To record streaming audio for your website you are going to need a computer recording studio. This is not as hard as you might think, as there are many online resources to help you along.

We are going to look at some of the steps you can take today to jump-start your recording studio.

Decide what your needs are: What you want to do with your recording studio will decide what type of equipment you will need. How professional do you want your audio to sound? What are your long-term goals? How much cash do you have to invest in your new project? All of these questions need to be answered so you can decide what direction to take.

Download Audacity: The first thing I would do if I were starting a brand new computer recording studio would be to go to the Audacity homepage and download this wonderful software. Not only is it fee it happens to be a great piece of software. You may decide to upgrade to something more professional in the future but you may find this software meets all of your recording needs.

Search for online free tutorials: Go to Goggle and type in free (whatever software you are using) tutorial. You will find a wealth of free info out there as well as some paid tutorials. Sit down with a cup of coffee and read and learn. The Internet is full of information.

Search online music stores: Go to Zzounds or the Musicians Friends website and take a look at their recording section. You will need at least a good microphone so shop carefully and you can get a great deal.

Get started: This is the most important thing you can do to build your low cost recording studio. All the day dreaming in the world will do you no good. Start today and before you know it your low cost computer recording studio will be up and running.

To transfer a cassette tape to computer you will need the following:

Working Cassette Deck Cable to connect the cassette deck to your computer Computer with a sound card Software application that lets you record stereo audio

The most important factor in a good transfer is the quality of the analogue playback machine, i.e. the tape deck you're using. Try to find or use the best quality and best sounding one to your ears that you can. If you have or can borrow a 3 head machine especially a Nakamichi and it's working well that should give you excellent sound on playback. It's a good idea to clean the heads, capstans and pinch rollers with isopropyl alcohol (IPA) and a q-tip.

They often become dirty with tape oxide that can muffle the high frequencies and give you a dull sounding recording. Gently rub the heads with the wetted cotton bud until no more brown gunk comes off. Most computers and laptops have sound cards with 3.5mm, minijack connectors on them.

If you have a more specialised sound card it may have larger 1/4" jacks or even XLR connectors but you probably won't need this article if you have one of those! You will need a cable with two phono connectors at one end, for the tape deck, and a single 3.5mm mini stereo jack and the other. These cables can be bought very cheaply and are often used to connect media players to stereos. Plug you cable in and get ready to record! There is a wealth of recording software for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux to choose from, some of it expensive, some cheap and some free!

We're going to use the free software, which is actually very good. Point your web browser to the Audacity website and download and install the version suitable for your operating system. Once you've got Audacity installed and working you'll need to check in the Preferences Audio I/O menu that you have the correct playback and recording inputs selected. If that's ok then press the big round, red record button and then start your tape running. If you see the meters moving up and down and a waveform being drawn across the screen, well done it's recording your tape! It might be a good idea though to stop and check it sounds ok as very low or very loud recordings will not sound good. You will need to be very careful of what's called clipping. Digital recorders can't record 'into the red' like your old tape deck could.

Once they go over 0dB you'll get clipping. This sounds terrible so it's best to check your levels and give yourself a bit of breathing space and record lower. This breathing space is called headroom. If the recording has gone ok, it's safest to save the file first before you do anything to it, using the File Save As menu. Now you can play it back, edit it, burn it to a CD or convert it to an OGG or MP3 file for your media player. If you've any large gaps at the beginning or end, it's a good idea to trim these. Just use the 'I' beam tool and select the flat looking bits of waveform at the start and end of your recording, then press backspace just like you would to delete a word or paragraph in a wordprocessor.

If your recording is over 80 minutes and is destined for a CD you will have to split the file by cutting the section for side 2 maybe and pasting this into a new stereo Audacity document as 80 minutes is the most you can burn on a CD. If you want a CD with track points you will need to create 'markers' in Audacity speak at each gap between tracks. If your recording has neat gaps between the tracks then it's pretty easy as your can use Audacity's Find Silence command which will place a marker at every point in the file that the volume falls to a certain level for a certain length of time. This may need a bit of trial and error to get right but it's worth persevering as it saves much time over the manual method of listening to the whole recording an inserting markers at the point between songs or tracks. If everything's fine, you're almost there.

The last stage before putting your recording on CD or converting it to a compressed format for your media player is to Normalize the file. This looks at the whole file, finds the loudest section and then increased the volume of everything in proportion until the loudest part is just as loud as it can be before it clips. I usually Normalize to 98% or -0.3 dB. Now it's time to make a CD or file. From the File Export menu choose the type of destination file you need. For CD choose, WAV, AIFF and for your media player choose Ogg Vorbis, FLAC or MP3. Now sit back and let it create the final file.. If you have created markers for track points in your CD, you'll need to use the File Export Multiple command which will export each track as a separate file. If you need to make a CD use the WAV file or files in your favourite CD burning application and it should burn one perfectly and you can sit and listen to your recording safe in the knowledge you can make as many digital copies now and play it back forever with no fear of the tape wearing out or getting 'chewed'!Auda

A few years ago there was a revolution in recording technology. As computers became more powerful, they started to replace traditional tape recorders that were the heart of most recording studios. Today, computers designed for home use are powerful enough to emulate an entire recording studio, and can be used for everything from multitrack recording to audio editing and scoring music for videos.

This "democratizing" of recording techniques has opened up the entire recording industry to anyone with the proper software and hardware. With software packages costing a few hundred dollars and professional-quality audio interfaces costing less than 0, anybody can have a virtual recording studio in their home.

Some of the big names in the audio recording field are Cubase, ProTools, Sonar and Sound Forge. Each of these Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) can be used for multi-track recording and editing and have the ability to combine recordings with "virtual instruments".

Virtual instruments are computer-generated sounds that can be played via MIDI. Traditionally, MIDI was used to send music data to hardware devices like keyboards and sound modules, but computers are now powerful enough to emulate sound modules. Instead of hooking up cables to an external device to play MIDI tracks, virtual instruments can be loaded into the computer's memory to play any type of sound.

MIDI tracks can be combined with audio tracks and all of it played back in perfect synchronization. All tracks can be processed with effects like reverb and chorus, and the entire mix can be compressed for a professional sounding result.

Although professional sound recording packages can be fairly expensive, you can get your feet wet by trying out one of the shareware programs that are available. They will allow you to see the capabilities of digital recording, and if you want to develop your interests further you can later buy one of the professional programs.

Once a musician (of any age) starts writing and playing his or her own songs, or joins a band and starts playing in front of actual people, it's not long before the urge to get some of this music recorded for the ages begins to settle in. After all, why write a song if the only way to play it for someone is to grab your guitar and actually, well, play it for them? And why should everyone in the audience know exactly what your band sounds like playing live when you yourself have no idea?

So the idea dawns. "Hey! I ought to have some kind of recording setup here in my basement (or spare room, etc.) so that I can record my songs and put them on a CD! And wow, maybe I could take the recording stuff to one of our gigs and record the band playing, then put that on a CD too!"

It's a great idea, but for someone brand new to the world of recording, that phrase "some kind of recording setup" raises a lot of questions, beginning with, what kind of recording setup? In the Ancient Days, there was only one answer: get yourself a multi-track tape recorder and use that as the basis for your home studio. The audio world has changed, but the descendants of those early units still exist in the form of "standalone" DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) such as those made by Korg, Tascam, and others.

These economical standalone DAWs have evolved to the point of becoming truly "a studio in a box." Want reverb? It's built in, with 100 variations. Want delay or chorus? Built in. Distortion? Guitar amplifier simulations? Compression? Mastering algorithms? Yup. All built in and ready to go. Everything works together because it was designed that way. The amount of equipment needed to provide similar flexibility 20 years ago would have filled half of your studio!

The Lure Of the Computer

"But what about a computerized studio system?" you may ask. "Isn't everyone running ProTools (or CuBase, or Sonar) on a computer these days? Why should I limit myself by using some obsolete overgrown tape recorder instead?" Well, that's a good question, except for that crack about the tape recorder!

Yes, "everyone" is using these advanced, sophisticated, leading-edge tools and systems, if by "everyone" you mean Madonna, Beck, and the seasoned audio engineers at your local pro studio. These are music professionals who have been doing this full-time for years. You are a newbie. A brand new pilot doesn't fly a 747. And no, you probably should not start out with a computerized studio setup.

I don't know how many posts I have read on home recording forums that read something like this:

"I got my new ProTools system set up on my laptop, but I can't get any audio through my sound card. I've been through the manuals over and over and user support is no help. There are three levels of menus to set up the routing and I don't know what any of the words they are using mean. Help!"

or

"My CuBase setup seems to be recording OK, but when I play it back there are lots of pops and crackles. Last time it stopped in the middle and a message about 'cache or buffer overflow' came up. What do I do now?"

or even

"My computer locks up whenever I try to download the required software upgrade from the Internet through the firewall, and now it won't run the original version either! Is there a workaround??"

Is this the kind of questions you want to be asking a week (or two, or four) after you first set up your brand new home recording studio? I think not! But this sort of setup trauma is a fairly common experience, especially for those brand new to recording, or computers, or both.

You Better Think Twice

But not just them! My music partner, whom I shall refer to as Mr. A (although his real name is Jack Burgess), recently upgraded from an 8-track standalone DAW to CuBase software, running on a computer system specifically designed for recording studio use. Now, Mr. A is a smart guy, and is a certified expert on both recording and computers, having worked with both for literally decades. And yet, it took nearly a month of telephoning and trouble-shooting before he was able to successfully record a track and then play it back, one of the more basic studio functions.

If it took Mr. A a month, how long would it take you?

So, no. If you really are just starting out in recording, don't be swayed by the siren song of the high-end pro systems. You'll get there. But try walking first. Check out the Boss BR-1600CD Multitrack Digital Recorder, for example. Look it up on the Musician's Friend website and read the reviews left by pleased users. You can be recording with this unit (or one like it) the very day it arrives at your house! With a computer-based system, not so much.