I work as the technical director for an internet radio station (Brentwood Radio.com), and we have been doing the Digital->Analog/Analog->Digital thing for some time.
The equipment I suggest you acquire varies on what sorts of sounds you want to record.
Obviously you'll need a good sound card, Creative's Sound Blaster Live! is comparitvely cheap for the value you get.
You'll need good microphones, also (it's amazing the difference quality makes). Nice mikes will let you record any instrument, electric or not. I would suggest the company Shure.
Next on your list would be a mixer, I would highly suggest Mackie boards, and for slightly cheaper tastes the Behringer line.
Another key component is good cabling. It's tempting to just run over to Radio Shack and buy what you need... but I've found those cables to have crappy shielding, almost no jacket, and die after about 2 years. I would suggest Hosa cables, or, if you have extra cash, Monster cables.
Lastly you might think of getting a headphone matrix. This is mainly useful if you want to record a band/mutiple people at once. It allows you to amplify the sound a person is making back to them.Also it will allow you to have 6+ headphones w/o splitting the signal.
Well, that's all I have to offer.
-Mark
P.S. Actually one more note, don't jerry rig things unless you really need to.
I've been using this exact same setup for some time, w/o great success. The problem is most likely rooted in the Quickcam driver, if you are using kernel 2.4. Hopefully this article will draw the attention of the qce's author.
The data which the Logitech cam spits out seems to encode poorly or not at all.
Well, I'll send more specific info to him:).
geekoid wrote:
What if something that you do now is legal, but becomes illegal, and the go after people retroactivly?(something ashcroft wants to do)
I hadn't heard as much from Ashcroft. American's have a constitutional right preventing laws from being enforced "ex post facto" as your above comment suggests. It is in the Bill of Rights, and an amendment removing this would be near impossible.
Macarthism and the Red Scare did not enforce laws on previous acts. In fact the system Macarthy set up did not enforce laws at all. The more frightening thing about such a system is it works around the law by simultaneously attacking citizens and threatening those who oppose it or point out the lack of legal substance behind it's policies.
Now, taking this from a view of inductive/deductive legal logic...
The FBI can snoop on my internet traffic
The FBI can do this because there is no expectation of privacy on the internet.
Similarly, if the FBI wanted to, they could read all my postcarded mail.
This is also because there is no expectation of privacy.
Any individual can read my postcarded mail as well, because of this lack of privacy.
If an individual does not violate my rights to privacy in that instance, what keeps them from copying the FBI on the internet?
For clarity: If the FBI can snoop for the reasons offered, then Congress just allowed any individual in the world to legally monitor my internet traffic, and in turn cannot pass laws to punish people who do this. If they did they would be holding a double standard, that privacy rights are not a concern to the government (no troll posts on "oh well it's always been like that").
If there are any lawyers in the audience, please, tell me this isn't true:(.
As valid the point you bring up is, Microsoft's invested, and future interests lie primarily in business software.
The initial and possibly most dramatic reason for Microsoft to target businesses is cash flow. There is great potential among mass-service; however an individual business (with several hundred employees and computers to boot (pun intended)) can just as easily be considered mass as a county. One reason for this is the growing necessity for computers (and the internet) in even more traditional industries. Comparitively a business can also afford more per employee than the average consumer. This cash flow also fills the void, which has been pointed out by many of the previous commentators, of bandwidth. The fastest connections in the world are controlled by ISPs and large businesses.
It also should be noted that the major victims of Microsofts earlier "update addiction" policies were businesses. The change of formatting between Word95 and Word97 does not really bother John Doe. However, when there are 500 John Does who are responsible for there time, somebody takes notice, and tries to correct the problem (the only way they know how). If one business makes the leap to.NET, other businesses will be compelled to follow either for reasons of cooperation or competition.
Earlier comments gave the issue of piracy as a motive for moving to the.NET approach. This has truth as it allows Microsoft to concern itself less with what each subscriber actually uses. Useing services, Microsoft plans to dominate the desktop. MSN is currently based on dial-up connections, and in that way Microsoft ensures constant income.
One of the more puzzling aspects of the.NET plan is how it will affect future PC purchases. On the one hand, until now PCs have been bundled with Microsoft Operating Systems for many years. On the other hand, there is a general disrest amongst hardware vendors about this death grip (which ironically MS seeks to extend to all users). Perspectives on how this may unfold are, of course, greatly appreciated.
DISCLAIMERS:
Please take this comment with a grain of salt. I wrote it in an expository fashion; thusly opinions are often stated as fact
The word "business" above also includes other establishments of similar needs, such as Universities or *shudder* Government Agencies
I just thought it might be nice to point out ESR's articles on this matter (that is why the Linux community is so successful compared to proprietary software).
I believe, IMHO, that Linux can only grow from this new challenge. ----
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The equipment I suggest you acquire varies on what sorts of sounds you want to record.
- Obviously you'll need a good sound card, Creative's Sound Blaster Live! is comparitvely cheap for the value you get.
- You'll need good microphones, also (it's amazing the difference quality makes). Nice mikes will let you record any instrument, electric or not. I would suggest the company Shure.
- Next on your list would be a mixer, I would highly suggest Mackie boards, and for slightly cheaper tastes the Behringer line.
- Another key component is good cabling. It's tempting to just run over to Radio Shack and buy what you need... but I've found those cables to have crappy shielding, almost no jacket, and die after about 2 years. I would suggest Hosa cables, or, if you have extra cash, Monster cables.
- Lastly you might think of getting a headphone matrix. This is mainly useful if you want to record a band/mutiple people at once. It allows you to amplify the sound a person is making back to them.Also it will allow you to have 6+ headphones w/o splitting the signal.
Well, that's all I have to offer.-Mark
P.S. Actually one more note, don't jerry rig things unless you really need to.
The Quickcam Express's Driver's Homepage:
http://qce-ga.sourceforge.net/
The Driver's Sourceforge Page:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qce-ga/
I've been using this exact same setup for some time, w/o great success. The problem is most likely rooted in the Quickcam driver, if you are using kernel 2.4. Hopefully this article will draw the attention of the qce's author. :).
The data which the Logitech cam spits out seems to encode poorly or not at all.
Well, I'll send more specific info to him
Another major fear is that the databases will become corrupted by patches. Transition from mysql 3.2.6 -> 3.2.10.
geekoid wrote: What if something that you do now is legal, but becomes illegal, and the go after people retroactivly?(something ashcroft wants to do)
I hadn't heard as much from Ashcroft. American's have a constitutional right preventing laws from being enforced "ex post facto" as your above comment suggests. It is in the Bill of Rights, and an amendment removing this would be near impossible.
Macarthism and the Red Scare did not enforce laws on previous acts. In fact the system Macarthy set up did not enforce laws at all. The more frightening thing about such a system is it works around the law by simultaneously attacking citizens and threatening those who oppose it or point out the lack of legal substance behind it's policies.
- The FBI can snoop on my internet traffic
- The FBI can do this because there is no expectation of privacy on the internet.
- Similarly, if the FBI wanted to, they could read all my postcarded mail.
- This is also because there is no expectation of privacy.
- Any individual can read my postcarded mail as well, because of this lack of privacy.
- If an individual does not violate my rights to privacy in that instance, what keeps them from copying the FBI on the internet?
For clarity: If the FBI can snoop for the reasons offered, then Congress just allowed any individual in the world to legally monitor my internet traffic, and in turn cannot pass laws to punish people who do this. If they did they would be holding a double standard, that privacy rights are not a concern to the government (no troll posts on "oh well it's always been like that").If there are any lawyers in the audience, please, tell me this isn't true
The initial and possibly most dramatic reason for Microsoft to target businesses is cash flow. There is great potential among mass-service; however an individual business (with several hundred employees and computers to boot (pun intended)) can just as easily be considered mass as a county. One reason for this is the growing necessity for computers (and the internet) in even more traditional industries. Comparitively a business can also afford more per employee than the average consumer. This cash flow also fills the void, which has been pointed out by many of the previous commentators, of bandwidth. The fastest connections in the world are controlled by ISPs and large businesses.
It also should be noted that the major victims of Microsofts earlier "update addiction" policies were businesses. The change of formatting between Word95 and Word97 does not really bother John Doe. However, when there are 500 John Does who are responsible for there time, somebody takes notice, and tries to correct the problem (the only way they know how). If one business makes the leap to .NET, other businesses will be compelled to follow either for reasons of cooperation or competition.
Earlier comments gave the issue of piracy as a motive for moving to the .NET approach. This has truth as it allows Microsoft to concern itself less with what each subscriber actually uses. Useing services, Microsoft plans to dominate the desktop. MSN is currently based on dial-up connections, and in that way Microsoft ensures constant income.
One of the more puzzling aspects of the .NET plan is how it will affect future PC purchases. On the one hand, until now PCs have been bundled with Microsoft Operating Systems for many years. On the other hand, there is a general disrest amongst hardware vendors about this death grip (which ironically MS seeks to extend to all users). Perspectives on how this may unfold are, of course, greatly appreciated.
DISCLAIMERS:
----
At first glance, I was reminded of several "alpha" designs at IBM. (Interesting that this comes right after the Ergonomics article)
----
Hmmm...
Now I wonder why they didn't attack any of the prolific *nix themes that emulate OSX. Possibilities:
- *nix isn't used by enough users to worry about (hah!)
- They fear the wrath of one of they're major future user bases.
- In time, all things come to pass.
I think #2 is much more likely it, but this article may just get that.----
I just thought it might be nice to point out ESR's articles on this matter (that is why the Linux community is so successful compared to proprietary software).
I believe, IMHO, that Linux can only grow from this new challenge.
----