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Help: Software Music Studio
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Help: Software Music Studio |
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Subject: Software Music Studio From: GUEST,Joerg Date: 08 Nov 00 - 10:07 PM Not too long before I discovered Mudcat I spent some considerable effort for checking out opportunities of using my computer as a sound studio. I gave up (for now!) because I couldn't find a way to solve one problem (maybe two). So may I pass this question to you: Does anybody know a way to play a WAV file while recording a second one in a synchronized manner? That should mean that sample No 1 of the recorded file is taken at the time sample No 1 of the played file is output and so on. You might understand what I'm thinking of: This would allow me for recording my own songs with any accompaniment I like in virtual CD quality, because neither creating music to be played nor recording some nor mixing nor applying effects is a problem any more, the only problem left is synchronization. This MUST be possible, but did anybody think of writing some software like that? I would have done it myself but I failed, simply because I could not find any convenient way to control my sound card by a normal (i.e. DOS) C program. So pointing out some way to do that could also solve the problem for me, and I would be pleased to donate the result to the public. The second problem - although much less critical: Does anybody know a way to simply capture the output of a MIDI player and direct it to a WAV file? (Some special players allow for writing to WAV files instead of playing, but these are special players, and you might not like the sound they are creating.) This also MUST be possible, because at least the sound card must know what amplitude is to be output at some given time, and the problem is only retrieving that and writing it to a file. Any hints? Joerg |
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Subject: RE: Help: Software Music Studio From: IvanB Date: 08 Nov 00 - 11:09 PM Joerg, I use a program called Total Recorder, available here: Click here With it, you can play a WAV file on the computer, while recording another sound through any other input. My main objection to it is that the record level seems to be quite low, so I always have to normalize files after recording, but I've been able to do some sound layering of the sort you want with it. The registration price is $11.95 US, and it'll only record a short segment on the unregistered version. You could also use TR to record a MIDI input (either a file or external source) to a WAV file. I also have another program called WAVMaker III, which transforms a MIDI file into WAV. It's in the neighborhood of $100 US registration, though, and only a limited number of sound description files (needed to generate the various instruments in the WAV file) are included with the trial version. It won't do the transformation on the fly, though, you would have to record to a MIDI file, then run the transformation. Total Recorder would probably be just about as useful. |
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Subject: RE: Help: Software Music Studio From: IvanB Date: 08 Nov 00 - 11:12 PM Joerg, I should also have mentioned that, if you click on 'Links' at the top of the page, Michael K has put up some good links to home recording. I've found them to be very useful and informative. |
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Subject: RE: Help: Software Music Studio From: GUEST,Joerg Date: 08 Nov 00 - 11:54 PM Thank you IvanB - I know WavMaker (that's not what I meant because of the restriction to its own instruments), but I'm going to try Total Recorder ASAP. And also thank you for the hint with the links page (should have noticed that myself *blush*). Joerg |
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Subject: RE: Help: Software Music Studio From: pict Date: 09 Nov 00 - 12:05 AM What you want is a multi track recording program.Do a search for Samplitude by sekd,Saw plus,Logic Audio,Cubase,Cakewalk who have guitar based audio recorders or Ntrak a much cheaper program |
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Subject: RE: Help: Software Music Studio From: Musicman Date: 09 Nov 00 - 02:39 AM I use one called CoolEdit 2000 combined with the Studio Plug in... gives me a four track recorder on my computer... just starting to play with it... Have used cooledit for a while.. great for recording yourself, mono or stereo, wave or mp3 or .ra files (plus a host of others). The Studio plug in is new for me, looks pretty cool though. Allows me to mix up to 4 tracks into one stereo mix...... musicman |
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Subject: RE: Help: Software Music Studio From: IanS Date: 09 Nov 00 - 04:02 AM I think that you'll find that using the soundcard inside your PC will not give you "virtual CD" quality. Apart from not having adequate quality A/D convertors you will find that the electromagnetic noise levels inside the PC are such that the signal to noise levels achievable on your sound card will not be particularly good. The best solution is to go for an external break out box with all the analogue circuitry kept well away from the PC (normally a couple of meters). There are a number of companies making these products now with the Guillemot ISIS being probably the best value ~ £200. The ISIS gives you 4 inputs and 4 outputs (plus SPDIF). This coupled with a software sequencing package such as Calkwalk or Cubase will give a very good multi-track studio - the number of playback tracks being limited only by your PC and hard disk performance (with a P200 I have achieved 12 track playback no problem). Ian |
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Subject: RE: Help: Software Music Studio From: GUEST,Joerg Date: 09 Nov 00 - 11:07 PM First, thank you. IvanB - I got Total Recorder now and also tried it, but at the moment I'm not yet able to save what seems to be recorded. I'm able to make my computer hang instead. Is that an undocumented feature of the evaluation version or do I have to know some special trick? Aside of that, the intention of the program (as far as I can see from the documentation) seems to be quite good, if I ever get it working it might be at least some good improvement regarding the second problem I mentioned. pict - I'm not so sure that I need what is a multitrack recording program. There is no need to record several tracks at the same time, just one single one, but controlled by the playback of another one. Pseudo code:
open wav file IN for input That's all. In practise this isn't that simple, otherwise I would have done it long ago. I would very much like to do it if I could only control my sound card, but I can't. It would allow me to do anything I want. I do NOT want to record more than one track at a time. (Who wants to? Only people who have to record the common performing of several players. I'm alone.) What I will get are as many wav files as I want, each one with one track, all of the same length, and with the music exactly in time. Mixing them is simple. Musicman - Thanks for the tip. I know CoolEdit, but I didn't know of some studio plug-in. Ian - of course you're right. That's why I said "virtual". To my own ears of course. I did a recording test and was quite impressed by the quality. Maybe you'll be interested in that I own a computer with the sound card integrated on the main board. This allows an engineer to provide many shielding measures not available to one who never knows where his product is going to be plugged in. Maybe they simply did... And if ever the quality seems too poor to me I can still consider improving my hardware. So thanks for your hints. Joerg
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Subject: RE: Help: Software Music Studio From: Grab Date: 10 Nov 00 - 03:10 PM Joerg, I'm surprised you're getting decent results off an integral mobo/sound card. Mine has horrendous noise on the record stage - even Indiana Jones didn't have this much problems with things hissing! Grab. |
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Subject: RE: Help: Software Music Studio From: GUEST,Steven Sellors Date: 11 Nov 00 - 01:43 AM Go to n-track.com and download their demo program. Try it for free. SS |
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Subject: RE: Help: Software Music Studio From: GUEST,Joerg Date: 11 Nov 00 - 10:41 PM IvanB - OOIEEH, OOIEEH - Total Recorder is the first and only software I know that can even shut down the reset button. I tried it with Windows Media Player. This couldn't work as the Media Player of course only sends MIDI commands to the FM synthesizer on the sound board. But when I specified the sound board to be the source - uhm, don't dare to start the Media Player without clicking Total Recorder's record button first and then realize your mistake and click the Media Player's stop button... It took some CONSIDERABLE time for Scandisk to run afterwards (Do you like scaring secretaries? Remember that trick >;->) On the other hand I can't figure out any way to record an input sound without mixing it with the output one. If you know how to do this please tell me. Grab - of course that depends on what you call 'decent'. If I unplug my mike and do a recording I can indeed hear my hard drive working and some other devices too but very softly. I doubt that this will be heard after mixing a real recording with all the other sounds and played on what it is going to be played on. I can well imagine that there are computers behaving much worse, and unfortunately you can never tell in advance how the computer you are just buying will behave (*sigh*) but it MIGHT behave quite well, so don't loose hope completely :-) Steven - as I suppose that you wrote that after having understood my last message I'm off to try n-track now. Thank you Joerg
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Subject: RE: Help: Software Music Studio From: GUEST,Joerg Date: 13 Nov 00 - 10:04 PM YES, Steven, n-track does have the function I missed. The only problem left is that the level of my mike input seems to be much too low, but that's a problem I know some solutions for. And thank you for directing me to shareware instead of some really expensive software you can't test in advance. Joerg |
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Subject: RE: Help: Software Music Studio From: GUEST,Matt_R Date: 14 Nov 00 - 10:49 AM Is there anything out there that is FREE, and can record from a mic, BESIDES Windows Sound Recorder? I'm not looking for multi-tracking...just plain old recording! Any ideas? |
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