PSR Keyboards (11 Boards) > PSR-E Series

A newbie question....

(1/3) > >>

chongjasmine:
How do you record sound from your keyboard to your computer?

Fantomas:
Hello

You can use Audacity with an USB printer cable connected to your keyboard.
Make sure you have installed Steinberg USB driver from Yamaha.

SciNote:
I believe that she has a PSR-E443, which does not have direct USB audio output.  So, she'll need an analog-audio-to-digital-USB adaptor.  There are plenty of these available for a wide variety of prices.  I use a very basic unit from a company called Behringer which cost about $30 US.  It's straightforward -- just hook the analog audio input of the device to the keyboard's headphone output (this may require an adaptor plug).  Then, hook the USB output of the device to a USB port on your computer.  I've used it on Windows 7 and Windows 10 and did not need to install any special drivers.  But, yes, you will need a computer program, called a digital audio workstation (or DAW) that can get the information from the USB port, interpret it as music, and record it digitally on your computer.  The DAW can then save the music on your computer and even convert it to WAV or MP3 files that can be stored on a flash drive, CD-ROM, or other media for playing the music on stereos or other equipment away from the computer.  Or, the files can be just transferred to a phone or other portable digital audio player like any other music file.

As Fantomas said, you can use Audacity software.  It can be downloaded to your computer for free and is quite powerful.  I have been using it quite a bit to record multi-track recordings from my PSR-E433.  It can convert recordings to WAV, but if you want to convert recordings to MP3, you have to download a separate companion program with Audacity, which is also free.  I believe that the instructions for Audacity on the web also give you instructions on how to download this MP3 program, curiously called "LAME."

There are also other considerations, such as making sure your computer is set to record in stereo instead of mono, adjusting levels to reduce or eliminate noise, and how to listen to what you've already recorded if you want to "overdub" or do multi-track recording, but I don't want to make this post too long, so we can tackle those subjects later.

andyg:
Indeed! The adaptors available now include one that looks just like an audio lead, mine has two 1/4" mono jack plugs at one end and a USB plug at the other. You can also get it with a 3.5mm stereo jack plug. You'd then need an adaptor plug to plug the lead into the PSR's headphones socket.

It needs no Windows drivers and simply appears as an input source in Audacity or whatever you're using. If you keep the PSR's volume control at the 2 o'clock position you should get good results with no problems. If you record a little on the quiet side, no problem, as all audio apps will let you 'normalise' the level at a later stage.

And it's worth mentioning one possible fly in the ointment. Unless you use a 'Y' splitter cable that lets you plug your headphones into the PSR as well as the USB audio adaptor/lead, you'll have to listen to your playing with headphones plugged into your computer. Here's where audio 'latency' may rear its head and you'll find that the sound gets to your ears a little while after you've played the keys. This can very off-putting for the best of players and if the latency is long, like 1/2 second, it's impossible for most people to keep time.

Three ways around this. 1) some adaptors have a headphones socket for monitoring what you record, but they're the more expensive ones 2) you may be able to use an ASIO or WASAPI driver for your adaptor rather than the Direct Sound one that Windows likes to use by default to get the latency down to a very low figure - the better quality adaptors will have ASIO drivers - or you could see if it will work with the free 'ASIO4ALL' driver, which will do the same thing. 3) and perhaps the easiest way - record what you play into the keyboard's song recorder. Once you're happy with what you've done, just play that song back while the audio recorder in the computer does its thing!

And I'll give Audacity a big plug too, for a free app, it does a lot, and does it very well. I have more expensive apps and DAWs but Audacity is the 'go to' app when I'm in a hurry.

SeaGtGruff:
I believe that on another site she mentioned having just bought a PSR-E463. If that's correct then the USB audio option that Fantomas described should work for her. :)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page