Recording using a board???

You guys have been extremely helpful actually lol.

Anyway...what you are saying is, my best bet would be something like the firepod with cubase and a good pc? No mixer or any of those digital boards and whatnot? And howbout control surfaces??

EDIT: I read some articles that say most people use a PC, audio interface and a mixer and plug the mixer into the interface.
 
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The guy's father's friend suggested that M-Audio's Project Mix (which is supposedly the newest thing for recording, combining audio interfaces, mixers, control surfaces, etc into one big board). However, that is a tad too expensive for me...so I was looking at something like this: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/prod...er-Audio-Interface-Control-Surface?sku=706931
However, the firepod probably has better specs?? I dunno...you guys tell me lol.

EDIT: btw, I think someone should change the title of this post to better fit our discussion...and maybe move it to the mixer forum. Maybe we'd get even more input that way.
 
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the project mix, and in particular that tascam device, are very cool looking aren't they? I haven't used either, but the companies are good, products should be solid. My concern, and it is minor, is this:

Simply based on bottom line, it seems unlikely (not impossible, just unlikely) that the quality of the different sections of the tascam combination unit are as good as buying separated units that are dedicated to their particular purpose. I mean, it has mic pres, a mixer, control surface, and a/d + d/a converters, and probably more (display maybe? motorized faders maybe? I didn't read too far in the description, sorry...). So I would just worry a bit that maybe the mic pres and a/d d/a converters aren't quite up to snuff. Those are the most obvious problem points in the signal chain generally, the sort of things that if not really good can make your life a living hell after you've gotten used to working with the device.

That being said, we're already recommending devices such as the firepod which are "many-in-one" devices (mic pres plus a/d d/a converters plus very basic level control and monitor mixing), so is this really any worse? who knows.

There are plenty of all-in-one devices that have been around for decades. Started with the old tascam and teac and yamaha portastudios with cassette 4 track recording (then 6 then 8 tracks then digital 8 tracks). When they started including mic pres they generally sucked. I'll get into why in a minute.
When they, only just recently, decided to start replacing the cassette drives with a/d and d/a converters for workign with your computer, I just worry that they maybe are still thinking that with everything in one box, nobody will care too much if they skimp on performance of a few items, like for example mic pres.

What is wrong with a bad mic pre?
possible problems CAN include one or more of the following:
- low gain, even when cranked up (maybe 45 or 50 db, not enough for ribbons or even dynamic mics if you have a softer voice or are recording something sensitive like a gentle acoustic guitar).
- hissy/noisy, generally only when cranked up, but if you already have low gain then you have to crank it up, if you have hiss on one mic track, and you record 8 tracks at high gain, you have 8 times the hiss, quite noticeable (maybe I didn't word that well, hopefully it makes sense)
- poor tone, sometimes in the form of reduced low or very high frequencies, more often in the form of uneven input impedence, this can cause some (generally ribbon, sometimes dynamic) mics to perform very unevenly, some pitches will be loud, others soft

Generally I look for at LEAST 55 db of possible gain from any mic pre, and low noise at that highest 55 gain amplification (like, inaudible when on one single channel). PLEASE NOTE - not all companies are honest in their specifications. most say 50 or 55 db gain, but if you crank the input on a firepod you get MUCH more signal (and with no noise) than with many so called 55db gain mic pres. Most people consider the firepod more like 60db of clean gain, and many other cheap mic pres are more like 50db of gain that is pretty clean but can be noisy when overtracked a lot.

What is the problem with poorer A/D and D/A converters?
Hard to explain, but in general you can get harsh tone (I'm exaggerating a bit), noise (and digital noise ain't pretty), poor locks or poor internal timing master (Which means it won't stay synced up properly, which means you'll get dropouts more often etc and garbage like that).

A/D means analog to digital which means your live sound turned into something the computer can understand. D/A is the opposite. All sound cards are D/A converters (make soudn from your computer), most are A/D converters as well (for yoru mic and line inputs). Most are good enough for fun and can sound quite good really. I've done pro level recording on a soundblaster. BUT, the better the converters the more fun you can have without any worries.

For example, like with mic pres, any problems with your converters are much more noticeable the more times you go through them. 8 slightly noisy mic pres make a lot of hiss when all cranked up together. 8 slightly crappy converters can result in a lot of artifacts (all kinds or wierd noises or uneven response or even hiss, but most commonly just crappy tone in quiet sections of your music) if you record (a/d), then mixdown outside your daw through a mixer (d/a then a/d again), then master externally through a rack (d/a then a/d again), then burn onto a pro level cd mastering device (although that is generally d/d so not a problem if no rate conversion is done).

Of course, if you record in, then do all your mixing internally in the daw, mastering in the daw, and burn to a cd-r in your daw, you won't exploit the problems of less than perfect converters, and in fact only your a/d converters will have been used in the final recording, the d/a ones only being used for listening and monitoring during the process. So converters aren't as big a problem in home recording as the mic pres etc.

daw (digital audio workstation, also known as your computer) recording + mixdown + mastering + burning is a DDDD system, perfect really once you've gotten the audio into your computer in the first place. Many pro audio studios do NOT do DDDD, or at least not in the way we're talking, so converter quality is much more important (for external mixing and mastering as in my example).

The best thing would be to go into a store that has that tascam unit or similar, put on some GOOD high end headphones, unplug everything from the inputs of the device, make sure you get help from someone to make sure your headphones are monitoring all of the inputs ok, then crank everything up, all the input levels all the way, the headphone out, etc. KEEP IN MIND the headphone amp may make it's own noise, so check out the soudn of the headphone amp cranked with the mic inputs all the way down as well, for comparison.

If you get some noise, that will be in your final recording, unless you use condensor mics (all of which are higher gain than dynamic mics) so you don't have to crank your mic pres.

Maybe the device will work great for you. tascam CAN make great stuff, they just don't always. :-) They've been culprits of lots of features plus not great performance in the past.

Sorry I was away for a couple days - hopefully this is helpful. And hopefully I'm not going off on a tangent here that's just wierd or anal or anything.

Cheers
Don
 
oh yeah, and the firepod does have good specs, just for the record. but if it costs more and the tascam does what you want, hell, I'm even considering one of those tascams now that you point it out but just need to do those audio tests that I've described for you to do before I'm about to take one home. Maybe I'll rent one for a bit. I'd probably not replace my main firepod based recording system though with something like that. And I have a motorized control surface already. But for me (I have some good dynamic and ribbon mics as well as condensors), I need at least 2 or 3 of my mic pres to have high gain and all of them to have low noise, the firepod does it for me so far. I have one $2000 esoteric outboard specialist mic pre, but honestly, it's only different in it's "color" of the tone, doesn't have any higher clean (clean = signal-you-want minus noise-you-don't-want) gain than my firepod, even though the firepod is rated at 55db gain and the specialist pre is at 60db gain, maybe cuz the specialist pre is tube based and slightly noisier.
 
a little more on topic here, yes you can do it all with cubase + firepod + your computer with a firewire interface (if your computer can perform ok as per my specs in a previous post).

Later you can get a control surface, like a bcf2000 from behringer or if you have more money, the real mackie control or similar that the bcf2000 is a copy of.

then later on you can upgrade your computer for more power = more tracks = fewer problems when you use lots of softsynths and/or plugin effects (as we all end up doing eventually... kind of an addiction, just wait till you get it...).

Then you can get a cheap little mixer to help with drum tracking (multiple close mics into 2 stereo mix outs plus kick plus snare still going on their own tracks).

Then when you get $1000 you can buy a really good used mixer board to impress your friends hahaha, not that it's not useful, just not necessary, but certainly a good draw if you are trying to attract customers into your studio for recording.

I'm thinking of buying a big broken behringer board and scratching out the behringer name so people see this huge board when they come in. Then once I get the deposit cheque I'll tell them the truth -- if you want the best quality sound then I'm not going to use the mixer. It will just add noise to the signal...
 
one final point - there is NOTHING wrong with a good mixer-based recording, just more expensive since good mixers really do cost a lot. behringer makes nice cheap good sounding ones, but they very often wear out within months.

But I'd happilly work in a studio again like I did in the old days with a 40 track custom ordered soundcraft board (or similar), tons of outboard gear (then called rack gear since there was no such thing as "inboard" stuff back then like plugins), and a 32 track analog tape deck. it's high end at it's finest. but it cost close to $300,000 to build that studio back then.... that's my point. it CAN be great, even better than what we're all doing, but you'd have to spend WAY more to get the same quality even as is supplied in the latest presonus and m-audio stuff for fairly inexpensive prices, or the slightly more high end gear that has nicer converters etc for a bit more cash. Again, not even going to soudn any different to you (I mean, you won't hear the difference as long as the mix is good and the sound is good, that's most important by FAR).

PS. with any of these recording systems, make sure you listen back on good speakers. if you have a couple hundred bucks, buy some used studio monitors (REAL studio monitors) or behringer truth monitors or yorkville ysms or something. inexpensive, REAL monitors will let you hear exactly what was recorded. You probably won't believe this, I didn't until I did lots of real comparisons a/b back and forth, even did one blind test, but real studio monitors by real studio monitor companies, even crappy behringer ones, are MUCH better at showing problems in your mix than even $3000 home stereo speakers are. They may not be any better for level mixing, but for making sure there isn't someone swearing into a mic in the background that you didn't notice during tracking, there's nothing like 'em. hahaha....

if you can't afford monitors, make sure you listen on different sets of speakers and check on headphones to make sure there are no surprises.

you can use great headphones, but it's no fun for the rest of the band, and of course phones do sound different from speakers so it's really hard to get a good mix from them (you'll do it, burn it to cd, play it on your stereo, and hear mostly bass and cymbals or something).
 
interesting, just read some user comments about that tascam unit. people are complaining (some people) about latency issues.

that's a pain, that's the delay between what you record and how long it takes to hear it back in supposedly real time through your a/d d/a converters. all converters take some time, but if you want to record (overtrack) over stuff and especially if you want to monitor through your software you need low latency (small delay times). like, 2 ms is ok, 3, 4 or 5 ms can be ok depending on your software and what you're doing. one thing the firepod has in it's favour here, if it's setup right and your machine "likes" it (hard to predict) and you take lots of time to experiment and learn what you're doing, you can lower it to 2 ms of latency, plenty fast enough for most people. that's comparable to old analog tape recording systems with true track monitoring, generally 2 ms or slightly better.

Just a thought. BUT, if you're recording your band in real time with all 8 inputs flying, latency isn't too big a deal. you're done playing? you're done your song. no overtracking needed. and believe me, I've done overtracking on 8 ms latency systems and if you use software that does automatic latency correction (I know sonar does that, maybe cubase does too) then it's no big deal as long as you don't need to monitor with plugin effects in real time.

if none of that makes any sense, never mind. just elucidating from my thoughts.... i'm on cold medication so consider me stoned. ;->
 
this is what I use for a control surface...

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Behringer-BCF2000-BControl-Fader?sku=701763

cheap, good. with a firepod bought from ebay for less than $500 the deal is pretty good. and the bcf gives much more control over things like panning, equing, etc. although it doesn't have that nice thumb-control rotary knob thingy.. it does have 8 rotary knobs that double as push buttons, plus the faders, plus the buttons.

Now if you want the real thing get a mackie control something. That's like the best of the best, with display, everything the bcf has plus master fader (master faders are sort of not very important generally in their default usage) plus nice transport controls. But it's gonna cost ya.

One other thing - the bcf2000's motorized faders "hummmm" when they move... would be good to know if the tascam unit suffers from the same problem. Not serious, just turn up the volume so you don't hear it... :-), just curious. the bcf has, I think, longer moving faders, but I could be wrong there, and it's not all that important anyway, quality is more important than quantity, and tascam products are probably better than behringer. just making comparison notes is all.

I do tend to think out loud don't I? My apologies.
 
I was looking at the Mackie stuff..but I think it says its control surface is designed for Logic (even though it works with Cubase and other products). I would want a control surface designed for Cubase, if they even have one, lol.
 
KiFF BluEs said:
I was looking at the Mackie stuff..but I think it says its control surface is designed for Logic (even though it works with Cubase and other products). I would want a control surface designed for Cubase, if they even have one, lol.
Click to expand...

ah. I believe that there is a mackie control for logic and one for everything else.

I'll tell you one thing... mackie control has touch sensitive faders, MUCH better than the bcf or anything else out there that doesn't have touch sensitive faders. means you can grab control of a moving fader in mid move and start recording new fader movements in mid track without stopping, editing/deleting, rerecording fader movements in the software.

the mackie control is the default control for sonar, just for example. and sonar has as little as possible to do with logic (what with logic now being owned by apple and all).
 
oh yes, and from my own distant memories of using a mackie control, it's faders don't hum (at least not as loudly as a behringer).
 
hahaha, and just one more thing. moving faders are kewl, but certainly not important in the big picture. nice if they're well implemented, but if they don't move they still work, just can take a little more mental concentration from the user to make sure you remember where the fader was set before you started moving it again (since the software will jump to your hardware fader's current position once you move one in a non-motorized fader type of control surface).
 
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