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Hi everybody, its been a loooong time since I posted here.. I am out of os stuff and back in graduate school stuff pfffssst... :S Anywayyy..

I am trying to connect my guitar to computer so that I can earn lots of money, fame, fans but I must first record sth.. Do you know the cheapest way to connect to computer, I checked google sources but I want to have some 1-1 conversation so as to being sure of doing things correctly. I know that you can directly connect to computer but it is very low in quality, right? My equipment: A computer, an electrical guitar, a behringer mixer, some guitar cables, distortion pedals.
I want to know the way to get most quality in cheapest way (I know it sounds dumb).. Thanx in advance..

To take a guess, try connecting the guitar's out to the "line in" on the sound card, you should then be able to record with Adobe Audition or the Windows Sound Recorder, etc.

One simple option would be to take line-out from the mixer, and put it into line-in of your computer. Quality will be what the quality of your computers (/sound cards) line-in has.

For better quality, you could get a better sound card. Also, if you computer can take digital signals (either coax or optical) and you can feed that from your mixer (or somewhere), then you avoid any analog processing inside your computer, and probably get better sound.

Anyway, in any case, you can probably get better quality by using a mixer/amplifier/whatever in between your computer and you guitar.

Also consider: you often get "better" sounds, if you play your guitar with a normal amp, and then use microphones to record it. The reason is that much of a typical guitar sound actually has to do with the amplifier, and skipping the amp will tend to give you a dull sound. For what I know, you can counter some of that by feeding the recorded signal to a program designed to model amplifiers.. the Guitar Rig by Native Instruments is one of such programs.

I tend to run my guitar thru my boss BR-8 (which is a standalone 8 track) and use its on-board fx+amp simulation, into a digital-in on my sound card. I often use Cubase to record/edit/mix, although Logic Audio Platinum would be my prefence. Getting a good sound out of this setup will take some time!

I highly recommended mystran's idea about mic'ing the guitar cab for better sounds. Get the levels right, even for heavily distorted metal riffs, use a lower volume, it'll still sound big. Try putting the amp in the corner of a room and place the mic in the gap, I've used this method in the studio, and seems to give a good sound, you just have to get the distance/placement right.