Love the lessons!

namiguShin · #1 August 27th, 2006

Hi, Tekker...

I love your recording lessons!!!

Especially the one about Kristal and real-time playing... Latency was a real problem and I had no idea how to solve it... And I heard about this ASIO drivers, but never knew what they are and what they do actually... Actually, I don't know now either,

but latency is gone!

Everybody is talking about them, and never about what they are, in plain English... If you could say in a few words about what is their purpose? Or is reducing latency their only purpose? Don't know if it makes a diference, I don't have an expencive soundcard, I have the one integrated on motherboard...

Also, I wanted to ask you if you're sure that you can plug guitar directly into soundcard without burning anything (1/8'' adapter at least)? I had heard a lot about that this is not a good idea, because of some diference in impedances (don't know what impedance is, either

), and that it is better to use DI-Box in between?

Thanks for wonderful lessons and thanks for reply in advance!

Tekker · #2 August 27th, 2006

Thanks for the kind comments namiguShin.

I don't really know the technical stuff behind ASIO, but you can google the definition for ASIO.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=asio+definition

I'm positive you can plug the guitar into the soundcard. I've done it lots of times. I don't have a nice guitar amp, so I always play my guitar through my soundcard using plugins for guitar effects. In this case there is not enough power from your guitar for the impedance difference to hurt anything. The only effect matching the impedance will have in this case is it will sound better. (Impedance is the opposition to AC current flow... Basically the same thing as resistance.)

Where matching impedance does come into factor is when setting up power amps and speakers. There is the potential there to do some serious damage if you connect a speaker impedance that is too small for the amp. But in the case of the signal coming out of the guitar, it is very weak so you can't do any damage with your guitar.

-tkr

namiguShin · #3 August 27th, 2006

When I think better now, I think that's what they were talking about... The diference in impedance would make playing sound poor... Anyway, thanks, that's what I wanted to hear, that it's safe...

Tekker · #4 August 27th, 2006

I don't know that it sounds "poor", but matching the impedance definitely sounds better.

My Aardvark soundcard has a high-Z setting for pluggin guitars and basses directly into it. Enabling the high-Z setting makes quite a difference. I also have a preamp (Studio Projects VTB-1) that has a high-z input and I like it a lot better than the one in my soundcard.

-tkr