About to purchase first setup... reccomendations?

[45calibermurder]

Hello everyone. A friend recommended I visit here to get some ideas and suggestionsabout PC recording. Here is what I am looking to do...

I currently have a Dell 8400 with a Intel Pen. 4 processor @ 3GHZ. I believe I have a gig or DDR ram, etc. etc. The computer should be more than capable of recording. I have a basic soundblaster card that I will be replacing soon.

For recording, I am interested in laying down a track with an acoustic/electric guitar, and 2 vocal tracks. Eventually I will be adding piano, strings, bass, drums, etc. Expandability is important. I don't want to have to replace all my stuff in order to do a little more farther down the road.

I really know very little about all this. I have basic electronics knowledge, maybe a little more than basic, but the PC recording is fairly new to me. So please feel free to offer expanded explainations.

Money is not really an issue. I won't be able to buy everything at once necessarily, but I would rather spend a little more to get a high-quality product that's going to give me more features and last longer.

A friend recommended that I get a Delta 1010LT card and ditch the original one I got. From what I understand, this will allow me to just plug the instruments/mics directly into the inputs on the card, and record the track using something like N-Tracks or Cakewalk. Right?

Now the other option I was told I had is to buy an actual mixer, connect it to my computer, and plug the instruments/mics into the mixer. Right? If this is true, do I still need a program like Cakewalk to record onto the computer? I guess I'm not understanding (if it's true) why I would want to buy a mixer and a program for my pc when I could just do it all on pc...

One other thing that is important is that I am able to record as I am building my set-up. So, would getting a card like the Delta 1010LT and getting N-Tracks or Cakewalk allow me to start recording right away?

I know people usually don't like fielding questions from rookies, but I would greatly appreciate any help in getting me started. It seems from what I've read that N-Tracks or whatever it's called is the easiest and best program to do this...?

Thank you!

--e

[RobertN]

I am a newbie to recording but I know a little bit.

Yes, I think you should get the delta.

Yes, If you get the delta and n-tracks or cakewalk you will be able to start recording right away. Assuming you have your mics and stuff.

Last piece of advice is you get what you pay for. You arent going to get a $10000 with $500.

If you want a good sound some cheaper stuff will work but, I suggest you hold off for stuff you dont absolutely need.

[Kevin Deschwazi]

Welcome to the BBS

I use a Delta 1010LT and it's a good card for the money. That will give you 8 simultaneous analog inputs into your PC (along with 8 analog outs, MIDI in/out and digital in/out if you need it).

You'll then need a mic preamp for each channel. The 1010LT comes with a preamp on channels 1 & 2 so you'll need 6 additional pres.

The cheapest way to get multiple pres is usually with a mixer which will give you several (the number of mic inputs will dictate the number of preamps onboard). The other (usually more expensive) option is stand alone mic pres which will generally give you better quality and means you'll be able to get a few different kinds for different flavours which can be desirable. This is a general rule bearing in mind that we're talking about entry level, moderately priced gear. Of course a high end mixer will have much better pres than budget standalone units.

You could just buy a 2 input card and record through a mixer (which sounds like what your friend is suggesting) but this means you'll be mixing 'on the fly' and will have to make sure levels,panning,verb,compression, eq and everyhting is spot on before you record.

This really isn't the way to go in my opinion.

Good luck with it all anyway

[giraffe]

thare are a million options, but i'd say no to the m-box
the monitering latency (spelling?) could drive a body mad

[Sanjanjoseph]

What i do is very simple-actually elementary...ive got a mic hooked directly into my computer-and i record into cool edit pro...i just recorded acoustic and vocals untill recently, my friends and i started a "rock" band and we either record seperately by following a live (all of us playing into the mic at the same time) recording through head phones. You;ll come out with a decent sound, this is good if your a beginer w/ this sort of thing.....cool edit pro and many other programs(including cheep/free ones) allow you to multi-track record. so that solves your problem with needing to record seperately over time.

-sjj