Part of this post is in the Building a Studio forum b/c it involves the actual room itself and someone recommended I post the "gear" related questions here.
The Band:
I have a five piece folk band comprised primarily of acoustic instruments; guitars, electric guitar, mandolin, fiddle, bass, harmonica, snare w/ brush and up to five voices (3 male [tenor, bass, high-baritone], 2 female [mezzo soprano, contralto]. We do a lot of duet and trio vocal work and even some four and five part harmonies.
We like to play live with minimal overdubbing. Perhaps it's laziness but it's also just the way we like to play More passion you know? In the moment.
Right now we record every practice and demo (live) from an iMac microphone although lately we've been using the preamps in my M-Audio ProKey Sono 88.
The guitars tend to sound too compressed through the pickups/preamp and too boomy if mic'd with a dynamic.
Okay ... so ... to the questions; what gear do you recommend?
The Goal:
Record our first EP that is good enough we can possibly mix ourselves and send for mastering to sell later or quality demos we can put on our website or on BandCamp/iTunes, etc.
Proposed Gear:
I was thinking of the MOTU pre8 so that I could vocal mic most of us and also mic some of the instruments...We don't need much in the way of monitoring as I can put it out over the reference speakers if we need it or have two headphone monitors in the M-Audio keyboard.
The MOTU also has about 300 hours of studio use on it.
I've been going back and forth b/w MOTU pre8, Firestudio Project and Firebox...whatcha recommend? The MOTU I have in mind has about 300 hrs of studio use on it.
Gear in use:
Alvarez-Yairi w/ under saddle piezo
Taylor with sound hole pickup
Epiphone EJ-200 with sound hole contact mic
Mandolin with no pickup
Fender Jazz bass with passive pickups
Fender P-bass with passive pickups
Fiddle with pickup
1967 Fender Vibrolux Reverb
5E3 Tweed Deluxe clone
The Rig:
24" White iMac Core2Duo w/ 4GB RAM w/ Snow Leopard 10.6.x.x and either Cubase or Logic Studio (probably Cubase)
7200 internal RPM although I'm going external Firewire 800/400 for this project
M-Audio ProKeys Sono 88
BeyerDynamics M300TG
Audiotechnica ATM410
Shure SM57
Shure SM58
Rode NT-5
The Band:
I have a five piece folk band comprised primarily of acoustic instruments; guitars, electric guitar, mandolin, fiddle, bass, harmonica, snare w/ brush and up to five voices (3 male [tenor, bass, high-baritone], 2 female [mezzo soprano, contralto]. We do a lot of duet and trio vocal work and even some four and five part harmonies.
We like to play live with minimal overdubbing. Perhaps it's laziness but it's also just the way we like to play More passion you know? In the moment.
Right now we record every practice and demo (live) from an iMac microphone although lately we've been using the preamps in my M-Audio ProKey Sono 88.
The guitars tend to sound too compressed through the pickups/preamp and too boomy if mic'd with a dynamic.
Okay ... so ... to the questions; what gear do you recommend?
The Goal:
Record our first EP that is good enough we can possibly mix ourselves and send for mastering to sell later or quality demos we can put on our website or on BandCamp/iTunes, etc.
Proposed Gear:
I was thinking of the MOTU pre8 so that I could vocal mic most of us and also mic some of the instruments...We don't need much in the way of monitoring as I can put it out over the reference speakers if we need it or have two headphone monitors in the M-Audio keyboard.
The MOTU also has about 300 hours of studio use on it.
I've been going back and forth b/w MOTU pre8, Firestudio Project and Firebox...whatcha recommend? The MOTU I have in mind has about 300 hrs of studio use on it.
Gear in use:
Alvarez-Yairi w/ under saddle piezo
Taylor with sound hole pickup
Epiphone EJ-200 with sound hole contact mic
Mandolin with no pickup
Fender Jazz bass with passive pickups
Fender P-bass with passive pickups
Fiddle with pickup
1967 Fender Vibrolux Reverb
5E3 Tweed Deluxe clone
The Rig:
24" White iMac Core2Duo w/ 4GB RAM w/ Snow Leopard 10.6.x.x and either Cubase or Logic Studio (probably Cubase)
7200 internal RPM although I'm going external Firewire 800/400 for this project
M-Audio ProKeys Sono 88
BeyerDynamics M300TG
Audiotechnica ATM410
Shure SM57
Shure SM58
Rode NT-5