My “music studio” is pretty basic. My typical setup simply consisted of my keyboard, my computer, and LightSnake USB instrument cable.

Though I’ve been recording here and there over the past years, I’ve always had two problems:

1. I’ve been recording “deaf”
2. Recording quality

Recording Deaf
When my keyboard (a Yamaha YPG-625) is connected to my computer, I couldn’t hear my keyboard’s sound coming through my speakers. The only way I could was to capture it through recording the audio, where it wouldn’t even play through the speakers while doing so. I would only be able to hear it after playing back the recorded audio.

This has been a rather problematic issue since it prevents me from recording music efficiently. I’ve been wanting to use some audio creation software that I’ve purchased before, such as Sony ACID Music Studio 7,  for making loops though I never felt I could actually do it if I couldn’t actually hear anything of what I was recording real-time. I had been resorting to compiling tracks on the keyboard itself where it’s limited to 5 tracks and 1 accompaniment. And recording those tracks would be a pain, too — it was a one shot chance to record right and if I messed up I’d have to start all over again. And again. And again.

Recording Quality
The recording quality was another issue, though it was something that I just learned to deal with. My keyboard and computer were linked together using a LightSnake USB instrument cable, and when just recording an empty signal from the keyboard, it would still capture static noise.

The static would of course persist over the duration of the audio recording. Though Audacity has the option “Noise Removal”, it always went at the expense of the audio recording quality. In more recent music I’ve made, I just ended up not using the Noise Removal to the audio altogether.

The Solution
Every single time I’ve been recording, I couldn’t help but think about re-evaluate my setup. Of and on I would ask the all-knowing Google as well as talking about my recording problems with other fellow musicians, the answer seemed to be pointing to getting an audio interface or mixer of some sort. Upon taking a trip to the local Guitar Center with some friends yesterday, I saw that they had a whole section on recording studios, and after going through different types of interfaces, I ended up purchasing an M-AUDIO Fast Track Pro.

The price tag was a little high where I bought it at the Guitar Center for $200. I was deliberating between the Fast Track Pro, M-AUDIO Fast Track ($99) and the M-AUDIO MobilePre USB ($150). I chose to go with the Fast Track Pro because the Fast Track used USB 1.1 instead of 2.0 and that the MobilePre USB could only record in mono, where the Pro could record in stereo. (The MobilePre had a stereo output, though).

It took a little bit for me to set everything up correctly and figure out what the knobs and dials correspond to. But now my setup looks something like this:

I was a little skeptical about it solving my recording woes, and after playing around with it a bit yesterday I’m impressed. But now I can actually hear what I’m recording while I’m recording, which is a very big thing to me.

Also, I was pleasantly surprised to see the difference in capturing audio now too!

Before:

After:

You see that flat line before and after recording? It’s beautiful, beautiful, no noise goodness.

Here’s to making better quality music in the future. Especially now, since it’ll be MUCH easier for me to make full, 3 minute music arrangements rather than just 30 second shorts.