Soundcards and laptops

I suspect my computer may have a shit soundcard. So,

1 - How do i find out if it is shit

2 - Is it possible to upgrade easily?

3 - How meke would this potentially cost?

chairs

what are you going to be using it for?

Production. But im still an amatuer, so i just want something that will do the job while i learn, and then when im rich or making the mad toons, then i can upgrade.

AND, i seem to be having issues whilst recording mixes. They all come out very poor quality, all tinny and shit, and a nasty hum in the background.

My theory is that its recording through the mic input, but if i change the setting ti line in, there is no sound coming in at all.

Mysterious.

Sounds like its a pretty shit soundcard.

When you play songs out of the computer do they sound like shit?

Although you dont need one for production if you are just going to be working in the box. If you are going to be recording mixes and want to seriously get into producion and want to record mics and stuff I would definitely get an external soundcard.

Everything i play through the computer sounds pretty good actually. its just recording i have an issue with.
All the production stuff i have done sounds sweet too.

The hum could be interference from the power (it can happen) or unshielded RCA cables to your laptop from the mixer. So perhaps try new or better cables. Double check your sound settings on the laptop, as some soundcards have software that will up the treble or fuck with the EQ's to make the sound better for actual voice recording using line in, disable everything to get it back to normal as much as you can find and also make sure mic boost is off.

When you switch to line in (which is what you should be using) some soundcards also have a tick box somewhere in sound setting along the lines of 'loopback' or something similar, which when ticked, will play whatever your sending down the line in through the laptop speakers, which might be the prob your talking about. You can also check that its not muted by default by double clicking the taskbar speaker icon and going to options>properties>recording>ok.

Its kinda hard to help out without knowing what soundcard and so on you have though, but have a play around with the settings and you should be able to fix it. A laptop soundcard should be fine for recording mixes until you want a proper setup, I use my laptop for recording and its sounds fine.

You can see what type of sound chip you have by typing dxdiag in Start>Run and looking on the sound tab.

Choice, will check that out. Shaunieboy i never knew you were such a nerd.

Its the awful truth.

Yo snow whats up!

If you have a pcmcia slot in your laptop (i cant remember if you did have one) then you can get one of those creative notebook cards. They are good as you dont have to take your laptop apart to install it and they are small. Seadog got one for use with traktor and it greatly increased his sound quality, obviously not as good as an external or proper internal but he gets fairly good latency from it as well (when using cubase) at 96k samples with no obvious audio defects.

They arent to badly priced either.

Hows the producing going by the way?

YO!!

Im not sure if i have one of those slots. How do i find out? Cos a soundcard upgrade would be sweet.

Producing coming along slowly, but surely. Have reverted back to reason though, due to the general simplicity. Figured out a bit more about the sequencing which is nice.

Made a sweet as 8 bar tune the other day. im thinking of looping it for 3 minutes and releasing it......

We should catch up one of these days au. Surely you have holidays coming up?

Yeah bro they are coming along soon as, come round as id like to hear this 4 bar mad loop ahah. Did ya get that book? Give me a call when you are free bro.

About the slot, you will have a slot probably with some sort of a removable cover on the side of your laptop, about 4-5 cm long and about half a cm wide. Would figure that your laptop being relatively new would have one.

Yup, i got that book and it is fucking awesome. I now know exactly how much i dont know abou this whole business.

Will give you a call soonish hopefully. Got a houseguest and another good friend over from england, but once theyre gone, its all go.

On this topic. I'm just trying to get myself a basic production setup. So far I'm using a macbook which I think is about 18 months old (leopard version?) and I'm planning on getting some M-Audio BX8A monitors.

The guys at the Rockshop suggested I should get an external sound card (M-AUDIO FAST TRACK USB AUDIO INTERFACE) to go with it.

Soo... Is it going to make much difference using this or should I just run with whats standard in the macbook?

Nah dude, go with something along what the Rockshop recommend (of course they will say m-audio cause they own it) so long as it uses asio drivers to free up your cpu, and depending if you wanna plug anything into it (synths, midi controllers etc) then you pretty much have to get a non factory sound I/O device.

Thanks. On buying the monitors last night I realised I'm going to need the sound card to even connect to my laptop due to the plugs. I got them going last night through my mixer but it's not ideal.

Also the tune I'm working on is getting quite busy and last night was the first time I had the cpu straining and getting some latency on the sound.

Time to spend some more money!

Update:

From learning more about soundcards today I've realised I don't even need one for what I'm doing. I've bought a few leads and now have the monitors running from my laptop through my mixer.

Maybe a little ram upgrade and things should be all good.

Thats always a good thing (saving cash)
what sort of connection setup (plugs and leads) are you running/using?

Yea basically as I understand it, seeing as I'm not recording any external sounds yet, just producing with samples and vst synths with my midi keyboard, there's no point having an external sound card. The latop processer and internal card does all that part.

I'm not actually sure what sort the cables are. They're just what they sold me at the rock shop and are still sitting in my car waiting for a play tonight.

There's a 3.5mm to RCA from my laptop to a channel on my DJM800. Then my new BX8A speakers are plugged into the booth output of the mixer with those thick plugs (sounding noob I know, not sure if those types of plugs have a name?) So pretty simple really. You can see the back of the mixer here http://www.skratchworx.com/images/Pioneer/djm800/djm800_back.jpg

I think running through the mixer will work quite well because I'll have some extra volume and eq control for the speakers. They don't have any eq on them themselves.

The problem with hum on your mixer is probably due to earthing in the notebook power supply. Try recording a mix using just the notebook on batteries (unplugged from mains). If its works ok then (which it probably will), you can either run the power supply with no earth - bit iffy but probably safe to do in NZ - I just got a tapon plug and cut the earth out. You can also buy isolated RCA cables for your decks which is the safest way.

I take no responsibility for anyone frying themselves if you go for the no earth option

Or worse still, frying their gear

From the booth? Then they are called TRS jacks
(Tip, Ring, Sleeve).
Be careful using your mixers eq, as this wont effect anything internally, or worse you could end up "coloring" your mixes in a bad way.
To be safe set everything at 0db and eq internally.
Not trying to be a johnny knowitall, I wish somebody had told me all of this when I was starting out.

Ahh TRS, good to know, thanks.

Yea I am running all the eqs straight up the middle and gains at 0db for the channel the laptop is feeding in to. That way it's a zero point and I adjust the eqing in ableton

It is quite cool be able to have a listen to what the track sounds like while it's playing with a bit of eqing on the mixer like you would be while your djing though too.