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Soundblaster Live Hissing Sound From Guitar

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DavidinCincinnati

Member
I recently bought a Soundblaster Live Xgamer 5.1 with intentions on recording my guitar sound with it. I decreased the electric guitar's plug size using an adapter and inserted it into the line in. When I unmute the line in and record the music it plays back with a loud hissing sound. I would appreciate any comments or suggestions.

AMD 800
Soundblaster Live
ABIT KT7-RAID
128Megs
 
I get a hiss from line in as well, it seems to be interference. The only suggestion I can give you is to try different connectors, higher quailty to block some of the line noise.
 
I'll take this slow. You need to do some research before you buy gear for any particular purpose.

Of course it's not going to work right, you're doing it the wrong way, and you're not using the right equipment. For starters you need a preamp to amplify the sound from your pickups to a line level for the soundcard.

You can buy a dedicated preamp for this or a small mixing board. You also might want to look into buying a small 4-track recorder(or similar) to learn to use and get the hang of recording. This might be around the same price as a preamp, but will be better for you. And you can also use the preamp from the 4-track to input into your soundcard if you wanted to. You can also record on the 4-track and then mixdown using the computer and then burn a CD.

My suggestion is to buy a 4-track and a cheap(professional) mic ala Shure SM57/or58, to record your guitar amp and also voice or acoustic guitar if you have one.

Also do some research on recording, or buy a book. This will help you tremendosly.
 
"For starters you need a preamp to amplify the sound from your pickups to a line level for the soundcard."

Umm, wrong! In fact I think this is so wrong that if you dump in an amplified signal you will probably blow your Live! and motherboard (although I'm not sure and I doubt I would try, that connection should NOT be amped)

"You can buy a dedicated preamp for this or a small mixing board. You also might want to look into buying a small 4-track recorder(or similar) to learn to use and get the hang of recording. This might be around the same price as a preamp, but will be better for you. And you can also use the preamp from the 4-track to input into your soundcard if you wanted to. You can also record on the 4-track and then mixdown using the computer and then burn a CD."

Why are you encouraging the purchase of equipment that ISN'T needed at additional expense? And why are you so condescending?

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David,

I don't know the specifics of the problem you are having but I built a computer for a client who uses a sounblaster live platinum to do sound recording. His only complaint is that he can't record the output of the EAX effects. He plugs his guitar straight into the Live Drive in the front though (it's a 1/4" plug). So I would guess that it has to do with either the connection (ie the cable) or plugging right into the card (and he doesn't preamp it!). You may want to get your hands on a live drive if you can.
 
Well, I've done both , I mean connected a guitar both with and without a preamp. The proper way to do this is to use mic in without a preamp and line in with a preamp, and I get no hissing or noise. I could even use the live's effects directly on my guitar without an amp (the distortion, as expected, is horrible).
 
Rahvin you have no idea what you are talking about. Please don't say that my advice will blow up his rig. Especially when I'm telling him the truth. My advice will get him a lot farther along in his pursute. He stated that he bought the card specificaly for recording. I told him the best way to go about it(not a rigged up "yeah there's sound but it's not right" way). My way will give him good sound, and he will learn something. Right now he knows nothing. And this is something you just can't start doing without learning some basics.

I am a recording engineer, And attended a recording school. I have played guitar for 20yrs. And I have also worked in music/recording sales for 5yrs previously. I don't want to be condesceding, but people need to research a little bit before they buy things for a certain purpose. I tried to give good advice so he would not be barking up the wrong tree by trying something that is A:wrong and B:sounds like sh*t. His question(sorry to the guy asking it, I understand, but this is the way it is) is like someone who has a prebuilt computer that has no AGP slot, they decide to upgrade the vid card and buy an AGP card at BestBuy, and try to force it in a PCI slot. They then post a question as to why this wont work. This would make most of us roll our eyes(now that it is put into terms we can understand). That's just the way it hit me at first. It's very obvious, and he should have looked a little more into it. No problem now he knows the right way.

Here's some more tips. Direct guitars(except basses) sound like sh*t. Unless you have a special kind of preamp made for guitar. These have "speaker emulation" on them. What you want to do is mic your guitar cabinet/speaker and plug it into a mixer or preamp- then into your soundcard.

Also never use the sound cards "mic input" for anything but a computer mic. The preamp on this is complete sh*t. It is distorted, and has the bandwidth for the vocal range(think telephone quality).

Check out some recording sites or magazines. The book idea is a good one. Also pay a visit to the local music store and ask some questions. Computer guys generally don't know much about this type of thing. If you have any more questions I'll be happy to help. 🙂
 
Even if you are miking the speaker, you'll want something in your software to fix the EQ. Even expensive mics make cabinets sound different, because, well, if you stick you ear right up on the speaker it will sound different, too. My advice is to back the mic away from the speaker a bit and to point at the cone of the speaker as opposed to the round bump in the middle. Doing this gets rid of the unnatural low and high boosts you get from having the mic so close. And crank it up as loud as you can, the hotter the signal, the lower you can turn it down in your software, and that will reduce hiss and background noise.
If you really want to get down and dirty, buy dedicated recording hardware. It will sound way better, but the same still applies, like it was said above, you want a pre-amp for the mic. By the way, many guitar amps have headphone or line out jacks already on them, even big Marshall heads. You can also run the effects loop out into the line in on your card, that will work, too, but remember that a lot of your sound is shaped by the speakers, and the signal coming out of your amp with sound way too trebley without the speakers to tone things down...

Look, you're not going to sound professional unless you dish out the $$$... But that doens't mean you can't sound pretty good and be able to make demos and do multitracking to try out parts with cheap stuff. Just depends on what your goals are.
 
As far as EQ if you use a mixer you can do it with this. For software you can use your recording software. My SB Live! shipped with Cakewalk Express and SoundforgeXP as well as Creative's recorder. I don't know what came with the Xgamer but these will work fine. If you don't have any recording software(I'm sure the card shipped with some) you can buy cheaper versions of Cakewalk, or Cool Edit is a great cheaper program that is full featured and inexpensive. There might be a shareware version of CoolEdit also(I think I heard about that somewhere).

Oh, I love Marshalls too! Fender tube amps are great also. 100watt Plexi stack is the Bizomb!
 
<<Rahvin you have no idea what you are talking about.>>

Oh actually I have a pretty good idea what I'm talking about. In fact I realize that I'm talking to someone that is experimenting with recording and playback and may NOT want to dump $3000 into equipment to do a little home recording/experimenting (as witnessed by the fact that he purchased a SBLIVE gamer). See unlike you I realize that the SBLive is the same friggin card as the EMU one. I also know that you can use the same drivers and using SAW (or your prefered software) to do a little home recording and you can get stunning results WITHOUT dropping $$$ on a mixer and preamp. You may be a sound engineer, and you may be great at what you do, but that doesn't mean you know how to get lower end equipment to do the same stuff as the high end equipment. Sure it might take a little more work and know how but it IS possible. I have witnessed it myself and I'm sorry to break it to you but you AREN'T an audio god.

As I said I'm not an expert, my client has gotten very good without dumping the cash but as I said he uses the live drive...
 
Look bud, I know it's the same chip as the EMU. It doesn't change the fact that you need to bring the signal up to line level, and that the mic in sucks.

If your client is doing what you are saying, then the live drive has a preamp built in to the 1/4&quot; jack input. My guess is that he is using more equipment than you know about(or is deaf, and doesn't realise bad sound when he hears it).

Actually I didn't suggest he buy $3000 worth of equpment. I said he should at least research and buy a book first. Then buy a cheap preamp or mixer and cheap(pro) mic. A good cheap pro preamp can be had for around $100 making the live drive a complete waste of time(and money). A mixer gives more functionality so would be a good choice as well(again a cheap one). Paired with a cheap(pro) mic will give pro results without the headache. He should just learn a little more, and then weight his options.

Your advice does him no good as you do not record or know anything about it. You are just going by what someone has told you. I own the SB Live! and have used it with an SM58 and a cheap mixer. I got pretty good results with it. So don't say I don't know how to get results with cheap gear.

The key word here is experiment. Well I'm just saving him the time of repeating experiments that fail. Knowledge will always do better than just trying this or that. I and many others have &quot;been there, done that&quot;. Passing along this info will save him time, money, and mucho frustration. Learn the basics and follow the footsteps of those that have been there and he should do fine.
 
Screw the plexi, mad cap, it's all about running a Big Muff into a JCM800! haha, eat distortion! 🙂 Ok ok, I know, it's getting off topic.
 
That's a good rig too. I also like the sound J Mascis from Dinosaur jr. gets from Big Muffs into plexi's. My very favorite sound ever is early VH. Straight hot humbucker into an old plexi turned all the way up(phase90 optional 😉 ). JCM 800's are great for that awesome early eighties sound, very brown still but just cranked up a bit. All of the mid range is still there. Ahhhh! I'm starting to drool just thinking about the tone!
 
Look I don't wanna argue with you about this. I understand what you are saying and I agree with a lot of it. I just felt you were VERY condensending to the poster in you first post to this thread. All I have been trying to say all along is that he needs the live drive (and I believe if you go to soundblaster.com and look through the FAQs they have a comment about not using the Mic in on the back of the SBLive for anything but speech recognition or internet phonecalls type crap) to do what he wants.

<<A good cheap pro preamp can be had for around $100 making the live drive a complete waste of time(and money).>>

If he can still return his SBLive Gamer he could get the platinum (with the live drive) for $50-80 more depending on how much he paid for the gamer. David is obviously not a professional sound producer and wants to play around, he may have no use for a preamp other than this experimenting (so it would be an expensive peice of hardware with no other use, the live drive on the other hand has some nifty plugs on it, in particular a front access headphone jack that automatically mutes the speakers). Neither of us know, I'm trying to present other options, it doesn't mean I'm wrong!

<<My guess is that he is using more equipment than you know about(or is deaf, and doesn't realise bad sound when he hears it).>>

Your guess is wrong. I talked him out of dropping $300 bucks on a mixer he doesn't need. The stuff he produces is better than some most of the locally professionaly done stuff I have heard. (mostly oweing to his use of SAW). Here is a link to his soon to be defunct bands website:

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/56/the_idea_of_space.html

(Disclaimer, the stuff produced on this site was done by a bandmate that doesn't use a live, but the quality is identical if you want proof I will get a song off him)
 
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