What can I do with a mixer & a soundcard?

[Masterofnone]

Santa's going to be bringing this newbie a 16-channel Yamaha and a bunch of mics and stands for Xmas, and I'd like to do all my recording digitally.

When I recorded my friend's demo song, we used a mixer, mics, and ran the line out of the mixer to the line in on my laptop. We recorded everything at once, pretty much as if it were live. It worked, and got the job done, but wouldn't be acceptable to anybody that expected it to sound like a CD. For the tiny amount of money I had in it, and the complete lack of real equiptment, I didn't think it did too bad, but maybe I'm being charitable.

So I guess my question is, what can I do with a mixer and a good soundcard like an Audigy2? Or do I need more equiptment to do anything worthwhile?

[tourettes5139]

Honestly, Audigy2 is crap for recording. Sorry if I seem harsh, but that's how it is. Soundblasters are great for gaming, but they suck for recording. Look into some of the firewire interfaces, like the Presonus Firepod, or even cheaper, the Presonus Inspire. There are other brands, obviously, these were just the ones that came to mind.

[Masterofnone]

Thanks...I just randomly picked the Audigy2, as I don't know the names of any of the professional quality cards. The Presounus Inspire sounds like what I've been after all along, but I'd need something in USB or PCMCIA (using a laptop so it's all portable). Got any suggestions on something like that? Thanks

[wx3]

Check out the Digidesign Mbox.

[Masterofnone]

I guess I failed to mention it'd have to be sub-$250 new, or available used for that. I found a few for about $120 that looked tempting, but they looked a bit cheesy. I've found good deals on eBay too, but I wouldn't know what to buy for some of this stuff.

[XLR]

There have been frequent discussions on inexpensive USB, firewire, and PCMCIA interfaces here that can be found with the search function. Sounds like you need to decide how many recording channels going into the computer you need.

I use the Tascam US122 USB interface and the Digigram VX Pocket PCMCIA card with my laptops (both 2 channels of input) and they work very well.

Tim

[altitude909]

Its also worth mentioning that your yamaha mixer most likely only has one or two busses to output to your sound card so will only get that many inputs into your computer (there are work arounds btw)