Archetype

Yep, the focusrite stuff is pretty top notch stuff, cant go wrong with it! And much better priced than some too, especially Digidesign stuff, but im a sucker for pro tools

If the monitors are Active (i assume so as you say powered) then yes you can just plug them into the outputs. Make sure its the master outputs though. Usually 1 and 2.

I agree with Lowdown, the best option will be a cheap m-audio card. That way youc an just plug in everything and work from there. If you start going down the route of plugging bass pod into guitar pod then you will no doubt hit a lot of level problems. Simple solution is a interface card. And M-Audio products are top notch!!!

[quote name='WalMan' post='84141' date='Nov 5 2007, 06:46 PM']so no need to worry about getting signal in through an 1/8 inch jack socket on your sound card (or motherboard if it is on board sound).[/quote] Rule number 1. Stay Away from ALL onboard soundcards for recording. and most PC "soundcards" in general for recording. These were never really designed for anything more than playback and one of those cheap mic's for talking over MSN or whatever. a few like the old Creative Labs Audigy cards had various inputs on them, but again not really for music making. Best thing anyone can do is get a good Audio Interface. I started on an M-Audio Delta 1010lt card (which i will be selling soon!) which was designed for recording. and it made a huge diffrence over the old Audigy 2 card i had! It really depends on how serious you and how important quality is! I know the guitarist in my band is more than happy with his Boss multi-effects board doing some half assed distoirtion into his onboard soundcard becasue all he wants is a rough guide rather than a recording. He just fires up Windows sound recorder and goes! But for anything semi-serious you need to spend a little bit on a soundcard first. The great part is alot of fantastic software (alot of which can be be free!) can really help you acheive a good sound. Such amp Amp sims, virtual synths, reverbs and all sorts. you dont need to fork out thousands to get a good sound. Also, You can build it up. Start with a sound card and maybe a line out from your Amp's. Get a good basis and build songs up from there, perfects if you just want to record demo's to hear how a song sounds. Then you could build it up with some POD's or Mic's, better software etc. As said above i know there is alot of free software out there. And for the semi serious budget people you could run Ardour which is a fully featured DAW and FREE!!! You could even miss out the PC and go for an all in one studio! I know tascam to name but one make several all in one studios where you record to an internal disk, mix, add effects etc on one small box. Infact if i rememeber right there is a thread not too far down about a guy making his bands demo with one on this forum. best thing to do is work out what you have and what you want. Do you want to record your own albums? just record basic riffs as a memory refresher? start up your own studio? your own portable studio!? the options are sadly endless about how you could record things. so try and be specific and im sure we could point you in the right place. But my main advise to anyone is to start with a good interface such as a PreSonus Forbox. And plan to expand for what you want. And of course, feel free to ask questions! Its the best way to learn.

Hrmmm. Lets see if i can have a bash at this one. You could use the line 6 POD's via USB and get a pretty good sound from them doing that. However the problem there is you can only select one POD at a time as they are 2 interfaces. you would need to tell the software or windows which one to look at each time you decided to record bass or guitar. The drum machine... You could MAYBE run the MIDI from the SR-16 to one of the PODS and record the MIDI signals, however that would mean you would need a virtual instrament to then play the drums and im not sure if your software would support that. Or line out from the drum machine into one of the PODS and record that, but again not sure how well that would work. The Easiset way would be to buy a cheaprecording interface that supports a few inputs. you could get one that is USB or Firewire, and will allow you to keep all you devices connected at the same time, so no messing about with cables etc. And personally thats what i did. I got an idea, spent 20 mins getting the cables and settings then hit record to get... nothing, gone! Very annoying but thats just me (you might have a better memory!) So give it some thought. I will be more than happy to help with any questions you may have. G

Thanks for all the input, I think the powersoft is... well... lets just say out of my price range.

Hey guys. Im working on getting my rig setup. Im thinking of fgoing for a BDDI, 3 settings, overdrive, and a built in DI box. The idea is that live or rehersals i can use it as my preamp (just going to the desk, into the supplied amp for monitor only) which would be all i need. However for home use and the occasional gig i would need a poweramp for it. Does anyone know any good ones? The lighter the better as always. I can see lots of poweramps, but should i be looking for anything for bass or just a general poweramp? Thanks G