Getting started

J

Jazzmankeys

New member
I am begin setting up recording capabilities at my professional piano studio
This studio is dedicated to music and has been acoustically prepared

My initial first year goal(s)-
1. To successfully record live solo projects and send them to the pro studio (pro-tools oriented) that I have been recording at over my career for production.
2. To record trio/quartet projects (raw) with the hope of doing the same.
3. Have some fun doing "Syth projects"..

I have mic's (Nuemann, AKG), Pre-amps , etc..

I DO NOT WISH TO BECOME AN PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER NOW and most likely NEVER.
I need to spend my time on my axe.
I would like to be able to record 8 "live" tracks simultaneously and be able to transfer to PC/MAC
I don't want poor quality. (who does?).
Would like something with a "large screen" or ability to interface as such.


Would I be better off starting with a Portable recorder (Zoom, Tascam etc...) or should I jump right into DAW,I/O setup etc..?

I would like to stay around $1,000.00 for openers.
THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR TIME AND RESPONSES!
 
Just the way you wrote your post seems to say that you figure you’ll go to a DAW at some point. Why not do it now? There are a number of AIs that have 8 inputs. The Zoom R16 or R24 both do and can act as an AI.......stand-alone recorder.......and even a control surface. No transferring files....more flexibility....more effects.....etc...etc. Just my 2 cents.

And welcome to the forum!!
 
"Large screen" - going with a DAW makes the most sense, none of the the stand-alone recorders has a large screen. Assuming you already have a computer, an AI with 8 mic inputs is the logical choice.
 
You can even do a DAW, laptop and use a portable rack for mobility. When you are stationary, slap a large monitor(s) on it and business as usual.

If you don't want to learn to mix, then at least learn to do mic placement as the source will be important in your case. Learn mic levels and that should get you pretty darn close to your goal.

Export in a 44.1 lossless or higher (subject to opinion), pop it on a cloud server and you should have everything you need.
 
If you're recording folks other than yourself in a fixed space, then you'll want to be able to give them and yourself feedback on the recording fairly immediately, i.e., before sending off to have someone else mix it. To me, that says an interface connected to a computer with decent monitor speakers. If you have a good computer already, you can get by under $1k, but "just" IMO.

If the 8 track recording is sufficiently in the future, you might just focus on an interface with 4 mic pres and ADAT expansion capability, or perhaps additional line-ins, if you have enough preamps already (as you mentioned). An interface with 8 mic pres is, of course, going to be "future proof" in some sense, but a lot of money to spend when your short-term projects may not need that.

Now, you can get a portable recorder - I have a Zoom H6 and F8 that allow 6 or 8 track recordings at very high quality, but I simply copy the WAV files to my computer for mixing and post work. They're not what I want to use for any kind of home recording.

If you plan to send the recordings out for mixing elsewhere, and it's a "live" recording of all tracks at once, you'll just be uploading the raw audio tracks and not using the DAW except for balancing to provide the monitor feed to evaluate the takes.
 
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