Recording Tips

From Audacity Wiki

Recording voice, music, or sound effects can be fun and easy. However, if you want to get the best transfer of a tape or LP to your computer, or record your garage band, you'll find that recording can be more difficult than it first appears, unless you arm yourself with a little basic knowledge. The pages listed here are currently a work in progress, providing many useful tips.

Related article(s):

Recording Troubleshooter - identifying symptoms of recording problems and fixing them
Also see our general Tutorials page - this includes some common tasks related to recording, such as cleaning up residual noise, splitting recordings into separate tracks and burning CDs

Edit Hint: There are several weaknesses here for outright beginners seeking help:

little information (in one place) about different types of microphone and where to find them
no information about how to connect a guitar to a computer

Please help by adding information if you can.

Recording Hardware and Software Tips

Hardware influence on recording quality - Appropriate hardware for the quality you want to record at, including sound devices, connecting cables, microphones...etc
Updating Sound Device Drivers - Appropriate and up-to-date drivers for your hardware, especially your sound device
Properly managed computer resources - What you need to record waveforms without dropouts or skips
Connecting your Equipment - Making physical connections from microphones, mixers, Hi-Fi, radios and other sources
Mixer Toolbar Issues - Using system and sound device control panels to fix configuration problems
Recommended sound devices - A partial selective list of sound devices known to work well with Audacity
Multichannel Recording - What is required to record more than two separate channels at once, and some suggested devices for doing so on Windows

Recording a guitar. This requires a usually-USB analog-to-digital converter box. They typical accept a variety of different inputs, including 1/4, XLR, and others depending on the model. Some offer phantom power for mics, and various controllable parameters. Another option are direct 1/4"-USB adapter cables. With these you can just plug one into a USB port and plug your guitar into the other end. But you get nowhere near the capability of using a general USB converter box.

These devices usually have USB connections to the computer, and are often known generally as "USB boxes". But there are similar devices that connect to the Firewire ports commonly found on Macintosh computers.
These devices are available from many merchants, like GuitarCenter (also guitarcenter.com). Other sources on the web such as Amazon and Musiciansfriend.com offer them, as do others.