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Hello! I'm sorry if this situation was already discussed here. And I hope you can give me useful advice.

I have one piano (yamaha p-35) pretty simple. Also I have Macbook pro (2011) with built-in audiocard (of course) and another PC. I want to record my playing to macbook, using the jack cord. Trying that I noticed the quality of the sound was not that good after recording, I think a built-in audio card on MB is not enough for the good sound of piano. However it sounds better on PC, but not that perfect anyway and i can't use this PC very often.

So I came up with the decision of buying a new external audio card for Macbook for recording but doubting if that's gonna help in my situation and which audiocard you could suggest (not very expensive)?
I hope here's someone who tried to record on MB...

Not sure where you are in the world, but the PreSonus AudioBox USB can be had for quite a reasonable price - it's probably much the same as the other two channel USB audio interfaces (I'm thinking about the Focusrite Scarlett 2I2 and the Steinberg UR22).

That said, are you using the correct input (I know on some laptops / desktops, they're a common one, where the sound hardware / driver tries to differentiate)? (ie line as opposed to mic).

That said, an inexpensive USB audio adapter could be the common device you use between different computers, and still provide reasonable results, so bought at a competitive price, isn't that much of an outlay.

You are using the Audio output of your P35 straight into the MacBook using a cable with two 1/4" TS jacks on one end and a stereo 1/8th inch mini jack on the other?

Can you share what is not sounding good about the recording?.
What Software you are using.

If you can share an audio file using dropbox or soundcloud or something that will help to.

For Mac Book a nice Audio card would be Apogee Duet. But not cheap. On the low end, something l like Focusrite Scarlette 2i4 or 2i2.

Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. Great brand and you don't need a driver using a Macbook.

Most modern notebooks aren't able to support anything beside a electret microphone for audio input and provide a low supply voltage (bias) for its preamp on the ring of the 3.5mm TRS connector, while recording from the tip in mono after passing the signal through noise- and echo-canceling filters (for good voice reception).

So unless you have a notebook with a true Line In (consumer level, usually stereo), you need an external audio interface for recording piano.

You should probably look for a decent Audio Interface with USB connection for your MacbookPro. There are interfaces which use FireWire but you don't really need them. I can only speak of Focusrite because I've got one. E.g., Focuserite Scarlett line is a set of incredibly good hardware. Scarlett 2i2 would be perfect for home recording IMHO. I've got Focusrite Saffire 24DSP and I am absolutely happy with that. It works with my MacBookPro without any problems. 2i2 costs over £100 so it's not cheap but it's worth the price!

There's only one input (used for headphones or mic) on my mac, so I think I don't miss it.



That's right. It goes right to mac. About the sound - it seems pretty simple and "cheap". Piano sounds pretty good on it's own but mac records it really bad and quite. I use Audacity, on PC it sounds much better but how I already said I can't use PC for recording.

Thank's everyone for your suggestions. I checked if I have Focusrite cards in my area but there's not many of them. Most of them go with quite an expensive price.

What do you think about Creative audio cards? (Creative X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro or Creative Sound Blaster Omni Surround 5.1). Some suggest ASUS Xonar U5, this one has good features as I can see.
Or something from Roland. Though not sure if they are going to work with mac.

Get a dedicated music production audio interface, they are superior to the creative and asus ones because they have dedicated inputs for instruments as well as dedicated drivers for PC which allow low latency for monitoring.

Also they may have a midi inputs which will become handy if yoy ever want to play virtual instruments with your digital piano (pianoteq or ivory pianos).

The roland ones are quite good, the duocapture ex even works with iPad.

Then the Steinberg UR22 is another good option and since its a company owned by yamaha the have very good distribution. But doesnt work with iPad.

Found Roland Duo-Capture. Not 'ex' one. Quite interesting, I hope it's gonna "produce" good sound, atleast better than what I have now.

I don't know the relative prices, but certainly P-35 sound is not good, recording it with a high quality sound card would be like converting a VHS tape to HD.
Perhaps a good option is buy Pianoteq (US$ 129) to record your playing, or another cheap virtual piano. By the way, I believe that Mac's onboard soundcard should be a good quality sound interface.

If you already have it, it's still better than the free stuff.

While I like Pianoteq Stage for its playability, it's still sounding to artificial for recordings in my opinion and the customizing isn't in the $129 edition. For recording I would use a sample library or a native DP instead.

I was trying to say that a high quality audio interface can be (at least in my third world country) quite expensive, and cheap ones won't be better than the Mac's onboard sound card.

I thought so too, but results are really disappointing me. Even on PC it sounds better as I already mentioned before.



So this is a problem. I don't want expensive cards because it's meaningless with my piano and I'm not looking forward to make much work with the recording, and too cheap models can make no other difference from mac.

You have a Mac Book Pro. With some adjustments you can get a decent recording of your P35 with on board sound. You may have ground issues or gain/noise issues that need to be addressed.

But also, you have a Mac Book Pro! Download Garage Band if you haven't already, the Piano samples that come with it are surely a step up from attempting to direct record your P35. If you don't think so, and if Pianoteq is not to your liking, try TruePianos.com or for a few dollars more download Logic Pro from the app store which has several Piano sample libraries included with EXS24 and so many other electric pianos, organs, and synths- it will entertain you for a long time. Or get both, true pianos will run inside of Logic Pro and Garage Band as a plugin.

Well, I don't know about garageband samples and why do I need to use other piano samples at all. I want to record clean P-35 piano sound, "my" sound, that I hear when I play it, not just other simple samples...
And also, I would like to make my mac to record it better, but I don't know how. Seems I've tried everything, maybe not.

In no way they are.

https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1690844/Re:%20The%20DPBSD%20Project!.html#Post1690844

Audible layer switching is a thing even the P-35 doesn't suffer from, the P-35 has more stretching groups than 23, GB doesn't even support silent notes, so it's not usable with a hammer action.


TP's sample set is even smaller than GB's, and also sounds worse than the P-35, it doesn't even support half-pedaling (the P-35 does). TP hasn't been updated for years and I wouldn't waste money on it.

https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1424488/Re:%20The%20DP%20BSD%20Project!.html#Post1424488

It's not meaningless. The Yamaha Steinberg UR22 works great my Yamaha NP-31 (tried it myself), so it will with the P-35. It's a bit expensive, but it comes bundled with Cubase AI, which makes it worth it.

A cheaper Roland Duo-Capture Mk2 (costs as half as much as the UR22 in my region) may be all you need.

Italian Snow said: Well, I don't know about garageband samples and why do I need to use other piano samples at all. I want to record clean P-35 piano sound, "my" sound, that I hear when I play it, not just other simple samples...

That is understandable. The problem is that this might not be the simplest or most effective way to capture your playing - you need an efficient interface from piano to Mac, going from your DP: digital/analogue/digital & finally, analogue (each stage with amplifiers and maybe equalizers). Somewhere along the way, your recording is getting distorted.

I think that is why some people have suggested that a piano from within the Mac computer might give better results, especially since some of these are more recent and elaborate samples/models than the ones in the P35.

However, your Mac/ P35 combination should give good recording results when it's set up right, so perhaps it's worth more experimenting as you'd eventually get a good recording set-up, that way.

I would second the ElmerJFudd post as +1. I wouldn't spend a 100 - 150 Euros on a decent audio interface in this instance to begin with, no matter how good the headphone out of the audio interface it will not combat the limitations of the piano sound samples. Looking at the specs of P-35 I suspect the samples will not come close to a decent software solution.

I also suspect that the headphone out of the macbook will be sufficient in spite of the fact your results are not that good with the line in. To test out try some samples or tracks played on software pianos or any high quality audio recordings. If the audio sounds good through the phones from the macbook without noise and so on, it will more than likely be fine.

Latency and sound quality you can evaluate with painoteq demo and/or the software already mentioned.

Others will chime in no doubt but I strongly suspect that you best investment will arguably be a MIDI to USB cable, that can cost not much to a bit, but mostly less than a decent USB audio interface.

I see the P35 manual mentions the one to use and that costs quite a bit, but there are cheaper MIDI to USB cables. I use Midi over USB using a USB cable which are as cheap as chips, since my piano has that option, but I don't think the P-35 has that option and only offers the traditional MIDI In/out ports. No doubt someone better can tell what is a good enough MIDI to USB cable for a decent price and make a suggestion.

100-150 is very cheap for a quality audio interface, all the decent ones are in that price range. Almost any other solution will require an upgrade later (those creative cards and other audio cables).


I al so live in a third world country, I know some brands are more expensive, but everything related to yamaha is priced equal or very near the US price because they have a very large distribution system.

There are yamaha music stores all around the world which sell Steinberg products.