Re: [Harp-L] home recording

Joel Fritz <williemctell@xxxxxxxxx> · Sat, 07 Dec 2013 10:51:55 -0800

Unfortunately home recording hasn't reached the appliance level.  
There's a relatively long learning curve for any recording software.  
Expect to spend some time playing around with it and reading 
documentation.  Audacity is, as recording software goes, not very 
complicated.  Prosumer and pro level software are much more 
complicated.  BTW, all recording software needs LAME or equivalent to 
create mp3 files.  Most recording software will save directly to wav 
files but needs additional software to convert to any other file 
format.  If you have the software and your recording software recognizes 
it, saving to mp3 or FLAC or something else is completely transparent.
On 12/6/2013 6:13 PM, martin oldsberg wrote:

But don´t forget that Audacity is a candidate for an award for the Least user friendly piece of software in the History of Mankind. The guys behind it should be proud of themselves.

If you use an RP pedal, start the computer, then connect the pedal to the computer; then start Audacity; then connect headphones to the RP unit. Make sure that you have the "speaker" and "microphone" options in Audacity set to "Digitech" etc -- sometimes goes by itself, sometimes not. The pedal trespasses the computer´s sound card.
   Note that when you "save" something in Audacity you "export" it. (Of course!) And you need something called "lame" or whatever to be able to use the mp3-format
   Still, things probably won´t work. They rarely do. Then run out and buy a few bottles of good wine and call a tech-oriented and thirsty friend: "Hey Bozo, I´ve got a few bottle of Barolo here, innarested?" Then make sure s/he (magically, it´s almost always a he) just happens to catch a glance at your computer screen: ""What´s it you´re doing here?" "Oh, it´s this really fascinating program called Audacity, can you believe it ...?"

Then if you somehow get things going the nice surprise is that Audacity is pretty good stuff. I have mixed feelings, though. My hair was already grey when I started, but if not ... There´s a price to everything -- and some people say, "Go for the Apple thing", but then you pay.
   After all, this is free.

Good luck,
/Martin
PS If you go to the MBH forum you can search and see some good hands-on advice for Audacity that was given to a participant of Swedish extraction, "Martin".