Recording to your computer

[Brother Jones]

I'm trying to figure out how to record my bass on my compy. Can you just put a 3.5mm adapter on a cable, plug it into a line in and record using Realplayer or something?

Thanks

[budget bassist]

Pretty much yeah, that's what i do anyway for now. I'm not sure what realplayer is but you can record using sequencer software, for very basic stuff download audacity, google it, it's freeware so it's completely legal and it's not too bd either.

[noisedude]

Yeah obviously it'll sound a bit rubbish but for getting ideas down that will work. Audacity is a good editor/basic sequencer and for something very special go to Reaper.fm and download multi-track awesomeness.

[YouMa]

try and get a hold of soundforge or ableton live they are both excellent and you can really tweak them.

[Mr. Foxen]

Some compression makes things much easier if you are doing that. All our stuff is written in Audacity. Lots of distortion plug ins.

[budget bassist]

[quote name='noisedude' post='238038' date='Jul 12 2008, 04:35 PM']Yeah obviously it'll sound a bit rubbish but for getting ideas down that will work. Audacity is a good editor/basic sequencer and for something very special go to Reaper.fm and download multi-track awesomeness.[/quote]
I actually got a pretty decent sound out of it that way, but that's probably down to my MM preamp, it always sounded rubbish with my old passive basses.

[noisedude]

[quote name='budget bassist' post='238083' date='Jul 12 2008, 05:27 PM']I actually got a pretty decent sound out of it that way, but that's probably down to my MM preamp, it always sounded rubbish with my old passive basses.[/quote]
Yeah it'll definitely be less bad with a higher output bass ... although with the impedance mismatch and terribly cheap preamp it's never going to be great compared to even a £40 USB audio interface!!

Unless you're recording 'garage rock' of course - I recently had someone bring me an entire album recorded on the built-in mic on a Macbook. He was aiming to sound like early Pavement and, apart from the songs being less good and him not being a stoner, it sort of did.

[bnt]

[quote name='budget bassist' post='238083' date='Jul 12 2008, 05:27 PM']I actually got a pretty decent sound out of it that way, but that's probably down to my MM preamp, it always sounded rubbish with my old passive basses.[/quote]
Spot on: [b]Line In[/b] ports are low impedance, meaning that they will overload passive pickups and suck the life out of the signal. A signal going to Line In must be electrically buffered somehow: through a preamp or FX pedal ought to be enough, or use the output from a multi-FX or amp simulator.

[b]Mic[/b] ports on the other hand are high impedance, but can sound awful because they go to the opposite extreme: too much gain. You might get that to work if you turn the Mic gain down.

+1 for [url="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/"]Audacity[/url] too - does the job nicely at the price.