From: JJ <jos...@ya...> - 2009-11-23 01:58:57
|
Hello. I have installed Rakarrack on my ubuntu 9.10 64-bit box, and it seems as if it has installed just fine. I can run the program. I'm not sure what the best way to get my guitar signal into it is though. If I plug my electric guitar directly into my sound card line-in (via a 1/4 to 1/8 converter plug from Radio Shack), I do not get a usable signal in Rakarrack (even though I seem to have Jack set up properly). Actually, I do get a signal (the green LEDs in Rakarrack move up and down), but it is just noise and gives feedback if I turn up the input. My sound card works in all other ways, as far as I know. Am I supposed to put my guitar signal through a preamp first? Or should I purchase a cable like Alesis Guitarlink 1/4 inch to USB converter cable for $40 in order to plug my guitar into the USB port? Would such a cable even work with Rackarrack, or do I have to plug into the sound card? Would you need a preamp with such a USB cable? I would like to use Rackarrack, but I don't know why it is not receiving a usable signal on my machine. Any ideas? Josh |
From: Dubphil <du...@fr...> - 2009-11-23 07:59:15
|
JJ a écrit , Le 23/11/2009 02:32: > Hello. I have installed Rakarrack on my ubuntu 9.10 64-bit box, and it seems as if it has installed just fine. I can run the program. I'm not sure what the best way to get my guitar signal into it is though. If I plug my electric guitar directly into my sound card line-in (via a 1/4 to 1/8 converter plug from Radio Shack), I do not get a usable signal in Rakarrack (even though I seem to have Jack set up properly). Actually, I do get a signal (the green LEDs in Rakarrack move up and down), but it is just noise and gives feedback if I turn up the input. My sound card works in all other ways, as far as I know. Am I supposed to put my guitar signal through a preamp first? Or should I purchase a cable like Alesis Guitarlink 1/4 inch to USB converter cable for $40 in order to plug my guitar into the USB port? Would such a cable even work with Rackarrack, or do I have to plug into the sound card? Would you need a preamp with such a USB cable? > > I would like to use Rackarrack, but I don't know why it is not receiving a usable signal on my machine. Any ideas? > Josh > Hi, I think you are just fine, did you use Qjackctl in order to check and do the connection of your soundcard to rakarrack into jack ? Best regards Philippe |
From: teza <tsa...@or...> - 2009-11-23 09:41:55
|
Hi, I'm Teza ibuild this page for Racarrack users, have a look it would help you. If you have any trouble with french, keep in touch, I will try to help you. Regards from Paris Teza http://fr.lprod.org/wiki/doku.php/audio:rakarrack ............................................................................ Le dimanche 22 novembre 2009 à 17:32 -0800, JJ a écrit : > Hello. I have installed Rakarrack on my ubuntu 9.10 64-bit box, and it seems as if it has installed just fine. I can run the program. I'm not sure what the best way to get my guitar signal into it is though. If I plug my electric guitar directly into my sound card line-in (via a 1/4 to 1/8 converter plug from Radio Shack), I do not get a usable signal in Rakarrack (even though I seem to have Jack set up properly). Actually, I do get a signal (the green LEDs in Rakarrack move up and down), but it is just noise and gives feedback if I turn up the input. My sound card works in all other ways, as far as I know. Am I supposed to put my guitar signal through a preamp first? Or should I purchase a cable like Alesis Guitarlink 1/4 inch to USB converter cable for $40 in order to plug my guitar into the USB port? Would such a cable even work with Rackarrack, or do I have to plug into the sound card? Would you need a preamp with such a USB cable? > > I would like to use Rackarrack, but I don't know why it is not receiving a usable signal on my machine. Any ideas? > Josh > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day > trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on > what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with > Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july > _______________________________________________ > Rakarrack-users mailing list > Rak...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rakarrack-users > |
From: Douglas M. <dmc...@fi...> - 2009-11-24 03:29:57
|
JJ wrote: > Hello. I have installed Rakarrack on my ubuntu 9.10 64-bit box, and > it seems as if it has installed just fine. I can run the program. > I'm not sure what the best way to get my guitar signal into it is > though. If I plug my electric guitar directly into my sound card > line-in (via a 1/4 to 1/8 converter plug from Radio Shack), I do not > get a usable signal in Rakarrack (even though I seem to have Jack set > up properly). Actually, I do get a signal (the green LEDs in > Rakarrack move up and down), but it is just noise and gives feedback > if I turn up the input. My sound card works in all other ways, as > far as I know. Am I supposed to put my guitar signal through a > preamp first? Or should I purchase a cable like Alesis Guitarlink > 1/4 inch to USB converter cable for $40 in order to plug my guitar > into the USB port? Would such a cable even work with Rackarrack, or > do I have to plug into the sound card? Would you need a preamp with > such a USB cable? > > I would like to use Rackarrack, but I don't know why it is not > receiving a usable signal on my machine. Any ideas? Josh Sound card should work fine. While this may well be just a software configuration issue (jack,...), I can report that there _are_ subtle physically different 1/4 to 1/8 adapters. I ended up buying about half a dozen various brands (radioshack, rca, noname), and ended up with roughly half that work, and half that don't. And inspecting, they are physically slightly different, even looking at two obviously mono male 1/8 connectors. A quick way to verify is to try plugging and unplugging, and seeing if that causes any input to jack (watch the levels, listen). If you do see a lot of static when plugging in, but then nothing, you might try another adapter. I've also had better and complete success with a 1/8 stereo to dual/seperated 1/8 mono, to 1/4. I.e. I can have two guitars plugged into the stereo 1/8 line-in. And theoretically run through seperate rakarrack instances, though I haven't done that yet (but have clearly verified via qjackctl that the channels are independent). -dmc |
From: Bill A. <bi...@k2...> - 2009-11-26 14:56:58
|
What kind of sound card are you using? It seems unlikely that the output from a guitar which is very high impedance and very low signal could work going directly into a card unless the card is specifically made for it. Some cards, like the Edirol USB audio adaptors have guitar signal inputs. Most don't. My M-Audio 2496 card expects a line input which means I need a preamp to get signal to it. You can get very inexpensive preamps like the ART Tube MP Studio for less than $30 which work very well for this purpose. To ensure that you've got everything set up right. 1. Make your alsa is working. Can you play an audio file directly? 2. If yes, take rakarrack out of the loop. Start jack up using qjackctl. When you hit the Start button, make sure it says "started" in the dark feedback area. Then hit the Connect button and make sure you're in the Audio tab. You should see "system" in both areas as readable and writable clients. Click on both one at a time to select them and hit the Connect button. Now you've connected your input directly to your output. When you play your guitar do you hear anything? If yes, hit disconnect, fire up rakarrack, connect the system input to rakarrack and the system output to rakarrack. Regards, Bill On Nov 22, 2009 8:59 PM, "JJ" <jos...@ya...> wrote: Hello. I have installed Rakarrack on my ubuntu 9.10 64-bit box, and it seems as if it has installed just fine. I can run the program. I'm not sure what the best way to get my guitar signal into it is though. If I plug my electric guitar directly into my sound card line-in (via a 1/4 to 1/8 converter plug from Radio Shack), I do not get a usable signal in Rakarrack (even though I seem to have Jack set up properly). Actually, I do get a signal (the green LEDs in Rakarrack move up and down), but it is just noise and gives feedback if I turn up the input. My sound card works in all other ways, as far as I know. Am I supposed to put my guitar signal through a preamp first? Or should I purchase a cable like Alesis Guitarlink 1/4 inch to USB converter cable for $40 in order to plug my guitar into the USB port? Would such a cable even work with Rackarrack, or do I have to plug into the sound card? Would you need a preamp with such a USB cable? I would like to use Rackarrack, but I don't know why it is not receiving a usable signal on my machine. Any ideas? Josh ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ Rakarrack-users mailing list Rak...@li... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rakarrack-users |
From: Douglas M. <dmc...@fi...> - 2009-11-26 18:23:20
|
Bill Allen wrote: > What kind of sound card are you using? It seems unlikely that the output > from a guitar which is very high impedance and very low signal could > work going directly into a card unless the card is specifically made for > it. Actually, I've never had this problem, and have tried at least 2 random consumer laptops (sony vaio vgn250, and acer aspire one netbook). There certainly is a low signal, and adjusting the mixer settings for record level had to happen, although not terribly drastic, as I currently swap my line-in for a usb-tv-tuner passthrough (standard line level signal from my tivo's outputs). Between that and my guitar, I don't have any problem. The problem I do have, and am too lazy to analyze myself, but hope you can answer for me is this- The volume knobs on my guitar _don't_ work when playing through a PC and rakarrack, but do work (I vaguely recall) when using a 'real' amplifier. Or rather, the curve they produce through rakarrack is something like a linear step function around 8/10 or so. I.e. <8/10 maps to 3%, and >8/10 maps to 'acceptable'. I think if I use a preamp before the PC, I can once again use my volume knobs, which would be nice, but... I'm on a particular bent to use open source softare to let anybody use any old PC and any old speakers, as an awesome rakarrack powered amp replacement (without the need to purchase any amp, even a little $30 headphone preamp) And of course, I can use my homebrew nintendo-ds wireless remote control for rakarrack and map it's master volume to the y axis on the touchscreen, so... I don't miss my volume knob _that_ much :) Cheers, -dmc http://viros.org/guitarzyx P.S. Guitar-ZyX is currently Fedora-10 based, but a Fedora-11 release should be coming very soon. And the MCP (nds homebrew) has also seen some major improvements, and now has a very aesthetic (IMO) main menu system, which will be exposing a much more complete set of rakarrack controls in the near future. I've even done proof of concept rigging up a 1/4 mono to NDS adapter for recording straight to the NDS, and hope to eventually see how little latency I can achieve piping the signal over wifi for a true wireless touchscreenwhammypad experience.... bwahahaha.... Some cards, like the Edirol USB audio adaptors have guitar signal > inputs. Most don't. My M-Audio 2496 card expects a line input which > means I need a preamp to get signal to it. You can get very inexpensive > preamps like the ART Tube MP Studio for less than $30 which work very > well for this purpose. > > To ensure that you've got everything set up right. > > 1. Make your alsa is working. Can you play an audio file directly? > > 2. If yes, take rakarrack out of the loop. Start jack up using qjackctl. > When you hit the Start button, make sure it says "started" in the dark > feedback area. Then hit the Connect button and make sure you're in the > Audio tab. You should see "system" in both areas as readable and > writable clients. Click on both one at a time to select them and hit the > Connect button. Now you've connected your input directly to your output. > When you play your guitar do you hear anything? If yes, hit disconnect, > fire up rakarrack, connect the system input to rakarrack and the system > output to rakarrack. > > Regards, > > Bill > >> On Nov 22, 2009 8:59 PM, "JJ" <jos...@ya... >> <mailto:jos...@ya...>> wrote: >> >> Hello. I have installed Rakarrack on my ubuntu 9.10 64-bit box, and >> it seems as if it has installed just fine. I can run the program. >> I'm not sure what the best way to get my guitar signal into it is >> though. If I plug my electric guitar directly into my sound card >> line-in (via a 1/4 to 1/8 converter plug from Radio Shack), I do not >> get a usable signal in Rakarrack (even though I seem to have Jack set >> up properly). Actually, I do get a signal (the green LEDs in >> Rakarrack move up and down), but it is just noise and gives feedback >> if I turn up the input. My sound card works in all other ways, as far >> as I know. Am I supposed to put my guitar signal through a preamp >> first? Or should I purchase a cable like Alesis Guitarlink 1/4 inch >> to USB converter cable for $40 in order to plug my guitar into the USB >> port? Would such a cable even work with Rackarrack, or do I have to >> plug into the sound card? Would you need a preamp with such a USB cable? >> >> I would like to use Rackarrack, but I don't know why it is not >> receiving a usable signal on my machine. Any ideas? >> Josh >> >> >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 >> 30-Day >> trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and >> focus on >> what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with >> Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july >> _______________________________________________ >> Rakarrack-users mailing list >> Rak...@li... >> <mailto:Rak...@li...> >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rakarrack-users > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day > trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on > what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with > Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Rakarrack-users mailing list > Rak...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rakarrack-users |
From: Douglas M. <dmc...@fi...> - 2009-11-26 19:11:39
|
Douglas McClendon wrote: > Bill Allen wrote: >> What kind of sound card are you using? It seems unlikely that the output >> from a guitar which is very high impedance and very low signal could >> work going directly into a card unless the card is specifically made for >> it. > > Actually, I've never had this problem, and have tried at least 2 random > consumer laptops (sony vaio vgn250, and acer aspire one netbook). > > There certainly is a low signal, and adjusting the mixer settings for > record level had to happen, although not terribly drastic, as I > currently swap my line-in for a usb-tv-tuner passthrough (standard line > level signal from my tivo's outputs). Between that and my guitar, I > don't have any problem. To clarify 'don't have any problem' is a bit disingenuous. I'm mainly a linux-geek, who started playing guitar a year and a half ago. So I am really tolerant of what real guitarists would consider a noisy crappy signal. I.e. my vaio is actually pretty decent, but after cranking the record level on the aspire-one to the necessary level, there is more background noise on the signal than real guitarists would tolerate. I just figure that by the time I'm good enough to care, I'll have figured out from a software/sysadmin standpoint how to clean up the signal. For instance, I think on the aspire one, there is just some crappy not-well-enough shieldedness issue going on, as I have briefly used a cheap usb-audio dongle instead of the onboard line-in, and the noise disappeared. But at the time (about a year ago), the driver for the dongle was too flakey for me to want to deal with. Anyway, I just wanted to reiterate that my response should encourage people that results should be visible/listenable directly plugging your guitar into line-in (or at least my experience suggests so), but that if you are a real guitarist, definitely listen to Bill's advise about using an amp/preamp to get a normal line-level signal piped to your PC's line-in. -dmc |
From: Ryan B. <ry...@gm...> - 2009-11-26 21:23:52
|
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <title></title> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> The problem with a guitar and computer sound card is beyond the software processing the signal.<br> <br> A computer sound card has an input impedance of 10k-ohms or less. A volume pot on a guitar is usually 500k-ohms. As you increase the volume on your guitar, it makes little difference until you get more than about 3/4 of the way up, at which point the series resistance of the pot looks comparable to the 10k input impedance. In the last 1/4 of the turn, the volume rises very quickly. How do you write software that knows the difference between light picking or a low setting on the volume knob?<br> <br> Once you have the volume on the guitar all the way up, then you have another problem: The pickups are loaded down at 10k or less. This represents more current, and thus more power dissipated in the system. This power comes directly from the motion on your guitar strings. The take-home message, is that a low impedance amp input causes your guitar pickups to behave as a magnetic brake on your guitar strings ---> Tone and sustain sucking, as well as some gating effect at low volumes.<br> <br> If you can stand some noise, you can put a 100k resistor in series with the input to the sound card (just solder it into the cable). This causes you to have to turn the input gain up quite a bit more, and then you also lose access to some of the resolution -- ie, you may have a 16-bit sound card, but the signal never gets large enough to ever use more than 11 or 12 bits --> poorer audio quality.<br> <br> The only real solution is a sound card made for guitar w/ high input impedance, or a simple preamp. Spend a little time at diystompboxes.com or similar and look for a buffer amplifier. You can build a perfectly functional high quality preamp for less than $5 if you don't invest much money in a nice enclosure.<br> <br> Just my 2cents.<br> <br> Take care<br> "Transmogrifox"<br> <br> Douglas McClendon wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:4B0...@fi..." type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Douglas McClendon wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Bill Allen wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">What kind of sound card are you using? It seems unlikely that the output from a guitar which is very high impedance and very low signal could work going directly into a card unless the card is specifically made for it. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap="">Actually, I've never had this problem, and have tried at least 2 random consumer laptops (sony vaio vgn250, and acer aspire one netbook). There certainly is a low signal, and adjusting the mixer settings for record level had to happen, although not terribly drastic, as I currently swap my line-in for a usb-tv-tuner passthrough (standard line level signal from my tivo's outputs). Between that and my guitar, I don't have any problem. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""><!----> To clarify 'don't have any problem' is a bit disingenuous. I'm mainly a linux-geek, who started playing guitar a year and a half ago. So I am really tolerant of what real guitarists would consider a noisy crappy signal. I.e. my vaio is actually pretty decent, but after cranking the record level on the aspire-one to the necessary level, there is more background noise on the signal than real guitarists would tolerate. I just figure that by the time I'm good enough to care, I'll have figured out from a software/sysadmin standpoint how to clean up the signal. For instance, I think on the aspire one, there is just some crappy not-well-enough shieldedness issue going on, as I have briefly used a cheap usb-audio dongle instead of the onboard line-in, and the noise disappeared. But at the time (about a year ago), the driver for the dongle was too flakey for me to want to deal with. Anyway, I just wanted to reiterate that my response should encourage people that results should be visible/listenable directly plugging your guitar into line-in (or at least my experience suggests so), but that if you are a real guitarist, definitely listen to Bill's advise about using an amp/preamp to get a normal line-level signal piped to your PC's line-in. -dmc ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july">http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july</a> _______________________________________________ Rakarrack-users mailing list <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Rak...@li...">Rak...@li...</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rakarrack-users">https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rakarrack-users</a> </pre> </blockquote> </body> </html> |