Home Recording

[Kuniva]

Hello everyone,

Looking for advice/help on home recording. Never done it. Be handy if people could give me some tips on how to start out. What are the best interfaces to purchase at a reasonable price. What equipment will i need to produce the most polished off sound bla bla bla.

Cheers K

[Stylon Pilson]

[quote name='Kuniva' post='762734' date='Mar 3 2010, 11:03 AM']Looking for advice/help on home recording. Never done it. Be handy if people could give me some tips on how to start out. What are the best interfaces to purchase at a reasonable price. What equipment will i need to produce the most polished off sound bla bla bla.[/quote]

Welcome to Basschat!

Are you planning on using your home computer for the recording, or would you prefer a dedicated hardware multitracker? How many channels do you need - are you going to be miking up a full drumkit? What's your budget? Do you already have a microphone?

Also, this should have been posted in [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showforum=10"]here[/url] but I'm sure that a moderator will be along to move it shortly.

S.P.

Edited March 3, 2010 by Stylon Pilson

[neepheid]

An outboard sound interface of some sort (be it USB or Firewire) is pretty much vital - less/no latency on recording, often direct monitoring, better inputs (often there are mic preamps built in) and will take full size jacks easier instead of precariously balancing a full size jack + a big > small converter off a mini jack socket.

I recently used an E-MU 0202 USB interface (2 inputs and 1 mic preamp) and used Audacity on my laptop to do the recording - probably the simplest/cheapest thing to do. Audacity is free and allows you to record tracks then play back what you've recorded while recording something else. It's not as fancy as a full on recording application, but it did the job for me.

No advice on prices I'm afraid - I have the 0202 on "long term loan" because the owner couldn't get it to work satisfactorily on Vista.

[51m0n]

This [url="http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/r16/index.php"]Zoom R16[/url] is IMO the single most incredible bang for the buck recording device yet.

16 channels, 8 simultaneously.

Onboard FX/amp simulation, copy of Cubase LE, records to SDHC cards OR operates as a 2 out interface to the 'puter.

And you can sync 2 together for 16 track in 32 out!!

It also has a pair of condensors mics built in (a la Zoom H4) and becomes a software control interface as well!

Holy cow, you can power it from 6 AA batteries

For about £300!!!!

And its ridiculously tiny....

Sorry but in 1996 a Fostex DMT8 recorded 13 minutes of 8 track (4 in at once) for £2000. That is progress.

If I hadnt got an H$ earlier this year I'd get one of these....

Edited March 3, 2010 by 51m0n

[Guest]

I am selling all my home recording gear, pm me if interested, I am up the A1 in Peterborough.

[matski]

My home-recording set-up is remarkably simple, yet highly effective.

I use a MacBook Pro 17" laptop on which I run Logic Express. Plugged into the Mac is an M-Audio NRV10 mixer/audio interface.

The really handy thing about the NRV10 is that as it plugs directly into the laptop using FireWire there is no latency (or 'lag') when recording, and also the NRV10 allows you to record 6 tracks of audio simultaneously. It also has onboard effects which are ok, but I actually don't use them during recording as Logic has much better built-in effects.

Also the NRV10 works really well in a live situation. Say, for instance, that you want to use a laptop for 'backing tracks' when playing live, you can assign audio tracks from your sequencer software (or DAW which is the technical term) to separate channels on the NRV10 and therefore control parameters such as output volume via the mixer's faders, pan, eq, drop-in and out etc., etc. It really is pretty good.

So it's this simple:

instrument > NRV10 > computer

Job done.

[purpleblob]

Quick answer is that the easiest way to home recording nowadays is with a computer, audio interface and software. There are still many very nice hardware solutions out there, but they do not ultimately offer the simplicity and at the same time power of using software on a computer.

Now, depending upon how many tracks you wish to record at a time and whether you want MIDI interface etc. prices can start as low £80 up to (well let's just say a lot ). Obviously you'll need a computer, whether it be Mac, Windows or Linux based is upto you. Software wise, there are free packages (or at least come with the hardware or computer) such as Cubase which is often bundled an audio interface or guitar tracks or the likes or Garage band comes with the mac. Or you can pay money out for Cubase, Sonar, Logic or whetever all the way upto ProTools.

EDIT: I used to use Sonar a fair amount and was very happy with that. Lately been messing with Logic Express on a mac. Which seems pretty good also.

Edited March 3, 2010 by purpleblob

[51m0n]

[quote name='purpleblob' post='763069' date='Mar 3 2010, 03:55 PM']Quick answer is that the easiest way to home recording nowadays is with a computer, audio interface and software. There are still many very nice hardware solutions out there, but they do not ultimately offer the simplicity and at the same time power of using software on a computer.

Now, depending upon how many tracks you wish to record at a time and whether you want MIDI interface etc. prices can start as low £80 up to (well let's just say a lot ). Obviously you'll need a computer, whether it be Mac, Windows or Linux based is upto you. Software wise, there are free packages (or at least come with the hardware or computer) such as Cubase which is often bundled an audio interface or guitar tracks or the likes or Garage band comes with the mac. Or you can pay money out for Cubase, Sonar, Logic or whetever all the way upto ProTools.

EDIT: I used to use Sonar a fair amount and was very happy with that. Lately been messing with Logic Express on a mac. Which seems pretty good also.[/quote]

Again I'd say if you have a poor spec computer or just want to get into recording and not worry so much about editing stuff up at the start the Zoom R16 would be my go to (and I've been recording for years and years).

Computer DAWs offer massive control - its true - but you are always mucking around keeping the computer stable, latency down to a minimum blah blah blah. And I've used Mac, Windows and LInux to record multitrack. They' all have issues.

Hardware devices take care of that from the get go, and frankly I'm yet to see anything close to the R16 in an interface.

After all it IS an interface - albeit with only 2 outs, but transfer speeds of the memory cards via USB2.0 make that not an issue anyway.

Its also a control interface for your computer DAW.

Come on guys what is not to love about this device????

You can even mix down on it if you want to.

I havent had serious GAS for something since I got the Roscoe, and telling you about this is starting to make me feel the urge

The studio I work in most has massive Mac power (really hugely overpowered G5 uber Mac), and runs protools for mix down and mastering. Yet even there they have had sufficient hastle getting over general tracking annoyances over the years that they track to a pair of HD24s as there are never any such problems with hardware.

YMMV but if I were you I really would very seriously consider this little beastie, seems to have covered quite literally ALL the bases for home recording.

[purpleblob]

[quote name='51m0n' post='763088' date='Mar 3 2010, 04:17 PM']Again I'd say if you have a poor spec computer or just want to get into recording and not worry so much about editing stuff up at the start the Zoom R16 would be my go to (and I've been recording for years and years).

Computer DAWs offer massive control - its true - but you are always mucking around keeping the computer stable, latency down to a minimum blah blah blah. And I've used Mac, Windows and LInux to record multitrack. They' all have issues.

Hardware devices take care of that from the get go, and frankly I'm yet to see anything close to the R16 in an interface.

After all it IS an interface - albeit with only 2 outs, but transfer speeds of the memory cards via USB2.0 make that not an issue anyway.

Its also a control interface for your computer DAW.

Come on guys what is not to love about this device????

You can even mix down on it if you want to.

I havent had serious GAS for something since I got the Roscoe, and telling you about this is starting to make me feel the urge

The studio I work in most has massive Mac power (really hugely overpowered G5 uber Mac), and runs protools for mix down and mastering. Yet even there they have had sufficient hastle getting over general tracking annoyances over the years that they track to a pair of HD24s as there are never any such problems with hardware.

YMMV but if I were you I really would very seriously consider this little beastie, seems to have covered quite literally ALL the bases for home recording.[/quote]

Fair points to consider from 51m0n. It's definitely best to have as powerful a computer as possible and preferably used almost solely for audio, thus ensuring that nothing nasty ends up sitting in memory and slowing it down.

[Steve A]

I have some monitors and power amplifier for sale. PM me if interested.

Steve