Chris McDaniel
New member
I've been recording podcasts for a few months now thru mixing boards into garage band and streaming the audio thru mixlr.com in real time as sort of an online radio station. After the live show I clean up the audio a little bit and upload it to my website as the next podcast episode.
I started out with a Behringer Xenyx 1202 usb and some condenser mics and eventually upgraded to an Allen & Heath Zed 14 that I just love. It sounds great, is built like a tank, and does everything I need it to do except record multiple tracks.
I'm not ready, but I'm going to anyway, step up to multi-track recording so that I can isolate the 4 to 5 speakers I have on a show and edit out them talking over each other when needed, or clean up the parts of audio when they're not talking, and I would just love some recommendations based on what I need.
-Needs to be somewhat portable. I will be taking the whole rig on the road once a week to record at a friend's house.
-I need a minimum of 8 inputs.
-It would be fantastic if those inputs had some sort of automatic gain
-I need to do at least 1 mix-minus for plugging my cellphone in (on my mixing board it's pretty easy, not sure yet how it works in a digital I/O)
-I need to be able to multi-track record while also having individual track fader control over a feed that goes out to my mixlr software to broadcast live.
-I need to be able to fade out an intro song or fade in the exit song. Or keep a fader down on a call-in guest until I'm ready to introduce him.
I think those are my major requirements. It's late and I'm exhausted from another several hour long session of trying to figure out what the hell I need to do this. I have a lot of hobbies and none seem to be anywhere freaking close to as dense as audio engineering. The Alesis Multimix 16 USB 2.0 originally caught my eye. It would theoretically do everything I need at an incredibly low price, so OF COURSE they had to discontinue it. Am I going crazy or does that smack anybody else as kinda fishy? It's almost like Alesis went, 'hey, consumers, here's a full featured multi-track recorder/mixer that costs almost nothing', and then the whole industry took them aside and was like, 'WHAT THE HELL are you doing??? You can't just give people exactly what they need in a simple form for cheap! That is NOT how our industry does business!!!', and the next day it gets mysteriously discontinued.
Oh well, whatevs, next I started looking into the Zoom R24. It does the multi-track recording, is insanely portable, and has faders. Seems like it'll fit the bill, but I'm seeing mixed reviews on sound and build quality.
Just tonight I started looking into the Roland Octa Capture. It gets glowing reviews for it's sound and has automatic gain on all channels (a big plus), but it doesn't have any faders for me to manipulate a live broadcast signal. As I look into it, i'm slowly starting to comprehend that those controls can be accessed in the software, but I do not want to get rid of the tactile feel of fading in and out channels as needed, it's a requirement. I think there's apparently some way to hook up a separate DAW controller, but I can't wrap my head around getting a 2nd piece of gear when there seems to be products out there that'll do it all in 1 piece of gear. Doesn't make sense to me.
At some point I might get an Allen & Heath Zed R16. It seems to do what I want, except for not being very portable.
Can anybody help me out to make heads or tails of what I should look into?
I started out with a Behringer Xenyx 1202 usb and some condenser mics and eventually upgraded to an Allen & Heath Zed 14 that I just love. It sounds great, is built like a tank, and does everything I need it to do except record multiple tracks.
I'm not ready, but I'm going to anyway, step up to multi-track recording so that I can isolate the 4 to 5 speakers I have on a show and edit out them talking over each other when needed, or clean up the parts of audio when they're not talking, and I would just love some recommendations based on what I need.
-Needs to be somewhat portable. I will be taking the whole rig on the road once a week to record at a friend's house.
-I need a minimum of 8 inputs.
-It would be fantastic if those inputs had some sort of automatic gain
-I need to do at least 1 mix-minus for plugging my cellphone in (on my mixing board it's pretty easy, not sure yet how it works in a digital I/O)
-I need to be able to multi-track record while also having individual track fader control over a feed that goes out to my mixlr software to broadcast live.
-I need to be able to fade out an intro song or fade in the exit song. Or keep a fader down on a call-in guest until I'm ready to introduce him.
I think those are my major requirements. It's late and I'm exhausted from another several hour long session of trying to figure out what the hell I need to do this. I have a lot of hobbies and none seem to be anywhere freaking close to as dense as audio engineering. The Alesis Multimix 16 USB 2.0 originally caught my eye. It would theoretically do everything I need at an incredibly low price, so OF COURSE they had to discontinue it. Am I going crazy or does that smack anybody else as kinda fishy? It's almost like Alesis went, 'hey, consumers, here's a full featured multi-track recorder/mixer that costs almost nothing', and then the whole industry took them aside and was like, 'WHAT THE HELL are you doing??? You can't just give people exactly what they need in a simple form for cheap! That is NOT how our industry does business!!!', and the next day it gets mysteriously discontinued.
Oh well, whatevs, next I started looking into the Zoom R24. It does the multi-track recording, is insanely portable, and has faders. Seems like it'll fit the bill, but I'm seeing mixed reviews on sound and build quality.
Just tonight I started looking into the Roland Octa Capture. It gets glowing reviews for it's sound and has automatic gain on all channels (a big plus), but it doesn't have any faders for me to manipulate a live broadcast signal. As I look into it, i'm slowly starting to comprehend that those controls can be accessed in the software, but I do not want to get rid of the tactile feel of fading in and out channels as needed, it's a requirement. I think there's apparently some way to hook up a separate DAW controller, but I can't wrap my head around getting a 2nd piece of gear when there seems to be products out there that'll do it all in 1 piece of gear. Doesn't make sense to me.
At some point I might get an Allen & Heath Zed R16. It seems to do what I want, except for not being very portable.
Can anybody help me out to make heads or tails of what I should look into?