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http://www.replica-watches-guide.com/forum...showtopic=11995
And knowing what I know about working with audio on PCs (I don't have a guitar nor am I inclined to buy hardware or amplifiers), I thought I'd write up an even easier way to get a timing machine operational that does not require the purchase of a guitar amplifier or other hardware. You will, however, still need the Korg contact microphone, which is only $10 from Amazon (right here) and a 1/4-inch to 1/8-inch adapter to convert the large 1/4-inch mono plug to 1/8-inch suitable for your PC sound card, which is only $0.99 from Amazon (right here). I realize the adapter plug is technically stereo and you can get different adapters, but that won't matter in a few minutes. Remember we just need to get sound into the PC, we don't care if its stereo or mono, so there's no point in hunting down a different adapter.
Software you will need (all freeware):
- VSTHost (homepage)
- Freeware. A VST host application. Those in the music biz will know
what VST plugins are. What this app does is provide a very, very simple
but very powerful GUI-based virtual stage to check out VST effects.
- Classic EQ (homepage) - Freeware. A simple 7-band equalizer VST plugin.
- Virtual Audio Cable (homepage) - Free version is all you need. This software is completely fucking tits! This is the special sauce and any digital audio engineer worth a salt should know this and know it well.
Install Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) and launch the Virtual Audio Cable Control Panel app:
In the VAC Control Panel, set the number of cables to 1 (if it is not already) and click "Set":
You should see something like this (note that I use 4 cables for my work, you will not need this many):
Now, a note about this crazy BIBURO application. In typical Asian fashion, it's a squirrely, oddly written piece of software. Modern audio applications will let you configure the audio input device, but not BIBURO. It just picks whatever the OS has set as the default. Which is most cases is probably okay, but since this thing apparently requires very precise sound to work, we can't really just plug the tuning microphone into your PC and go. This is why, in the other tutorial, a guitar amp was needed. We need to finesse the audio a bit. Wine her and dine her.
Well, we're too lazy and cheap to do that here so we're going to do it the tits way.
Right-click your volume control in the systray in Windows:
Select "Recording devices":
Scroll around a bit and see what VAC has done... what's this? A virtual line input! Who'd have thunk it?:
Right-click that bastard and select "Set as default device":
Should look like this now:
Now we're all set to really start cooking. Fire up VSTHost and it should look like so:
Select the Devices menu and then Wave:
Set input to your Microphone input and Output to, you guessed it, VAC Line 1:
Now add the EQ through the New Plugin tool in the File menu:
File the "Classic EQ.dll" file you downloaded and click Open:
Hot damn! We're making progress here! Click the little clock thing on the Classic EQ tool:
Now, this is where it gets dicey because I've never used BIBURO before and don't know what it expects, but following the previous tutorial it sounds like I need to completely turn down the bass and crank up the treble. The frequencies for bass are on the left, and the treble on the right. That's as simple as I can put it for those who have never used graphic equalizer before.
You'll also need to mess with the input gain and output gain so that BIBURO can "hear" the sound. Gain is just a fancy word for volume. Think of the input gain as a volume knob for the incoming sound and the output gain as volume knob for the sound as it leaves the EQ.
The nice, standard EQ with no sliders configured:
You're going to want to try something like this... Once you strap on your microphone, you should see some blinking lights:
Now launch BIBURO per the instructions in the other tutorial. When you do and after you adjust the signal to noise ratios, you should see magic (since I don't have the appropriate microphone yet, I used the sample watch audio file from the BIBURO website. Apparently this file loses 60 seconds per day, which you can see in the screenshot below):
Now you've got the ticket. The same setup as mentioned in the previous tutorial without any more hardware than a tuning mic. No need for any preamps or EQ hardware. Done entirely with free software!
Continue using the previous tutorial at this point and good luck!
Edited by ZellerFTW, 27 March 2011 - 11:08 AM.
