an external keyboard and mouse, but definitely an issue if not. And yes, I think Apples are also better built in general.

Generally the Producer edition is well worth the extra cash if you can afford it and you don't already have some other replacement for the extra plugins it gives you. Z3Ta+ is a badass synth, as is Pentagon I... The VC64 is a very nice plugin, the POW-r dithering is well worth it too.

LAME with the RazorLAME frontend works for me.

I think the blown adapter sounds like a good explanation. Try a new one. Is the sound coming directly from your computer, or is it coming out of your speakers? Poor converters reduce the quality of your output too, but it's only a problem in the monitoring department, and a smaller issue overall. True, but AFAIK you should be able to turn all that crap off in the driver settings. I don't think the coloring is fundamentally ingrained in the hardware.

The producers that made the original Cher effect actually bullshitted about how they did it in an interview: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb99/articles/tracks661.htm They said it was a vocoder-like effect because they didn't want people knowing about their then-new trick of the trade I imagine you could produce a similar effect with a vocoder, though.

So basically a dimished chord + a minor 6th?

Well, one thing that could help is this utility: http://www.midiox.com/ It'll show you exactly what's coming into the MIDI interface. Might help you figure out what's up. Otherwise hopefully someone who's used these kinds of keyboards might be able to help you out...

But that's one of BT's own compositional idiosyncrasies. You certainly don't have to know anything about it to have a reasonable foundation in music theory. You don't need to write your tracks in Csound either I agree with your overall thrust though, for sure. People should know that they can create good ReMixes with free software and only a basic knowledge of music theory. You won't be able to make anything very good right off the bat, but you can learn as you go.

You might be triggering the builtin rhythm patterns or something like that... Make sure you have all that stuff turned off on the keyboard.

Theory makes me rigid. huh huh-huh huh

Mine: http://www.sectionz.com/detail.asp?rType=mp3&SZID=10628 Remix of the theme from the original PC Lemmings game. It's dirt simple, but I still think it sounds kinda nice

Ok no, those are awful and aren't going to cut it. You need to get some good free VST's and/or soundfonts. Check the Mixing for Free thread in the guides section of this forum for more info. Anvil Studio does have VST support, I just checked it. The "see for yourself" part kinda does require hours of piddling But I agree, you need to have an idea of how you want to work and what you want to create before you can really tell if your tools are adequate.

I'm not sure if most DAW's are really able to use notes as automation in that way. That's pretty cool I'll have to see if Sonar can do anything like this sometime. I've always relied on the filters within a given synth for any key-sync control.

Keep 'em coming. Every time I think about buying another mic I see all the options and go "fuhhh...."

Ok that I can mostly live with -- that's the reason behind the whole loudness war. While louder music is going to sound more full and energetic, people do have a limit where they say "ouch, that's too loud". So they keep their volume knobs relatively low to avoid being blasted by the obnoxiously hot recordings people are putting out. The ultimate consequence, though, is that everything sounds worse, not better. That is a pretty neat site, I didn't know about it. For the Google-challenged, I believe this is what he's talking about: http://www.moultonlabs.com

Lol, we're talking about compressing the individual instruments and such... The mp3 in the OP is solo piano. Prasa -- are you comparing this to other solo piano mixes? The piano is a very peaky instrument, and on a solo piece anything but a very small amount of compression or limiting is going to obviously color the tone. As a result most solo piano music, even pro stuff, tends to sound a lot quieter than other mixes. Cerrax -- I agree. It would be nice if everybody tried to keep to a sane median volume. The problem is that the median volume of current commercial music is much too high. I also agree that you do have to make a compromise on the dynamic range for people trying to listen in their cars; if parts of the music are too quiet, you can't hear it above the road music at all. Makes it kinda hard to listen to classical recordings

If you like how it sounds now but you just want it to sound louder, you want to use a limiter -- that will hopefully remove the peaks more transparently and allow you to turn the volume up more. If some parts are too damn quiet and others are too loud, use compression. No, there's not much difference between a limiter and a compressor with a really fast attack and a 1:infinity ratio. A dedicated limiter probably uses some kind of lookahead algorithm whereas the compressor probably won't. As others have said, it's better if you can apply the limiting to the instrument that's responsible for the peaking. Especially if you don't have $2000 mastering plugins that are good at doing this stuff transparently! No. No no no no no no no no. NO! GRGRHAIFJWJAF!!! Louder gets more attention, maybe. And it keeps your mix at an even level with the other stuff in a random playlist, but that's only because commercial recordings try to blare each other out to hide the fact that they have very little worthwhile content. Otherwise everyone could just turn their speakers up a bit and get better quality sound at the same volume. There is plenty of dynamic headroom in 16-bit audio. It makes me mad because audio actually sounds worse and more fatiguing because of this goddamn loudness war.