Recording on a laptop

Glenn Pezzillo · Post by **Glenn Pezzillo** » 24 Jan 2003 11:22 am

Is it possible to use standard on-board sound on a laptop (DELL latitude) to get a decent audio recording or do you have buy an add on soundcard? I've tried it with just the standard audio input on the laptop to record my guitar and then I used CoolEdit v2.0 to capture and modify the recording. I get a lot of hiss. Even using the noise reduction utility in CoolEdit doesn't fix it. Do I have to buy a special soundcard?

thanks for any advice

DroopyPawn · Post by **DroopyPawn** » 25 Jan 2003 9:46 am

It's possible but unlikely. Your best chance is to get an external mixer like a Mackie 1202 to boost the signal going in. That will overpower the noise. Laptops are generally not good choices for recording. By the way, you can get a Yamaha DSP Factory PCI card on ebay now for about $200. That's an EXCELLENT deal. These cards were $1000 when they came out and are still worth every bit of that price. They will do 2 stereo tracks out of the box and will do 8 stero tracks (or 16 mono) if you add some other hardware. There are compressors, limiters, parametric EQ and more on every channel as well as 5 high quality stereo fx processors.
gs

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Paul Osbty · Post by **Paul Osbty** » 2 Feb 2003 8:40 pm

The inputs on (my) laptops are line level, so if you use a mic it will be noisy. Try getting a mic pre-amp or small mixer. I've done a few things this way and it works ... not too bad. There is also a PCMCIA card that has RCA, XLR, and S/PDIF ins and outs. I saw it at musiciansfriend.com

Paul Osbty · Post by **Paul Osbty** » 3 Feb 2003 1:02 am

Hey, thanks Herb. That site has the Digigram VXpocket 440 I was thinking of.