Home Equipment, new to this

T

Tronologic

New member
I have recently been looking into starting to record some stuff, i dont have any experience with recording but i am a programmer and anything on the computer comes easy to me if you want to put it that way. I play guitar and can play keyboard.... i have roughly 1000-2000$ canadian to spend on equipment i will want just 1 low quality mic with a pop screen and stand just for some rough ideas for stuff. I write music for video games so that will be my main focus... Reason 2.5 or 3 will be the program of choice i think and i have been looking at a lot of stuff from www.m-audio.com ... Please help me out and post your suggestions this community looks awesome.
 
I presume that you already have a computer with a decent sound card.

You will need a mic, true, but definitly go with a least a prosumer quality mic because nothing after that can fix what the mic didn't pick up.

Then the piece of gear you didn't mention was a preamp. You definitly want the preamp so you can use the line-in rather than the mic-in of the soundcard. The mic-in is useless for music. The m-audio DMP-3 is a very respected preamp.

Then look seriously at the sound quality of your room. A few hundred spent on 703 fiberglass or roxul can improve your sound just as much, if not more, than spending it on a more expensive mic.
 
Tronologic said:
.... i will want just 1 low quality mic with a pop screen and stand just for some rough ideas for stuff.
Click to expand...
I'm no expert but you I know you do not want a low quality mic. Sennheiser and Shure are two good brands, they offer microphones for $99(US), and the
quality is good enough for Professional Studios.
Innovations is right you are going to need a pre-amp (although I would go with a mixer- Mixers have built in preamps and you get greater versatility than a pre-amp) and an audio card.

My own setup which I just got together is
Yamaha MG 10/2 (Mixer that works as a pre-amp) - $99
Sennheiser E835 (Vocal Microphone) - $99
Delta 44 Audio Cards - $150
XLR Blue Blueberry Cable (Microphone Cable) - $30
No namebrand Patch TSR Cable - $13

The only thing I would caution you is that the Delta 44 does not have a MIDI keyboard interface, and neither does the Mixer. Make sure you get a soundcard that has a MIDI Keyboard interface or they sell some cables that allow you to go from your keyboard through your USB on your computer. However, I don't know how those work.
The benefit of the mixer (over the pre-amp) is that (if you have more than one instrument or instrument and vocals) you can record the music all at the same time. If you do a search on this forum you'll see what people think about the Shure vs. the Sennheiser.
 
Well

yeh thanks for the suggestions, i have a 4x3 foot room that i could isolate or would it be better to just put the mics in the middle of a 12x9foot room that has computers and what not running in it, my problem being it will pickup the noise from the computers and such. I understadn that with a small room you have problem with sound development what should i do?
 
I don't know jack about acoustics and I'm trying to learn.
However, I have a E835 Sennheiser and I record in the same room that my computer is in, along with all the other computer crap I have in there.
I have yet to pick-up the sound from my computer. Granted my mic is about ten feet away from the computer, but since I have a dynamic mic. I have no worries.

If I had a condenser mic then it would probably pick up the computer noise.
Like I said I don't know anything about acoustics but from what I've learned you do not want to put your mics in the middle of a room that is 12x9 (they are multiples of eachother), and you may want to be in the 4x3 room since they are not multiple of eachother.
Here is a good website on acoustics
http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html
and everything else you are asking concerning equipment.
 
thanks for the suggestion i will see what i can do with the closet type room, the walls are parallel and i suppose thats probably a problem
 
I grabbed a new M-Audio Nova condenser mic for just over 100 euros and I'm micing vocals in the same room my computer is in:it won't pickup my pc noise as long as the back of the capsule is set facing the computer.
...and it's a good mic for "little" money.
For the record, i'm using it with an SM Pro Audio TB 202 2 channel tube preamp i picked up for 190 euros:it's got phantom, phase reversal, opto compression,and three band eq for each channel:works fine for me-I doubt it would sound worse
than the preamps on some cheap 150 euro Behringer...but it's just my opinion!

:)
Best of luck!
 
Tronologic said:
yeh thanks for the suggestions, i have a 4x3 foot room that i could isolate or would it be better to just put the mics in the middle of a 12x9foot room that has computers and what not running in it, my problem being it will pickup the noise from the computers and such. I understadn that with a small room you have problem with sound development what should i do?
Click to expand...
One suggestion for your room: Look at the Studio building and display forum on this site. There are some real pros in there, and people asking the questions you are asking. I bet you'll find your answers about room isolation and treatment there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top