I have a fairly poor computer and a slightly better laptop. I want to record acoustic guitar and clarinet. then I will work on the files in SoundForge.
What steps must I take to improve the quality of the input sound?
Microphone? Software? Hardware?
I've got a couple of those cheap large mikes that come with your DVD player for karaoke - would they be an improvement on the $10 desktop mike I've got or are they incompatible with computer sound cards?
What's the main, first, simplest, cheapest thing I should do to improve the sound?
let me ask a very important question...what is your budget? Because honestly without decent equipment you're not goind to get good results at all. Using cheap computer mics or even karaoke mics are nowhere near the quality needed to capture decent audio, especially from musical instruments. Also, using an onboard sound card in a computer to record audio is really not a good idea. Line-in recording on consumer sound cards is not as good as the output of its audio. Also sound forge is not really a good program for musical editing...you really need a multi-track professional editing software.
This is what I recommend:
For microphone, pick yourself up a used Shure SM57 on ebay. You should be able to find one for well under $50. They are not used so much these days, but a decade ago they were VERY common in recording studios to capture audio from everything from drums to guitar to pianos. If you want to record vocals, get yourself a Shure SM58...the most popular vocal mic in the industry.
Now if you are serious about getting into audio recording, look into Pro Tools. It is the industry standard professional recording/editing/masterng system for the music as well as tv/film industry. Pro Tools uses its own proprietary hardware, so you don't use the computer sound card. For under $500, you can get a MBOX, which is a 2 channel in/out, 24 bit 48 Khz USB 1.1 powered external audio hardware, along with Pro Tools 7. PT 7 has 32 audio tracks and up to 99 midi tracks. It comes bundled with several decent plugins. For $500, its a steal for what it can do. Check it out here:
Thanks for that. It's achievable. I've a family to support and this is just playing for me so I can't justify taking their money for my games. But I can go $50 once in a while and maybe tax time or somesuch I could spend the $500 for something really worthwhile such as you are talking about.
Until then it sounds like there's really nothing to be done?
