Easiest Portable System for novices?

[Vease]

I have been a guitar player and songwriter for twenty years, just for my own amusement. Now I want to get into home recording, but I want a system that doesn't overwhelm me with options I don't need, just something I can put vocal,guitar and bass tracks on through a pod pro, over a basic drum track.

Any suggestions as to the kind of portable unit I should be looking at would be much appreciated.

[Wide Awake]

The first things you have to consider in advance are how many tracks will you need in total, and how many tracks will you be recording with simultaneously.

Are the drums going to be miked or are they coming from a drum machine ? Miked drum kits can eat up inputs depending on how you mic them.

If you can afford a 16 track recorder it does give you a lot more freedom than an 8-track. It allows you to do more overdubbing. Things like adding hand percussion to a drum machine track makes things groove much better, layering guitar parts, adding vocal harmonies, etc. For basic songwritng 8 tracks might be plenty. It just depends on how you write.

For 8 track recording I would look at the Tascam 788. It seems to have a lot of features for the money.

For 16 tracks I would consider the Korg D16 or D1600, Fostex VF16, or the Akai DPS16. They seem to all have good interfaces and won't overwhelm you with options. They vary in price quite a bit. All have built-in effects processors.

[Vease]

I will be using a drum machine and I think I want 16 tracks because I like harmonised vocals and guitar parts. I like the look of the D16, but it has built in pre amp settings so I don't know whether I could use say, a guitar through a POD then DI'd into the machine.

[Wide Awake]

By the built in preamp do you mean it has guitar amp simulation effects ? I know it has those but you just wouldn't use those if you have a Pod.

The D16 has 8 balanced preamps, two of which are XLR inputs. You can just plug your guitar into the Pod Pro and then plug your Pod Pro into one of the preamps(I would use the XLR out) I'm sure someone here is using the Pod/D16 combination and can answer that definitively.

If you do have 16 tracks and use a drum machine, I highly recommend buying some hand percussion instruments at some point. Just adding one or two real elements can make a huge difference in making a track come alive. Shaker, tambourine, bongos, chimes, congas.

[Vease]

I know what you mean about the 'dry' sound of a drum machine, but really, if I ever wanted to fill out the drum sound on my songs I would work with a real drummer.

The only other problem with something like a D16 is I don't believe that you can playback the sound files straight from the machine, so does anyone know how to transfer the sound files from the hard disk into a playable format (.wav or MP3 for example)

[markert]

Vease:

I'm not sure what you mean by "playback sound files straight from the Machine", but what I do is burn audio disks to an external cdr for playback on other cd players. There is a way to import/export .wav files on the d16, but I haven't messed with that. I think you need a dos formatted removable drive such as jazz or zip drives to do this. I find, however, that I can do all my recording, editing, mixing, and "mastering" inside the d16.

It's a good stand-alone recorder for the money.

[Vease]

Thanks markert. Is it possible to burn cds from a D16 onto a cd writer which is part of a PC system? I can't see how you transfer the files from the hard disk in the D16 unless it is via the soundcard in the PC.

[markert]

Vease, I see what you mean. I don't know a way of hooking up the d16 directly to your computer, except through:
1) the analog outs from the d16 to the analog ins of your soundcard, or

2) optical out from the d16 to an optical in on your soundcard. Now, your soundcard probably doesn't have an optical in. Otherwise, that would mean you have an excellent soundcard with multiple in/out and you should use your computer for recording instead of the d16.

Anyway, I don't think you are really getting the most important part of the picture which is how will you back up your track data, not just burn audio cd's. Best way for that is to get an external scsi cdr/rw as recommended by Korg. That way you can burn audio cd's and still have a way to save raw track data so you can remix your creations down the road.

Hope that helps.

[Vease]

Apparently you can make your files in the D16 into a .wav format which is what made me think that there must be a way to get those files from the D16 into a PC, but I would be happy to use an external CDRW drive if this is the only way.