It sounds alright, but there is a slightly noise on the line. I guess you did this without noise reduction? Then I suppose this is as good as it's going to get...

By the way, most people will listen over speakers and to them the noise is inaudible anyway. Only a sound nerd like me with headphones on might hear it.

And no, I don't mind... In fact, I have to thank you for helping me make the article clearer.

Ok. I'm not satisfied. I really want to find out what I'm doing wrong. Do you think it could be the cable? It's a cheap $7 cable with 2 mono 1/4" to 1 stereo 1/8". I plug it into the on-board soundcard's input jack. Maybe it's my soundcard? I'm going to make an unedited wav file to see if you can tweak it. That will rule out my equipment.

link

Looking at your WAV file, the volume is really really low! If this is the level at which you've recorded it, you may want to move your volume sliders/knobs up quite a bit.

If this is as loud as it gets, then putting some kind of amplifier in the middle would help. Normalizing a recording amplifies the sound (and the noise in it!) digitally, so maybe an analogue amp would produce a better result. I don't know.

By the way, I don't think you're doing anything terribly wrong... maybe you just have reached the level of recording quality that your equipment is capable of.

If you want to get better sound, buy a digital piano or sound module with balanced outputs, shielded cables, and a better soundcard.

Audacity = excellent software ...
thx for this suggestion,,

To Agent,

make sure if you have a microphone input, that it is muted during the recording.
And any other inputs besides the Line-In.

(Maybe Matthijs already mentions this on his page?)

Double click the little speaker for the volume control,
In the Options menu, pick properties.

Choose the recording radio button.

Mute anything other than your line in.


Not sure if this will do the trick, but it's worth a shot...

...Steve

Heh, good suggestion. I hadn't mentioned that in the article, but I'll add it. I think most soundcards only allow recording from a single input at a time, but no doubt someone will have a soundcard that allows more than one. Thanks, Steve.

Thanks. I did mute the mic in but I'm not sure if there are other inputs to consider. I'll check it out.

Hi Mahlzeit,

I'm looking for an app to convert midi files into mp3 but with the voice that came with the art vista virtual piano (and maybe some other virtual pianos in future). Your faq recommended VST host and Cantabile, will they allow me to do this?

Also, will they allow me to convert the midi with multiple voices (i.e., combine the voices from 2 different plugin apps?)...haha, I'm new to all this plugin stuff so forgive my ignorance.

Thanks in advance!

Hey Mahlzeit,

I think I figured it out, went with Cantabile Lite that you recommended, very easy to use with the one plugin I have (do you know if I can play a midi with two voices at the same time on catabile lite?)

Anyway, finished my first conversion from midi to wav to mp3 (via audacity with lame).

Kudos, mate, you have my vote for most valuable member. BTW, what commercial program would you recommend? I've only heard of cubase and cakewalk...

Thanks again.

Hi sid, I'm glad you figured it out.

Hmm, I haven't tried this, but if a MIDI file thas two voices then each of these voices has its own "channel". Maybe you can map the channels to different VST plug-ins? That's how I would expect it to work, anyway.

I wouldn't know. I use a very old version of Cool Edit Pro. If I ever get a new computer then I might upgrade to Cubase. But you're better off asking others for recommendations here.

Pretty cool, mahlzeit, man this stuff is like crack cocaine. I think I'll be keeping all my future recordings as midi in future for the obvious reason...that and my need for a couple hundred extra gigs for all the new samples I'll be collecting. One terrabyte, here I come

/bump awesome thread. Should be stickied thanks mahlzeit

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but there is good info here, and I wanted to be sure I correctly understood the process, as it is described. So let me see if I have this correct.

1. Connect your DP to your computer using, for example, a MIDI to USB cable.

2. Record using something like Red Dot Forever, which captures the MIDI signals.

3. Convert those to an intermediate format, like WAV, using something like SynthFont.

4. Convert your WAV file to MP3 using something like WinLAME.

That is one possible process, Always.

The other one is:

1. Connect your DP to your computer using an audio cable.

2. Record a WAV with Audacity.

3. Convert your WAV to MP3 using WinLAME.

True enough, but I am afraid the sound card on my standard IBM, er um, Lenovo laptop would make for a less than perfect recording. I'm willing to trade the extra step for better quality.

Hey, I've been using my motherboards built in sound card to make my recordings. People have yet to complain about poor sound. The main thing you have to adjust is the volume on line in so that you don't get any "clipping" on the loud sounds. Once yo have that set you can record just fine for putting your piano recordings on the internet. Granted, maybe the recordings sound like crap on a pair of high end headphones but someone will have to send me some to check. :p

I'm pretty sure that Audacity can let you know if clipping is taking place. You pretty much want your volume set as high as it can go so that you don't get any clipping when recording your piano. Luckily, once you set that line in volume you don't usually touch it for much else. Unless you're using that line in to record other things like voice for Skype or stuff like that.

The only way to find out what you're going to get from your recordings is to try it once you get to that point. Also remember that should all else fail you may be able to take your midi recordings and send them to someone else on the forums to "render" using either software or the piano they have and send you back an mp3 of that performance. I'm sure many folks here would be glad to help if you couldn't afford the software to do so on your own for now.