Please Help!!

[mud4895]

Hi all,
It's my first post here and I've just recently started to look into building a nice home studio. For starters, let me list my current recording rig: Tascam four track, Powerbook G4 Laptop equiped with Reason and Cubase, a PC equiped with Cakewalk. I'm very familar with Reason and just starting to use Cubase and Cakewalk. Anyways, a friend of mine suggested that I buy a mixer to run all the mics/instruments into and then use an RCA to 1/8th inch cable to send the mixed mics/instruments to either computer. My first question is: With the following setup, wouldn't my computer be recording all of the instruments as one track? What I really want is to have all the instruments able to play a song at the same time, and then for each instrument to appear as its own track in my recording program (be it cubase or cakewalk). This way I if the band is making a recording and an instrument makes a mistake, I will be able to go back in and rerecord that instrument's track. I've just started reading about ProTools....would a ProTools rig be able to do the above? If so, is there any other way to do this?....I would like to be able to use my G4 and I know that it will be hard if not impossible to get protools on my laptop. Any help or suggestions are greatly greatly appreciated. : - )

[mud4895]

Forgot to mention that GarageBand is also on my Laptop. Thanks again.

[ssscientist]

Originally Posted by mud4895

I've just started reading about ProTools....would a ProTools rig be able to do the above?

'protools' is not the answer to your problem. Get one of these and plan to track in Garageband. The music will sound the same, there will be no drop in audio quality and you'll spend less money to get the same results.

And those programs are all legal, bought and paid for, non-cracked software, right?

[mud4895]

Of course it's all legal! Went to Berklee for a semester during the summer and they required we buy most of what I got. That USB Audio Interface looks like it is going in the right direction for what I want. But how many instruments can I have running into that at the same time? I was hoping to be able to have at least 10 inputs. Thanks

[mud4895]

Also, I'd be able to use Cubase instead of Garageband right? or be able to move the tracks over to cubase? Thanks for all you help ssscientist....i've been reading around and you seem to help a lot of people here.

[crankz1]

If you are wanting at least 10 simultaneous inputs to the computer .... USB ain't gonna cut it.
You would do better to look into a FireWire interface such as a MOTU 828mkII or even a RME Fireface.

And ... yes, you will be able to use Cubase exclusively or you could import tracks recorded with Garageband into a Cubase project.

[ethos]

dont they make sound cards with 10 inputs? atleast 8 right?