Fray

It blows my mind how many different guitars are out there... Keyboards are so few by comparison

Ah my bad. I was thinking of keyboard combo amps I guess, which generally do have a line out because they have a builtin mixer. So yeah, you want a DI box or the thing Snapple linked to.

You're probably getting pretty cruddy sound quality by doing that. You're much better off plugging the guitar into your amp, then plugging the line out of the amp into your audiophile. Either that or run the guitar through a DI box, which lowers the impedance. I think you probably are being hurt by impedance issues -- guitars generally have high impedance outputs, and I don't think line-level inputs are designed to handle that properly.

Yes, to an extent. Better compressors and limiters are better at jacking the volume up more transparently -- for example, the latest version of Sonar has a plugin called Boost11 Peak Limiter that's designed specifically for that purpose. You just set how much gain you want and it figures everything else out for you by analyzing the incoming waveform. Much easier than trying to accomplish the same thing with the comp/limiters that came with previous versions. I imagine there are far more expensive plugins and hardware that do the same thing even better. The other thing to consider is the intent of the plugin itself. Some of them (Blockfish for example) deliberately color the sound. Great for fattening up drums, not great for pushing up the volume of a track without coloring the sound. Usually the more transparent ones will tout themselves as "mastering" plugins, although in some cases I'm sure there's more marketing to that than reality. I don't know much about the plugins that come with other software, but if you suspect they might be holding you back, you can sometimes get trial versions of the more professional plugins. Give them a spin and see if they make your job easier. Your mixes usually sound pretty good, sir

If your mix sounds perfectly clean before mastering it, why are you doing anything to it at all? If all you're trying to do is make the mix louder, EQ can help if you're cutting down on busy frequencies (bass ones especially), because that will allow you to turn the whole mix up without clipping. But that's totally dependent on the mix itself. EQ (even more so than other effects) is very situational -- like zircon said there really aren't any settings you can always apply to make any mix sound better. If you're trying for louder without clipping, compressors and limiters are other tools to reach for.

Past a certain age (different for different people, but usually around 40s) your ability to hear higher frequencies drops off substantially. There was a news story a year or so ago about a convenience store owner using this to his advantage to chase off loitering teenagers -- he put on a loud high freq. noise on the speakers. We tested it out at work one time -- my 55-year-old coworker couldn't believe I could hear it (and be driven crazy by it) from halfway across the building. He still plays it sometimes to piss me off

I'd even go a step further and say that hobbyists and small project studios are perhaps the most important market for a lot of music software makers. Up until recently I think most pro studios used ProTools, Digital Performer, and things like that -- they were stabler and offered exclusive access to some very high end hardware. I think FLStudio is very much directed at the casual user, even if it is powerful enough for some serious use. I also doubt Sonar would include so many bundled plugins if they were really directed at pro users -- those guys are going to use more high end VST's. You just summed up the Nicholestien experience I personally find him charming.

No, it's not. It's the replacement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Express_card

You're on the right track comparing your stuff to pro mixes -- it's not as good as getting real monitors, but you can at least partially get around the limitations of your setup by learning how a good, portable mix sounds on your particular system. If commercial music (a lot of which is actually pretty fatiguing anyway) doesn't hurt your ears on your speakers, neither should your own mix. So umm... let's hear your mix already

So is there anything fundamentally different between a guitar amp and a mic preamp? Or are they pretty much the same circuit?

I kinda imagine the sound quality on your library wouldn't be very good if you did that

I'd say Musician's Friend is a decent yardstick, but they have it for the same price TBH it's not worth saving an extra $10 to deal with SUPERMUSICBUYS.BIZ type places, which, even if they aren't a direct ripoff operation, are more likely to screw up the shipping, send you the wrong stuff, etc..

Do not bother with Creative stuff for recording purposes. They're gaming/listening soundcards that are only decent (at best) for recording, no matter what they tout themselves to be. Unless you're really wanting it for gaming purposes too, get a dedicated audio interface -- you'll get better recording quality for whatever you decide to spend. Honestly the stuff I've read lately seems to indicate that the USB 2.0 stuff isn't bad at all. I.e. the latency and jitter are only slightly worse than what you get from PCI or firewire devices. I don't have any firsthand experience with them though. But yeah I too would go with firewire if you've got the port for it. Express card is really going to limit your options too much, imo.

Thanks, I love to get all nerdy about this stuff