Mike says....

With the simple Sound Recorder that comes with Windows, you can record a longer clip than 60 seconds. 
What you do is basically extend it in 60 second increments.

First, record your 60 second clip then play it back, leaving the slider to the extreme right-hand side.
Now get your guitar and get ready to add another 60sec, just hit the record button when the slider is to the right, and it will add the next 60 seconds to the end of the first, the total clip length will now be 120sec. Add another 60 the same way.
It does take a few minutes to do this, and then you usually have a worthless 180sec clip consisting of 3 completely different riffs or tempos, so don't bother to save it, just move the slider to the extreme left and record a fresh 3minute tune, then you save that 3min tune as a single file.

Just over 10MB per minute is consumed when you record a wav file in stereo 44.1Hz, 16bit resolution, make sure to select these parameters from the main Sound Recorder menu before recording, the submenu for this may seem like it is for CONVERTING an already recorded file to a different resolution (it will do that but it won't sound any better if it was recorded at lower resolution), but the same procedure will set the recorder for this resolution if there is no file open to convert. (at least thats the way it works in W9x, probably XP too). I have found no evidence against the likelihood that XP has W95b inside as kind of a *kernel*.

Anyway, when you compress a wav file to CD audio, there is very little loss because there is very little compression, almost none, it is more like a change of format than a space-saving file conversion.

And since so many sound cards have the stereo line inputs directly connected to the A/D converter, all you need is to have a stereo mic preamp having lower analog noise than audio CD playback systems (easier said than done), and you can get full CD quality recordings. In stereo, using the line input with two mics plus a two-channel preamp. Not requiring more than just a cheap soundcard, this has been easily accompished since ISA soundcards first reached 44.1KHz 16bit, but disk space was largely not there at the time.
If your soundcard goes up to 48Khz, you might want to set it for 44.1 regardless, even though this is not the maximum performance of the soundcard, then there is less resampling when you convert from wav to CD with your favorite software (like Nero), since CD's are 44.1Hz, the data has to be in that state anyway before burning the CD.

If you don't have a preamp, then you can always use the mic input on the computer, but usually the on-chip analog mic preamp is an especially high-noise design.
Any audio amp hobbyist can usually come up with a better sounding preamp than that, then switch over to the line inputs to move up to full CD quality when ready.

Until then, there is nothing wrong with plugging in a dynamic mic like an SM58 or equivalent straight to the mic input of the soundcard, even if the soundcard puts the +5VDC (intended for electret computer mics) across the coil of the mic, it will do no damage nor interfere with the recording.
To see if a dynamic mic can handle the +5v, measure the DC resistance of the coil and use ohms law to figure how many milliamps is passing through the coil when powered by the 5V, and what the power dissipation in watts is. There may not be a maximum dissipation rating for the mic coil, but its usually a pretty hefty chunk of magnet & copper and on a SM58 can surely handle as much as a 1/4 watt resistor.

Unless you have extreme noise coming in from the mic cable itself, you can probably maintain CD quality even if you use an unbalanced mic cable instead of the balanced one you expect to require. You might as well just use a 1/4inch input jack like they do on other unbalanced inputs, then a guitar can go straight in when you want that too.
And since we are only talking about CD quality, not the full demands of live studio recording, you can also probably maintain CD quality without an input transformer to the mic preamp, just unbalanced straight into an active very carefully selected silicon or vacuum gain stage.
More important than impedance matching, usually the greater advantage of these luxuriosly expensive mic input transformers is to provide a small factor of noiseless gain as they step up the signal 2x to 5X before hitting the first active device. The more you step it up with the transformer though, the more the fidelity suffers, so they don't go too many times the amplitude of the raw signal.
But its really overkill if you are just trying to achieve CD quality.

That sure opens up the possibilities for possible preamps doesn't it :-)

Hmmm, 1/4 inch jacks, no transformer needed, low noise gain stage, solid state with hum-free power supply . . .
sounds to me like an Electro Harmonics LPB2, remember how these are about the only EH pedal not to have a power connector for an AC adapter, its near impossible to beat the low-noise performance of a 9V battery so why bother?

For portability, that would make it pretty convenient for using with a battery powered laptop computer, too bad the stereo line inputs were mostly discontinued on laptops by about 2003.
Those idiots. Still available on some top-of-the line Dells, but get them affordably while you can on the recent and current ACER laptops, and the ACERs are economy priced across the board, not usually advertised, the regular price more than competitive with more well established laptop makers' discounts. ACER is probably no Hewlett-Packard, but they have been making PC hardware for a long time and survived the dot-com crash so take that for what it is.

So I guess that means lots of players without any audio software or special soundcards, who just happen to have an LPB2 or two to work with and a couple unbalanced 1/4 mic cables, probably already have the minimum hardware & software needed and may not know it.

Naturally I didn't mention anything about editing or remixing, and the above bare-bones scenario is mainly therefore to emulate *taping*.
Editing is extremely rudimentary with just the Windows Sound Recorder, and you will need to have a full duplex soundcard & drivers and likely at least some basic audio freeware in addition if you want to play back your tracks while recording a new track or two for future remixing or real-time overlay. With just one soundcard you can only record two live tracks at a time too, that's no surprise. You can easily add more soundcards sometimes, but it can still turn into a headache with incompatible hardware or drivers. And if you are going to do any remixing you will really want as decent audio software as you can get.

But for just plain CD quality recording, two channels at a time requires nothing that should be far out of reach.

There's more:

Once you get all set up to make stereo close-mic recordings of your amps with SM58's etc. then all you really need is a set of not-too-expensive condenser mics, and you can use the same computer, preamp, and software to record your whole band in direct-to-CD quality.

(well, you can use the SM58's to capture the whole band but you will not have the high-end from the cymbals & snare that you get from condenser mics. 58's do seem about perfect for right up against the grille cloth though.)

Of course you need to get the mics in just the right place fairly close to the front of the stage to get a good stereo mix, and there's very few studio tricks or remixing possible with the whole band thrashing away live in stereo on those two tracks, but its pretty much like taping a concert. some tapes come out better than others, that's life, you never know if the mics were that well placed until afterward, but you can get good after some experience. You need some ear-covering headphones but they do not need to be expensive.

Except since I'm still showcasing the amps, I like to aim the mics toward the center of the stage at the combos or half stacks, then move the stands out until the mics get enough vocals from the PA, for this (as well as the ultimate quality of the vocals themselves) its always best when the PA has only vocals in it, and if there's more than one vocalist, they are running a stereo mix to some degree. Small clubs are best for this but in a big venue you get lots more audience applause into the mics. One of the drawbacks of this near-field micing of the band is the reduced volume of the applause unless its really intense. But that is one of the things you can add later using software if you are sneaky. plus if any musicians are captured telling jokes in between tunes they could almost always use a laugh track in response ;-)

An alternative if there is too much guitar in the PA (it could happen) is to put the booms up into the stage where the mics can get their vocals from each singers monitor, there's usually plenty of guitars, bass & drums and hopefully keys without having to get any of that from the PA. You can still have the mics closer to the vocal speakers than the guitar amps, but aimed at the amps you mix the two using the directionality of the mics as before.

Another hint, if you have run-of-the-mill mic stands with none of the studio refinements, you can upgrade them yourself so the tubing doesn't ring or rattle, examine each stand carefully and bang on it in various places to find where you need to attach damping material,  Sorbathane can be ideal but any soft polyurethane is usually better than random plastic or rubber when you need maximum damping from a minimum amount of polymer.
If you have those stands with the dang *machinist's vice* type adjusting handles, lots of rubber bands can be better than the usual electrical tape to keep them from rattling, that way when you adjust the stands you don't get goo on your fingers which finds its way to the guitar strings. Mike