Garpocalypse Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 I would like to start recording myself play a few instruments, mostly bass and guitar, but since I have little recording experience outside of the virtual instruments on my pc I thought I should pop in here and ask around before I started throwing money at what I want to do. I have been trying to record some funk playing lately but I have been plugging my bass directly into my sound card's mic input and every slap gives me a nasty distorted peak so here is what I thought would might work given my limited studio space. I plan to buy a small Hartke speaker and mic that into my soundcard. The acoustics in my studio room are terrible but I think that if I keep the volume low and the mic close I won't need to worry about catching the sound bouncing off the walls. Would this work for folk guitar as well? The mic I plan to use is an AKG D 8000 S adapted with an Alesis USB Miclink. -Gar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moseph Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 The distortion problem might be related to the quality of the soundcard. Is this one of those integrated cards with an 1/8" input jack? If you're going to mic a bass amp, one thing that you should keep in mind is that to get a good sounding tone, you may have to record a pretty loud signal. I've heard of people having okay results by draping a blanket over the amp and mic to cut reflections, but I haven't tried it myself. You could also patch directly from the amp to the soundcard, but if the soundcard is causing your recording problems, you may still encounter them. Does the Alesis Miclink accept 1/4" input or just XLR? If there's a 1/4" input you could run direct from the amp's output jack into that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garpocalypse Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 My sound card is aging but decent for what I want to do. It's a terratec DMX 6fire 24/96. Part of it may be technique. I play a Rickenbacker and I know I am slapping painfully close to the pickup. The Alesis is only XLR to USB would you recommend anything different? Thanks for the comments. -Gar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moseph Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 Oh, okay, the Terratec is a legit audio interface, so that's probably not the problem. Have you been able to record without clipping at an extremely low gain, or does it clip no matter how much you turn the inputs down? If you can get a clean recording at a very low volume, you might be able to use compression/limiting to make the recording usable, although you might then have trouble with line noise. Barring that, though, miking an amp would probably be the best way to make it sound good, short of being able to put a compressor pedal or something in the signal chain before it gets to the soundcard (although I can't really say anything for sure since I haven't messed around with your setup myself). One other shot in the dark question: have you tried lowering the pickup on the bass so that it's farther away from the strings? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garpocalypse Posted January 8, 2011 Author Share Posted January 8, 2011 I've been messing around with a compressor and it seems to help. The sound peaks on every slap regardless of volume and since my rickenbacker is my baby i'm far too apprehensive about doing minor adjustments like lowering the pickup. Thanks for the help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.