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So I'm trying to get things set up so that every time my students have finished a piece, we record it, and then at the end of the school year, I give them a cd of all the pieces they've worked on.

Right now, I have a laptop and I need to get cables to connect it to the computer. However, I'm concerned about the quality of recording that I'll get as a result of using the input on the sound card. I do own a usb interface that I'm currently using to record my voice student's lessons on a computer. Would you recommend that I use that for the piano as well, or will it not be noticeably better than the input on the sound card?

I currently use the line-out on the fp-7 to the line in on my motherboard sound card. However, if you have an external sound card you may get better recording off of that. If they don't require different line in jacks or different lengths of cable then there shouldn't be much difference between trying both methods out. The external interface doesn't have to deal with an electronically noisy interior of a computer case though.

Well, I tried the direct line in and was having some trouble with getting Sonar LE to do any audio recording at all. I'm running Vista, and apparently this has been a problem and there are no patches as of yet. So now I'm off to find some other recording software that can work in Vista. Any suggestions?

Are you sure the problem isn't with your sound card rather than with Sonar LE?

We got it working so that Vista could recognize the DP, but Vista is blocking Sonar from recording from the DP. So I don't think it's a sound card/hardware issue. Apparently this is a commonly known problem with Vista and Sonar.

Have you tried running Sonar as an Administrator?
(right-click the sonar icon and goto properties)

This will solve many permission issues with Vista.

As far as other recording software, I use Reaper with Vista, you can download a fully functional trial for free. It goes for ~$50. Lots bang for $$.

Audacity is a free recording software, but I only used it once.

I am already as Administrator, so that didn't change. It's Sonar LE that comes with Roland, so not sure if that's an issue too.

Thanks for the info, I'll check out those programs.

Maybe I'm missing something here. You've successfully recorded voice on your computer using a quality interface. So instead of trying the same thing with your DP, you're looking into buying new recording software so that *maybe* it'll work through your soundcard and bypass Vista's bullshit???

There's no need to ask hypothetical questions about using your interface when it's sitting right there in front of you and you can just try it.

Am I missing something here?

Morodiene,
Not sure if you know already or not, but just in case: Being signed on as an administrator is not the same as setting a program to run with administrator privileges.
You can right click the Sonar icon, select properties, go to the compatibility tab, and check mark "run this program as an administrator".
There are also settings for XP compatibility mode.

I overlooked that the first time a read the post.

To jscomposer's point, are you using sonar to capture the voice recordings??

No, although that is another thing I'd like to do, using my usb interface. Right now, though, I'm just trying to tackle getting the DP recorded.

As for the running as administrator, I was just looking on "run as administrator" when right-clicking on the icon. I followed your steps, and we'll see how that goes.

I think we got Audacity to work, but I'm miffed that Sonar LE won't work. When I go into Options/Audio, there are no drivers whatsoever, even though I installed drivers so that the line in works in Vista.

FYI, in case you might not be aware. I was talking to Psalm23 on this thread, where he said Roland was going to release new Vista 64 bit drivers during the week of January 5. Vista drivers from Roland

guest1013...thanks so much! I think that will solve my dilemma.

Hi!

I would like to highlight another problem that I have been faced with when using the FP7. When I'm connecting the USB-cable between the piano and the computer, for usage with Sonar, sometimes no sound appears when playing, and nothing is being recorded into Sonar either, though I can see that the connection is working (the small icon reacts when playing). I have to restart the piano to get any sound.

/Andrée

Well, that didn't resolve the problem. I'm running the 32-bit Vista, and while I did install a driver for that off of Roland's website, it didn't help much. Now I'm able to actually record either via the usb interface or audio out, but it gets garbled and cut off. I've fiddled with the levels and it does it no matter how softly I record. I was able to hook up the piano to a PC with windows xp on it using sound forge as the software and had no problems (using the usb interface). So my guess is either there's an issue with Vista, or I need to use sound forge. I'll be trying sound forge, and hopefully that will do the trick .

Did you try adjusting sample or buffer rates?

In Audacity? (I could never get it to work in Sonar LE). In Audacity, I had it set to 44,100 hz for sample rate (32-bit float format). Is that good? I don't see anywhere to edit buffer rates. I know just enough of this stuff to break things!

Hee, hee, I hesitate to say more, the blind leading the sighted...

here is a similar inquiry about Sonar LE, a bit dated but might have enough similarity to your set up. Sonar LE audio settings

I have to wonder if jscomposer is on to something, quality interfaces seem to make a world of difference.

Sorry I missed this post the first time around!

The problem is that neither the interface nor the direct sound card hook ups work on Vista at the moment. I have a PC that I've been recording voice into, but that is located in a different area of the studio for students to work on while I'm teaching. I wanted to use my laptop to record the DP so I wouldn't have to use the student PC. Hope that makes sense.

At first my question was which one is better, but now I'm just hoping for any of them to work on Vista.

BTW, the interface I'm using is Edirol ua-1ex. I've been very happy with in on my XP machine. anyways, I'll try using Sound Forge on Vista now and see if that works. It's really a shame that Microsoft put out something that had so much potential to be cool and utterly failed at functioning.

Just for an update, Sound Forge did work with the Edirol interface (and I did have to run that as Administrator too...silly Vista!).