I’ve never quite been able to get CD-standard recordings out of my computer – until now! Yes it’s a new toy, a TASCAM US-122L – and I really wasn’t sure how it would go when I bought it based on internet reviews – via eBay. So what is this thing? It’s a device to plug your musical instrument or microphone into your computer via USB and it converts your analogue input into MIDI input.
Until now, I had been using a small four channel mixer into the mic input of the iMac. Previously, there has always been a bit of hiss or noise from the desk and effects pedal – always low, but present. This is the first time I have had truly clean signal input via the USB port with a two-channel midi interface.
In the box is the TASCAM US-122L unit, a USB cable (which powers the device as well as provides input-output) three CDs – one to install the driver, one to install Cubase lite and one to install GigaStudio3.0 – for windows machines. I was mainly interested to see how it would perform with Tracktion studio recording software – having just upgraded to Tracktion3.0.
After installing the driver on the mac, I plugged the TASCAM unit in and it lit up straight away. The device can take two inputs – and it has both jack and canon sockets. It also has a switch to provide phantom power for mics that would otherwise need a pre-amp.
There is also a headphone socket so you can hear either the input or the output to the computer – or a mix of the two. The device has almost zero lag or latency, and the sound is very clean – no noise or hiss at all!
The Tracktion studio recording software was able to take the midi input without difficulty and I was quickly able to get some nice clean recordings – so perhaps a CD is not out of the question now. Here is the whole recording studio!
Overall, the device is compact, and it performs its fairly simple function of taking your analogue instrument input and turning it into clean digital signal very well indeed.
Okay, don’t take my word for it – have a listen to my fairly average playing of Ashokan Farewell. I thoroughly recommend this device if you are thinking of recording sound on your computer.
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on July 5th, 2007 — Posted in Journal, Music
I had some wonderful feedback from Frieberg-trained linguist Tamsin Sanderson on my systemic functional music schema and as a consequence have incorporated a number of amendments – this piece is developing rapidly!
I have added a component in the text on the physics of music, and on why pianos are always out of tune – and why THAT is a radical innovation for western music!
Enjoy 🙂
Cheers
Jerry
Comments Off on Music – a systemic functional approach – revisited
It’s amazing what can be done with a couple of macs and three years of extraordinary creative thinking! “We are the strange” is a new-media movie – part game scene part Donnie Darko and part AI – that draws on the mash-up/remix culture to produce a loud colourful and quite hypnotic piece. This is a movie by M-dot-Strange – and it has gained official selection for the Sundance Film Festival.
You can see a preview of it on YouTube – a very appropriate space for it
We shall be at the Bankstown Town Hall and its immediate surrounds in Sydney for a day and evening of music and dancing. Also playing are Mothers of Intention and Nasheli Rakkasa.
You might even see us in a Bollywood movie coming to your screens down the track a little.
GIRMIT An untold story
Set in 1700 – 1800s, Forgiveness & Forgotten, tells of British travel across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, it is a story of kidnapping, recruitment and about the false promise of a new way of life for the Indian people of Fiji. It uncovers the real story of the struggle by native and Island people in those days, that is today almost forgotten!
This will be a Bollywood/Colonial Australian movie full of intrigue and struggle – and maybe a few Hindu gods too!
Anyhow it promises to be a great weekend – come and see us play!
Google Apps has brought Office software (docs and spreadsheets) into Web 2.0 with its browser-based editing suites. And Picasa offers photo editing and sharing. SecondLife has 3D modelling tools. Even YouTube has online video editing software, but there is still a gap.
We seem to live in such a visual society that the audio side is deeply neglected – Where is the YouTube or Picasa for musicians or podcasters? Surely the soundtrack to our lives is just as important as the visual!
Sure there are free downloadable software (such as Audacity, MutliTrackStudio, Anvil Studio and GarageBand which comes with the new Macs) for specific platforms for sound editing, but the current crop is neither browser-based nor platform-indpendent.
As the 3D web takes off I can see increasing demand for people to be able to record music, and ambient soundscapes for SecondLife and to be able to stream those sounds straight into these virtual worlds.
So here is my challenge to Google – how about developing the browser-based GarageBand [tm] for the masses?
