Interface questions

[KennysFord]

Hey all.
We've just started to do some very basic recording of band rehearsals from the desk straight to PC,with fairly good results too.We want to up the ante now as my mate and band member is in the very lucky position of owning a warehouse which contains the room where we rehearse.
Basically the plan is to start doing some multi-track recording rather than everything on the one track.For this I know we'll need some sort of interface but we're both complete dummies when it comes down to digital recording.
The band is a 7 piece so I guess a 10 channel interface as a minimum and software to boot.We're not rich but we don't want to buy rubbish as the plan is to turn the room into a fairly decent studio and then offer our services to other bands when the time comes.
Sorry about the epic but if you guys have any recommendations for a decent interface I'd be very grateful for any advice on which ones to look at.

Edited October 7, 2009 by kennyrodg

[GM10]

Not the voice of an expert but here goes:

Are you planning to record all 7 pieces at the same time or individually. You may want to put it all though a mixer before it goes to the interface. That way you don't need an interface with loads of in and outs. Could also work out a lot cheaper

As far as software is concerned I recently brought Cubase Essential 4. I got the educational version for £68, (Dolphin Music). Comes high in my recommendation.

Edited October 7, 2009 by GM10

[skankdelvar]

As with all these things, yer gets wot yer pays for. You could easily splash £20,000 on a daft big pro-tools rig that's going to be obsolete in 3 years - but there's lots of interfaces around the £500-£1k mark that would probably do the job. Your first question is 'Firewire or USB?' And [i]there's [/i]a can of worms.

About the cheapest is the Tascam US-1641 for around £300-350 - I seem to recall someone on here using one of these for the same purpose you have in mind. Mind you, 6 of the 14 ins are line-ins, so you may want a little sub-mixer with the appropriate number of xlr ins / line outs - maybe dedicate this to the drums. Eventually, you may wish to trade up.

This is a good primer site to get you started [url="http://www.tweakheadz.com/"]http://www.tweakheadz.com/[/url] I found the forums and gear reviews on the 'sound on sound' mag site very useful - [url="http://www.soundonsound.com/"]http://www.soundonsound.com/[/url]

Edited October 7, 2009 by skankdelvar

[cheddatom]

You need a pre-amp for each mic you want to record. These could be in a mixer, in a rack, or built into the interface you choose. Firewire is better than USB. I have PCI interfaces and use external pre-amps. It depends what you have already, and how much cash you have to spend.

[BTGAndy]

Interface wise you should check out the Saffire Pro 40, it has 8 mic pres and is firewire. You can also expand to a further 8 mic pres at a later date with ADAT. DAW wise I swear by Logic but you'd need a Mac to run it.

[[al]]

I use an [url="http://www.alesis.com/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1172/tt/5"]Alesis Multimix12 Firewire[/url] and [url="http://www.reaper.fm/"]Reaper[/url] with my macbook for recording our rehearsal sessions, it works very well indeed.

You should be able to pick up the Multimix12 for about £200 second hand - I lucked out and got mine for £150. There's an 8 way version too which you can probably find on fleabay easily enough for around £130. One thing to note is that you want either the Multimix [b]Firewire[/b] or the Multimix USB[b]2.0[/b] version as these can send the tracks individually to the computer (the older Multimix USB can only send the stereo mix to the computer).
These things all do phantom power and mic-preamp for 4 channels with the rest being line.

Reaper is an awesome bit of DAW software, there are versions for Mac and Windows, there's a free unlimited trial to get you started and if you get along with it then it's $60 for a personal license.