Newbie Needs Help

T

teetopkram

New member
Greetings - I am starting to build a home project studio based on a Powerbook G4. I have all the musical equipment I need, just none of the recording stuff. I also have a spare G4 desktop unit running at only 400 Mhz that I plan to use as a Midi synth unit or as a separate hard drive to record on (since the HD is faster).

Anyway, for the time being I will be recording at most only two channels at a time (e.g., stereo acoustic guitar, stereo acoustic piano). I'll only need more channels on down the road if I invest in a drumkit - there is no possibility of me recording a band in my home office.

My basic questions are...in order to record two channels at once, will I need a separate mixer going into a soundcard? Or, do the standard firewire or USB sound cards today (e.g., Tascam US-122; M-Audio Firewire Audiophile) offer the ability to record two separate channels at once? I have Garageband and Tracktion software for digital recording/mixing, and can get the academic version of Logic 7 if I grow into it.

If a separate mixer is not used, would it be worthwhile to invest in a separate mic preamp even if the soundcard recording unit has preamps? Because I am new to this I wonder if I would even appreciate/notice the difference...I plan on using the basic Chinese condensor mikes (e.g., MXL 603s, V67G, or Studio Projects B1, C4s).

thanks for your answers to these questions.

Mark

Mark
 
Essentially you need a two channel interface and two mic preamps.

The Tascam interface you mentioned has pres built in so you wouldn't need a seperate mixer or preamps with that.
You'd need seperate preamps with the M Audio interface which could come from a small mixer or a standalone preamp like the M Audio DMP-3.

Personally if i new i'd be wanting extra inputs down the road I'd buy a soundcard with plenty of inputs now and save an upgrade in the future.
 
So what you are saying is that something like the M-Audio firewire 1814 can record 18 separate channels at once? Forgive my ignorance...
 
teetopkram said:
So what you are saying is that something like the M-Audio firewire 1814 can record 18 separate channels at once? Forgive my ignorance...
Click to expand...

It depends on the manufacturer really but the numbers will often refer to ALL of the ins/outs so that's analogue, MIDI, digital etc.

For example I use an M Audio 1010LT, so that's 8 analogue ins/outs, 1 MIDI in/out and 1 SPDIF (digital) in/out.

The main thing is to be sure of how many of each type of input/output the interface would give you.
 
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