I thought they had to have the 1/4 male ends like these?

BTW, thanks for the replies Helen&ken and gerg...

I had a look at the ES 4 manual and it is difficult to tell from the drawing but it does look like a phono jack rather than a RCA connector. You can use adapters as your picture above indicates or get a stereo 3.5 mm (1/8") mini plug to mono 1/4" phono jacks as it is probably cheaper. This still should be easy to find but get one with a long cord.



K

The picture from gerg is correct, that's the same type of cable I used. But notice that I did add two converter plugs from RCA to big mono jacks.

The cable from Helen&Ken's picture is even better (no converter plugs necessary) but I couldn't find one of those anywhere in my local stores.

You are correct. I do need the (2)1/4 inch males to the single 1/8 male. Thank you all very much for your help. I'm off to Radio Shack today...

Mark

I'm up and working. For a while I didn't think the Radio Shack guy was going to find all the pieces to get it working.

Thanks everyone again!

Ok, now I'm able to record but when I wear my headphones I lose my stereo sound. And it's difficult to play in mono...

And ideas?

Mark

That's weird. So you're saying that if you plug something into your piano's Line Out, that the headphone sound becomes mono? Are you sure the headphones are plugged in all the way?

If this isn't a case of operator error then you can try to listen to your playing through the computer. Open the Volume Control Panel and enable playback for the Line In device.

This is assuming you're recording on Line In, not Mic In. Mic In is always mono. Try to record through Line In if at all possible.

The headphones are in right. And I can listen through the built in speakers when the headphones are out. But I was hoping to record without disturbing the family...

Then enable playback from your computer and plug the headphones into your computer.

Hi Matthijs,

I tried Red Dot, it's a great little software. I have one comment,

When I set my Audigy sound card as my midi ouput with soundfont, there is no sound except when I hit record.

It would be nice if Red Dot sends the midi data from my keyboard to the Audigy without having to press record.

It's because I like to practice playing before recording.

I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.

Serge

Hi Serge,

You are correct: Red Dot doesn't open the MIDI input until you press Record.

I might change it to the way you describe, but I'll have to think about it because it changes some of the underlying logic and I need to make sure this doesn't hurt the user interface.

By the way, this would also allow the user to start/stop recording by pressing a key on the keyboard, which would be a very handy feature.

Thanks for the feedback!

That would be cool thanks!

Serge

Don't expect me to work on this anytime soon, though... I'm way too busy at the moment. (Hint: the source code can be downloaded from http://reddot.sf.net )

Are the 1/8" to 1/4" adapters that you used Stereo? (In other words they should have 3 sections, not 2). If not, you are shorting the right channel to ground, and that's why you only hear in mono.

Of course I don't.

serge

Hi, can anyone recommend a good USB MIDI cable that I can buy online? I bought one from eBay (brandless from China) and it stopped working after I used it once. I have a Roland RP101 and used it with RedDot, works great the first time but after that the program never detected the cable anymore.

Have you seen this or a similar list? Roland compatibility list

mahlzeit..btw, just thought I'd let you know I resolved my issue...simply burned exsisting music to a CD-RW, then just re-ripped it at a reduced sampling...

for those out of the loop, I had some music that I had ripped at a really high bit rate and when I tried to sync it to my mp3 player, it wouldn't play...only supported 192 bitrate or lower...

Haven't seen this before. This list doesn't mention the my piano model, and this is only for Vista & later. I am still on XP.

hi,

I have a question which is not really covered in the tutorial. I have a Yamaha P-120 which connects to the PC with a to-host/d-sub cable. I installed the Yamaha midi driver but I don't know how to get audacity to recognize the input. Also, I only have the audio input options "stereomix", "CD-Audio" and "microphone" (SigmaTel soundcard) but no line-in. Can anyone help me with this?

Hi conny,

Welcome to the forum.

It sounds like you are using MIDI instead of audio. With this setup, you would be recording the notes you are playing instead of the sound of your piano.

If you go to the pianoclues website
http://www.pianoclues.com/how-to-record-piano/
look at the section on how to record MIDI. You will want to be using a program like RedDotForever or Reaper to record instead of Audacity. This section of Mahlzeit's site will walk you through what you need to do to set up your recording.

You will probably also want to convert the MIDI files to WAV or MP3 files and this page will walk you through the options for this:
http://www.pianoclues.com/2008/03/11/how-to-convert-midi-files-to-mp3-and-make-them-sound-good/

If you want to use Audacity and record the sound of your P120, then you need a different cable. I would connect from the Aux Out of the P120 to the microphone in on your sound card. See page 11 of your manual and I would suggest using a cable connecting the two 1/4" mono phone plugs to 1/8" stereo phone plug. This would let you control the volume on your keyboard. It would not be an ideal set up, but it would work.

For better sound, you could use an external USB audio interface, if your computer has USB ports.

Hope this helps
Rich

Hi Rich!

I saw your post only yesterday cos I was waiting for a notification from the forum.

I tried the variant with Red Dot Forever and it is working now!! Thank you so much for your advice, I was getting frustrated already

Eva

The noise is the result of you hooking your mixer up improperly to your computer. Check out the tips in this article.
http://www.tweakheadz.com/how_to_hookup_a_mixer.htm

Anybody try to record using the digital camera?

All the recent digital camera like my canon S2 have sound recording function and the quality of the recording sound is quite good and can be played back via TV or computer, off course sound file need to be copied from camera to computer.

Hi bigcat, welcome to the forum.

I tried using my digital camera a couple of times. It's a Canon Powershot. Unfortunately the sound quality was very bad... lots of clipping and distortion. This was disappointing because I had seen YouTube videos where people used their cameras and got pretty decent sound. So I'm glad it's working for you.

Nowadays I just use my Zoom and splice the audio track onto my Flip mino video using MovieMaker.

Since most recordings today are done digtally, don't forget the Nyquist theorem, which states that you have to digitally sample the sound at a rate at least twice the highest frequency component of the source sound.

If you sample at too low a rate, you'll get "aliasing", and the sound will suck. This often shows up in amateur recordings. Sounds with lots of high frequency components (such as loud audience applause) come out sounding like trampled mush.

You have to either (a) raise the sampling rate or (b) roll-off the treble. (For better sound, prefer choice "a".)

Check your recording software and make sure you use an adequately high sampling rate. Given the prodigious storage and network bandwidth available today, it doesn't pay to select a low sampling rate.

Here are some of the selections available in Audacity. Note that these are minimal settings. You might want to go higher.

You're right about the Nyquist frequency, but I would be surprised if any recording device in use today didn't use a low-pass filter before the sampling stage in other to remove the frequencies above the Nyquist limit.

Tell that to the people who record crap for you tube.

I'm getting a "404 not found" message when I try to look at the link on how to record digital piano to computer. this is it
http://www.originalsolopiano.com/how-to-record-piano.html