loosing quality through rca cables

[Cornelius The Third]

so ive noticed when i finish a beat on the sp, and i go to record it into logic through rca chords in the audio port, it sounds rather muddy. . .is this because i dont have an interphase? or shud this not happen?

[LoneStar]

I guess the problem is your soundcard, you're using the the onboard one, right? From a sound engineering point of view, any onboard soundcard is a piece of shit worth 3 dollars

[Cornelius The Third]

yea im using the one that comes with the macbook pro. . .13'', (which also only has one audio port. . .sucks ass) i dont know anything about soundcards, can u replace them with better ones? are they expensive?

[Jim Y]

Does your Macbook have RCA jacks - or the usual stereo minijacks? If mini jack it might only be a mic input or one that can be configured by software as mic or line-in. You need a line-in really, a mic input will probably be mixed to mono which can screw up any stereo FX.

TBH, the quality of on-board soundchips isn't really too bad nowadays, but they still often lack the right facilities, especially on a notebook computer due to spacesaving. A USB soundcard will probably be the best option but I have no personal recommendation for that - how much do you want to spend? There are loads out there, many of which won't even need a driver installing/

Jim

[Platypus Beird]

if you have a Mac, get the Apogee Duet! look on Ebay or Craigslist for a gently used one, they can be had for 300 dollars and are worth every penny...do you have a Firewire port? or did they do away with those?

EDIT: don't think you have a FW port so scratch that idea...

[cartesia]

first of all make sure youre not clipping the signal.. is the recording coming through with really flattened out looking waveform that looks like the top/bottoms been chopped off?

failing that..

USB audio interface. (I recommend you spend at least $200 to avoid bad ones) You can get better quality RCA cables but the difference they make is very subtle, not what you would be having trouble with at the moment.

[Cornelius The Third]

thanks for the tips guys. . . i got it to work as good as i could for now(cant afford interphase yet) the signal was getting converted to mono which made it sound bad and yea cartesia i think it was getting clipped cuz the first waveform was very flat and the new one isnt. Thanks for the help!!!