I want to coonect my electric & electric accoustic to my imac. Can I just connect it to my mic input or do I need an adaptor I don't really want to spend any money but will if needed.
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Accoustic electric guitar
- Thread starter smilinmonki666
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Your best bet really is to get some kind of Firewire or USB preamp device. If you don't want to do that, I would suggest getting a cheap mixer.
Most electric guitars are passive and the signal you get will probably be weak if you plug it right into the computer. Most acoustic/electric guitars are active and are likely to overdrive the input on the computer. A mixer or preamp will allow you to adjust for both and get a better result.
You should also be aware that, generally speaking, acoustic/electric guitars don't sound all that great when recorded through their pickup. A cheap USB mic (like the Blue Snowflake) will give a much better sound.
Most electric guitars are passive and the signal you get will probably be weak if you plug it right into the computer. Most acoustic/electric guitars are active and are likely to overdrive the input on the computer. A mixer or preamp will allow you to adjust for both and get a better result.
You should also be aware that, generally speaking, acoustic/electric guitars don't sound all that great when recorded through their pickup. A cheap USB mic (like the Blue Snowflake) will give a much better sound.
They have things like the TonePort that pair some digital effects processing and amp modeling with digitizing.
M-Audio, Edirol/Roland, and a bunch of other companies also make more straightforward digitizers / external audio cards. Pricing is generally between about $70-150 for most of them.
Since the OP is of few words...
The big question for the OP is... are you trying to record only, or record and amplify?
If you convert from 1/4" TRS to 1/8" TRS (like the cable Jessica linked) and plug it from your guitar straight into the mic port of the computer, you won't get very usable results because your guitar doesn't output line level. The cable is actually designed, AFAIK, for use with the Griffin iMic or whatever it's called, which has a preamp in it.
If, however, you convert from 1/4" TRS to 1/8" TRS and plug the cable from the amplifier's line out to the computer, the results will not be too bad. As others said, it won't be studio quality -- it will have some noise. But it will be fairly usable for garageband type projects.
So basically, if you have an amp, you can just do this with the 1/4" to 1/8" converter. If you don't have an amp, then you really should buy another piece of hardware -- either an amp or something like the toneport.
Yeah, true. If you have patch cables around, and it really comes to doing this (or if you have an amp, in which case you really get not half bad results from doing this) then an adapter from 1/4" to 1/8" is only $2-4 (example).
The Toneport is actually kind of cool, though. I'm actually thinking of getting one myself over other USB audio interfaces because it does some fun stuff like microphone preamp modeling.
I was meant to inform you that I have a guitar amp so it would be coming from that. Sorry. My general thoughts are guitar to amp, amp to iMac?
Then read my post again.
You should get reasonably good (non-studio) quality just by runnning a cable from the line out of the amp to the mic port on the iMac. Depending on what you do and don't have, you need some combination of...- 1/4" cable and a 1/4"-1/8" adapter (like I linked)
- Dedicated 1/4" to 1/8" cable (like Jessica linked)
- 1/8" cable and/or adapter (one of my amps has a 1/8" output port)
And, also depending on what you want to do, you may want to consider a dedicated Audio interface. Personally I do not like the sound quality of the built-in sound interface. I can't think of another reason to input the output from a guitar amp, apart from recording.
I have an adapter for 1/4 to 1/8, which in effect is similar to the cord Jessica pointed out. But I run it through an iMic, the Griffin device that mkrishnan mentioned, that runs through a USB port. Of course the Sound input would have to be set for that in System Preferences.
Also, my only amped guitar is a solid body electric; my acoustic has no pickup, so it's strictly mike.
Also, my only amped guitar is a solid body electric; my acoustic has no pickup, so it's strictly mike.
I've got a Toneport UX1 too, works excellent with my Vista PC as with my MacBook!
Electric guitar, acoustisc guitar, vocals, no problem.
Electric guitar, acoustisc guitar, vocals, no problem.
If you have a good amplifier you'll get a much warmer sound with a good microphone than a direct line in, even more so if your using some distortion like the one on a marshall, where it's the speaker quality that makes all the difference.
Instruments sound better with microphones anyway; except those using digital sounds like keyboards.
Speaking from my on experiences in studio recording.
Instruments sound better with microphones anyway; except those using digital sounds like keyboards.
Speaking from my on experiences in studio recording.