Mixer or DI?

[MikeNovy]

Originally Posted by dmckissic

I am new to all of this. Just started home recording. Not looking to sell a million CD's just want a good sound, and have fun. I play all of the instruments in my songs and do all of the vocals. My set up is an M Audio Mbox 2 audio interface, with Pro Tools, and Sonar 8 software, I have a couple of KRK Rokit 6 monitors.
My question is when I record (mostly DI, in a small untreated room), should Use a mixer, (small Tapco), or go directly into the audio interface with my instruments, (fender Telecaster, Ibanez Artcore Hollow body, Ovation Celebrity, and Yamaha 625 keyboard, Epiphone Thunder bird bass). I dont have any songs up for you to listen to yet but Im working on some will post them soon.
Thanks

There is no right or wrong.
If you like to have the complete control in your computer (means mixing, effects,...) you should use the direct input of your audio interface.
But this requires a few inputs.

Other people still prefer mixing on usual (analog) mixers and put the
sum or the bus outs to the PC. But if you don't have a digital mixer,
you may not be able to store the mixer's settings.
Too bad, if you working parallelly on several tracks.


So:
If you have those inputs, use them and avoid fighting with a mixer,
which outputs have to be fed to the PC anyway for the final recording.
But you could do some kind of pre-mixing with your guitars, and feed
the single mixer outputs (using Sends or AUX) to your audio interface inputs afterwards.

It is all up to you, and how you want to spend time on the overview, the cables, ...


Best wishes,
Mike

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www.the-composers-approach.com

[dmckissic]

I am new to all of this. Just started home recording. Not looking to sell a million CD's just want a good sound, and have fun. I play all of the instruments in my songs and do all of the vocals. My set up is an M Audio Mbox 2 audio interface, with Pro Tools, and Sonar 8 software, I have a couple of KRK Rokit 6 monitors.
My question is when I record (mostly DI, in a small untreated room), should Use a mixer, (small Tapco), or go directly into the audio interface with my instruments, (fender Telecaster, Ibanez Artcore Hollow body, Ovation Celebrity, and Yamaha 625 keyboard, Epiphone Thunder bird bass). I dont have any songs up for you to listen to yet but Im working on some will post them soon.
Thanks

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by dmckissic

My question is when I record (mostly DI, in a small untreated room), should Use a mixer, (small Tapco), or go directly into the audio interface with my instruments

If you're playing and recording everything yourself, I assume that means by default you're only recording one instrument at a time. And since you're apparently recording everything direct, there's no need for the Tapco.

If you are miking your drums with more than three or four microphones (assuming that the Tapco is large enough to have four mic preamps) and you need to do a real-time submix to two channels in order to fit everything through the mBox, then the mixer has a use for you. But other than that, skip the mixer and keep your signal chain short. Adding the mixer will only serve to add another stage of noise and distortion with no added benefit to justify the cost.

Sure, some like going through an analog mixer first even if they don't need the extra channels or need to submix, but that's when they have an analog mixer that actually has something worthwhile to *add* to the signal such as higher quality mic preamps or a really sweet-sounding EQ section. But you're frankly not going to get either of those with an entry-level mixer like a small Tapco. The pres won't be any better, and might even be worse than what's on the mBox...and since you're recording everything direct, you're not even using the mic pres. And the EQ on small mixers like that is never anything to write home about, certainly not worth paying for by the added noise level.

G.

[dmckissic]

Thanks a Lot Guys, that really helped me. Your absolutely right when I tried to use the mixer I spent more time fighting it than I put into my project. And it is definitely a noise generator.