Silas Scarborough - Devices I Use

All of my equipment is based off Mac driving systems, either a desktop or a laptop depending on circumstances. While it's possible to use Windows-based systems for audio streaming, if you're trying to connect your instruments to your computer through the sound card, you've really already lost the battle because you've introduced dependencies (the sound card hardware and software) that doesn't need to be in the signal path. Comparisons of Apple / Windows software quality set aside, the key deciding point in the platform you'll use is whether the audio signal you generate with the instrument can be passed through as hygienically as possible to the software on the computer. With current machines, the best way to do that is to use a USB or a Firewire audio interface.

If your kit is not all that large and you don't intend to do multi-channel recording, an option that will work for any platform is to use a mixer with a USB output. Using such a mixer, you could plug a vocal mike and a guitar mike into it, balance to taste, and send the mixed signal straight through to the computer software for streaming out to the net. The disadvantage of this type of system is that it is impossible to record discrete channels unless you do them sequentially. For example, play a song on the guitar and record it then record your vocal on another track in a second pass.

Presonus Firestudio Project

Connecting to the computer is done over Firewire and all the instruments and devices connect to the interface as they would to a standard mixer. Above it is a Behringer headphone amplifier to permit driving multiple sets of headphones. The Firestudio Project is fairly well-behaved in hardware and rarely loses connectivity to the computer. The FireControl software that runs on the computer to support the hardware is adequate but far from impressive.

Godin xtSA MIDI guitar

The picture doesn't show the twang bar and it also doesn't show the other Godin xtSA that I keep tuned in case of a broken string or some other problem in a gig. I've played many other guitars and this is easily the finest I have ever had the privilege to play.

E-Mu XBoard61 MIDI Controller

The keyboard can't really make a sound as it only sends MIDI information and the sound is produced by whatever receives it. Sometimes I'll use voices generated by the computer and other times I'll use an old Korg O5r/W sound module (it's the little black box next to the audio interface).