Advice on a new PC & audio interface

[SteveB]

JR - Apologies in advance if you feel this post petty, patronising or flippant. 
Given that making music (some rather wonderful stuff by the way), is a large part of your life, is it unreasonable for myself to suggest that you save up for a few months and purchase a decent PC/laptop etc from your local Argos, Currys or wherever - thus negating any Ebay trauma? 
My 64bit music-making PC was from Argos (A UK high street store for those not UK-based), and cost about £350, it was pre-installed with Windows 7, and given the free upgrade from Microsoft to Windows 10 (which has worked well since installation - touch wood), is probably going to last me several more years.
Would this scenario not be a boon to your good self?

[Johnny Robbo]

JR - Apologies in advance if you feel this post petty, patronising or flippant.

To be honest, mate, I kind of do.

In an ideal world, a new, box-fresh computer WOULD be a solution. However, your suggestion that I just "save up for a few months" implicitly suggests that I have any spare cash at the end of each month. I don't. I make a living providing a service, that can only be described as a luxury. This is in a town which has just lost it's main employer - the SSI steel works. Each month is a struggle to make ends meet - my takings are down by about 50% on where they were before the recession & the steel works closing down is squeezing me even more, as customers drop from a weekly lesson to every two weeks, or even stop coming altogether. As far as luxuries go, some months we have enough for a take away meal - fish & chips, as a treat... once a month. Most months, we don't. That is the reality of our situation.

My wife is having a horrible time at her place of work, too: workplace bullying, that her employer is steadfastly turning a blind eye to. She's already has one nervous breakdown over it & is on a hefty dose of anti-depressants just to get through each week. How long she'll be able to continue at this place of work is anybody's guess - I've told her to ditch the job, even if it means we lose our home, nothing is worth sacrificing one's health for. As you can see, money is tight for us just now, so having someone say "Make a few sacrifices so you can save up for something better" irks me a little.

The £50 I spent on the new PC is money I collected from the jar of pennies that each of us probably have in the house, along with a couple of quid here & there that I've managed to scrape together since Xmas. I thought it would have been pretty obvious, from the fact that I was looking for a refurbished machine on Ebay, that (unlike yourself) I'm not realistically in a position to afford hundreds of pounds on an expensive brand new computer.

[SteveB]

Aw sh*t. 
Steve plonks his size 7s in it again.   
Further apologies JR. Hope your situatinon(s) are ultimately resolved.
SB

[Johnny Robbo]

Aw sh*t. 
Steve plonks his size 7s in it again.   
Further apologies JR. Hope your situatinon(s) are ultimately resolved.
SB

No worries, mate. You caught me at the end of a particularly crap day & I'm sorry if I over-reacted   

[IanR]

Hi Johnny,

Sorry to hear about your circumstances. I'm also sorry to read about the eBay ordeals. It is a bit risky sometimes but I have had mostly good outcomes getting stuff off eBay.

I haven't read all of the posts on this thread so sorry if I repeat others but .........My general advice is similar to Flash, where he said that investing in a goodish interface may be the best decision to make. If you have a reasonably reliable pc and a simple DAW, you can record tracks and bounce them down so that they are not taking up too much processor space, as you go.

I did this for many years. I used the soft synths and plug-ins that came with my DAW and would come up against the limitations of the processor very quickly. But when I bounced down the tracks, the processor get released again for more work.

However, if you have a good interface, you have a better chance of capturing the best from your performance and will hopefully need less processing in the box.

My BR800 is my interface. It can also be used as control surface.

cheers,

Ian

[Johnny Robbo]

Well... the saga rumbles on: I got the issue of the "non-genuine" copy of Windows sorted – as it turns out, it just needed activating, I had been told that if my desktop kept going to a blank background, this was an indication of counterfeit software, and this is what was happening to me. Anyway, after a good hour or so of navigating the Microsoft website, I got my copy of Win7 activated (what a nightmare that site is, by the way – you know that "endless loop" you find yourself in where you follow the links you're given and keep ending up back at the page you started on? Did they get the site put together by a guy who designs mazes & cryptic crosswords in his spare time?). In order to get it onto the internet to do this, I had to shell out a whole £3-00 for a new wifi dongle.

Next up was the issue of the audio interface... was I going to need to buy one? Well, using the Vox Tonelab coupled with ASIO4ALL, I got my guitar coming through the speakers, loud & proud with no latency. The USB out on the Vox going into the PC, then my excellent sounding Logitech 2.1 speaker system connected to the audio output of the Vox. I was concerned that doing this would mean that all the audio on the PC would be getting played through an overdriven Marshall amp model. Great for guitar tones, but not ideal for anything else – mp3s etc. I needn't have worried though: the guitar tones are all as I expected: all my usual guitar sounds coming through perfectly, but the audio playback of music from the PC is unaffected by the amp/cabinet model – just as you'd expect from a PC sound card. Clever!

Next up, install Cakewalk. I thought I'd try & save a few quid here by installing my old version of Music Creator (version 4) that I bought in 2009. It installed perfectly but wouldn't allow me to register it. I kept getting a message that I wasn't logged on as administrator, even though I most definitely was. There was also a midi problem, as Cakewalk couldn't find any midi outputs, meaning that all my VST instruments were silent.

I spent hours trying to solve this & almost gave up – no matter what I did, Cakewalk would not let me register the software, meaning that it was going to time out on me after 30 days. I knew I WAS logged on as administrator, but Music Creator stubbornly refused to acknowledge this. Then, by accident, I happened to right-click on the Music Creator icon on the desktop & saw the option to "run as administrator". I did just that & suddenly, the registration problem was solved: the box where I needed to enter the reg code was no longer "greyed out", so I entered it & got the confirmation message that everything was now fully functional. Also, strangely, the midi problem was now cured – all the midi outputs were recognised & importing a midi file resulted in it playing perfectly. We're getting somewhere!

To make sure, I did a test recording with some midi drums & a bit of guitar. It worked perfectly! Well, that's everything sorted & the new PC doing everything I need. No extra expense for a new audio interface or a new version of Cakewalk Music Creator... right?

Well, it's not quite the happy ending I was hoping for. The one thing I didn't test before popping the champagne (well... actually a can of Aldi lager) was the audio effects in Music Creator. They're not all there, unfortunately. They're all listed in the Audio FX menu, not greyed out, & some of them even work. For instance, I get reverb & compression, albeit with about half of the presets missing, but when I try to add delay or chorus (or any of the other modulation FX), there are no presets available. No problem, I thought... I'll just adjust the parameters (delay time, feedback wet/dry mix etc.), get my sounds and save them as new presets. I'm allowed to do this & the presets save OK, but they have ABSOLUTELY no effect on the sound. Cakewalk is showing that I have chorus & delay (for example) applied to a track, but it isn't actually doing anything. Bizarre!

My instinct tells me that the problem is that I'm trying to run a version of Music Creator which is just too old for Windows 7 and this is why I'm not getting the proper functionality in certain areas like the audio FX. I bet if I played around with it for an extended period, I'd find there would be other things that didn't quite work properly too. Having said that, if I could just get the audio FX running properly, I'd have all the functions I need.

Anyway, the decision I've come to is that I'm back on my old XP computer until I can either scrape together enough money for Music Creator 7, or find some cheap (or even better, free) audio FX VSTs that I can plug into my old version of Cakewalk, in order to replace those which are missing.

I'll keep you posted

[Oldrottenhead]

your saga reminds me of why i prefer a standalone recorder, setting up soundcard, setting up midi in out etc. that said it also has it's benefits , like actually seeing the track you are recording etc.

why don't you try another daw. there are a few free ones around i believe. am heading to work and no onternet there so can't recall right now which daw are available. hopefully 64guitars can provide links etc.

[Johnny Robbo]

your saga reminds me of why i prefer a standalone recorder, setting up soundcard, setting up midi in out etc. that said it also has it's benefits , like actually seeing the track you are recording etc.

why don't you try another daw. there are a few free ones around i believe. am heading to work and no onternet there so can't recall right now which daw are available. hopefully 64guitars can provide links etc.

Yeah... I'm getting quite nostalgic for the days when I used to record with a Boss DR5 drum machine/sequencer into a 4 track cassette machine 

64Guitars has suggested that I make the move to Linux & use one (or more) of the many free DAWs available for that OS. The plan is that I'm eventually going to put Linux on my old machine (which I'm currently running XP on) to road test it.

In the mean-time, I intend to use Win7 + Cakewalk. I've used Cakewalk in it's various guises since 2001, so I know my way round it pretty well & can get good, realistic sounding results. This is why I'm a bit twitchy about abandoning it... Will I get the same "natural" drum sounds just as easily: that's a big concern. That said... if I do end up going the Linux route, I don't want to be shelling out money on upgrading Cakewalk if I'm not going to be using it, so I'm currently testing some of the free VST FX that are available to see if I can get my old version running OK on the Windows 7 computer.

[Hook]

Man I really feel for you brother. You have described every reason I want (and will) stay with stand alone recording units. For all its limitations I love my br80 & I thought I would hate it. I should have bought 2 at the stupid price I got it for ($150) but it's worth it at $250. I also think the br800 looks like an excellent machine capable of high quality recording and is also a DAW controller.

I've just started writing songs for my next kids cd (work) and once I get 25-30 songs I'm gonna produce them. I plan on recording my tracks on the br80 and mixing them on my Tascam DP24 which I hope will bring me the best mixes I've produced yet. Then I'm gonna give Landr a try for the mastering. 

My only concern with my preferred recording method is long term in that they don't seem to be making them anymore. The new Sam Ash gear guide had the Tascam handhelds, dp03 & the DP24sd (or 34, I can't remember but not both) and no boss recorders at all. The new Guitar Center gear guide I got yesterday didn't have any stand alone recorders at all.

Regardless, I hope you get this all sorted out to your liking. I can't think of a more deserving musician.
Rock on!

[Johnny Robbo]

It seems like we're on the same page, Hook... we've both grown accustomed to a certain way of recording which gives us the results we like & are reluctant to change... even though it seems like the world wants us to by telling us we're using obsolete tech.

Regardless, I hope you get this all sorted out to your liking. I can't think of a more deserving musician.
Rock on!

Thank you so much for your kind words too, mate... that was such a supportive, friendly thing to say! Much appreciated!

And now for the good news: It's all fixed! I'm on the new PC, and I've just finished recording a sample tune - only 8 bars long, just to test everything out. EVERYTHING WORKS 

I remembered that when I installed MC4 yesterday, I went for the "64 bit" install, and there was an option to do a "32 bit install" as well. Just so I could rule it out, I uninstalled MC4 (the 64 bit install) and re-installed it as a 32 bit install. I was only doing this as a way of ruling out every last possibility before hunting for a deal on MC7. I fired it up, got it all registered again (now I know I have to "run as administrator"), and all the presets that were missing yesterday are suddenly all back, and WORKING! Woo-Hoo!

I don't understand why it won't work properly in 64 bit mode, as I'm using Windows 7 - 64 bit, but, hey... I'm not questioning it: I've got a new secure PC, my familiar DAW, no extra expense for an interface & all it's cost me is the £50 I spent on the PC plus a new Wifi adapter & keyboard. Back to making music again, I reckon