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well.. our band needs a method of recording.. and someone offered us a M-audio buddy for about 1/3 the normal price.. so we are all psyched..
but then.. we realized..
how do we connect it to the laptop? no wires were given
And i suppose that once we connect it then we can use a program to record from it? or am i over simplifying it? I do plan on figuring out the features more, but i have no idea how to connect it to the comptuer

Comments

hueseph Tue, 02/24/2009 - 22:37

The [[url=http://[/URL]="http://pro-audio.mu…"]Audio Buddy[/]="http://pro-audio.mu…"]Audio Buddy[/] is a $60 preamp. Hardly worth getting excited over. You would need a dual 1/4" mono to single stereo plug and likely a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter(careful that that this keeps the channels separate. Buy it at a music store otherwise it will likely sum the two mono ends). This would go into the line in on your laptop.

Ideally you would want to get some sort of recording interface. I'm guessing that you are under a very small budget. Of course this means you will be limited as far as simultaneous channels you will be able to record. Likely anything more than a two channel interface will be too expensive for you. Not to worry. You can make it work. It won't be as good as having a 8+ channel interface but you will benefit from learning to hone your recording skills.

The question now comes to your budget.

IIRs Wed, 02/25/2009 - 01:59

hanbbae wrote:
And i suppose that once we connect it then we can use a program to record from it?

Yes. But we need to know whether you use a PC or a Mac before we can make any useful suggestions...

You should be aware that the line input on your laptop is likely to give poor performance. Some are better than others of course, but my PC laptop's line in is unusable!

An audio interface would be a good idea if you want to get respectable results, as suggested above. Many of these come with pre-amps built in, so you might want to consider putting the Audio Buddy money towards one of those instead. Or you could get the Audio Buddy now, then save up for an interface without pre-amps, or with pre-amps for only some of its inputs.

Audio interfaces often come with bundled software btw. Sometimes its a cut-down version of a big-name app like Cubase or Live, or sometimes its a full version of a more affordable app such as Tracktion. Either would probably do you fine at this stage... however, Tracktion is very easy to learn while still being extremely capable, so that might be worth a look if you want to get recording music with the minimum of hassle.

IIRs Wed, 02/25/2009 - 07:57

Just cos its not a $$$ preamp doesn't mean it doesn't have its uses.

I set my mum up with one of those, a cheap 'Joe Meek' SDC, and a copy of Audacity. She uses them to record the individual parts for her choir so that they can learn all their own parts by ear. She is more than happy with the results!