Basic Mixer/Preamp Required - any ideas?

T

treebeard

New member
Hi,

I'm looking to create a PC based home studio to record my rock band. I will be recording instruments one at a time.

I will be recording: Lead and rythem electric guitar, bass, drum kit, vocals and backing vocals.

I will be miking each source seperatly and using software such as Cakewalk to overlay and edit the tracks on my PC, before burning them CD.

Now, I know the Sound Blaster Audgiy 2 Platinum Ex isn't a professional recording card - but its what I will be using. At the momment I am limited to only two mics: one Shure SM57 and one SM58. I plan to use the SM58 for vocals, the SM57 for the instruments, and both for the drumkit.

My problem is what to have inbetween the mics and the soundcard. I was trying to decide whether to buy a mic preamp or a cheap mixer. It seems that a mixer would give me more mic inputs for if I aquire more mics. Basically, my only requirements for the preamp/mixer are:

More than 2 channels
Phantom power (for future condenser mics)
Good clean preamps for the mics
An optical output would be nice (to connect the preamp/mixer to the optical input on the Platinum Ex)
Under $200 if possible

Any recommendations, suggestions, ideas for the preamp/mixer?

Also, whats a condenser and do I need one?

Many thanks,

Treebeard

PS: I posted this in the Mixing forum first, but I guess it belongs here.
 
treebeard said:
Also, whats a condenser and do I need one?.
Click to expand...

A condenser is a type of microphone, commonly used in a studio.

There are some good articles describing how they work and their applications at www.studiocovers.com Look at the Microphone section.

Do you need one ? Maybe. Probably. :D They are good for recording vocals, drum overheads (the mics above a drum kit), acoustic guitars, percussion, some woodwinds. Dynamic mics are also used frequently and used on guitar amps, vocals, drum applications, bass guitar cabinets, etc.

First decide what you need to record and what your budget is and then ask more questions on Microphone Forum here at homerecording.com

Good luck :cool:
 
Thanks guys!

I've now had a look at the M-audio Mobile USB and some others, including the Delta DMP3. I don't really want the Spirit M4.

Now from what I've read the DMP3 seems like a really good preamp for the price - and I'm kinda taken with it. But would I get better recordings by plugging the DMP3 into my Platinum Ex or plugging the Mobile USB into my PC??

The Mobile USB says it can record at 16bit and 48kHz.
The DMP3 has a frequency response from 20Hz to 100kHz.
The Audigy Platinum Ex specs confuse me and can be found here:

http://www.soundblaster.com/products/audigy2_platinum_ex/specs.asp

Its all so confusing...
 
Other things to think about...

Sorry to muddy the waters here, but here are a few more things to think about...

1) How are you going to be monitoring (ie listening back to what is already recorded? The reason I ask is that recording on a computer imposes "latency" (forgive me if you already know this) which is the time that the computer takes to convert the audio to digital form and process it. If your latency is long, then it's quite disconcerting for the singer (for instance) to hear their own voice coming back out of the computer and through the headphones a little after they've hit the note! This is where "zero latency monitoring" is a good thing - the mic preamp or mixer has the ability to send the singer the pre-recorded track (which is inputted from the output of the computer into the pre/mixer) and also to send the singer their voice mixed in with this, before it hits the computer and has latency imposed on it.

The easiest (well OK, the cheapest) way to get zero latency monitoring is to buy a small mixer which has mic channels (to give you mic preamps) and stereo line level channels (which you plug your computer's sound output into) and an aux send or direct out(which you use to send the mic's signal to the computer) (x2 for stereo recording).

2) Condensor mics - wide awake has covered these pretty well, but I would go further and say, yes, you do need one. For a drum overhead, otherwise your cymbals will sound like they're 50 feet away and past the S-bend on the toilet they're in! Also, if you want to have acoustic guitar on there, again, your sound will be crap without one

3) Number of channels - If you're recording the instruments one by one, then in theory you only need as many channels as you have mics or outputs, which should be 2! But, with drums, I think you're going to find that having three channels, which you mix down to stereo is going to give you a better sound. And if using 2 mics gives you a better sound, at least you have the ability to try

4) The audigy. You're right, it's not a pro recording card, but it's not terrible, and it sounds like your expectations are reasonable. If you can afford extra, upgrade to something better like the audiophile 2496 by M-audio ($149). Bear in mind that the audigy only runs at 48kHz, not 44.1kHz which is the CD data standard. The reason I say that is that even if you got something with a spdif optical out, the sample rate conversion that would take place (unless your optical source was running at 48k) would take away a lot of the benefits of avoiding the audigy's converters.


So, after all of this, what would I recommend?
1) Behringer mixer with 4 mic amps eg.MX802A $80 at musiciansfriend.com
2) Studio Projects B1 large diaphragm condensor mic $80 - This is a good mic for a very low price. You will need a pop filter with this for vocals (which you can make out of a loop of wire and a pair of old pantyhose)
And $40 for cables, extra stand, or putting towards a better soundcard like the audiophile, or for an extra condensor mic, a behringer ecm8000, which is a small diaphragm mic good for acoustic guitar and overhead on drums $40.

This gives you lots of options...
Drums - B1 as overhead (a couple of drumstick lengths or more above the snare or a few feet out the front of the kit, experiment with positions, sm57 on snare, sm58 on kick
Guitar - Mic the amps with either the 57 or the B1 or the 57 up close and the B1 a few feet away
Bass - Direct, or you could use the B1
Vocals - Whichever of the mics sounds best with the voices

YMMV of course. Behringer takes a bad beating here at times, but features for $ and sound for $ they do very well.

Good luck
Steve
 
Your Mileage May Vary!
ie. this is my opinion, your experience may differ.

Others have suggested it stands for You Make Me Vomit, but this is definitely not the case!!!:D

Steve
 
By the way, when I said 'what's a condenser' I really meant 'what's a compressor?'. Ahem. And I still can't decide on the DMP3 or a Behringer mixer...
 
The easiest way to think about a compressor is that it's a box with a robot inside who has his hands on a volume control. The knobs on the front control the robot's behaviour. Usual controls are as follows:
- Threshold - Controls how loud the sound is before the robot starts turning down the volume
- Ratio - Controls how much the robot turns it down when it gets over the threshold - 1:1=doesn't turn it down at all. 2:1=turns it down so that for every 2dB over the threshold, the sound only gets 1dB louder
- Attack - Controls how long the robot's reaction time to the level being above the threshold - the shorter the attack time, the better the control of volume, but longer attack times let through the attack on bass and acoustic guitar for example which are an important part of the sound
- Release - Controls how long the robot keeps it turned down for
- Makeup gain - This is another volume control that is yours to play with after the robot has done his thing. Because the robot has turned down the loud parts of your recording, but left the parts below the threshold alone, the difference in level between the loudest part and the quietest part is now less. This means that if you turn the makeup gain up the right amount (usually the amount of "gain reduction" showing on your gain reduction meter on the compressor, your loudest parts will be as loud as they were, but the quiet parts will be louder than they were.

This is really the main purpose of compression - To make a track sound louder overall and more even in level. Compressors can be applied to things as you're recording them, as you're mixing them down, or as you're mastering. Or any combination of the 3. Most pop/rock/rap etc is compressed to hell. Most classical music and a lot of purist jazz is not compressed at all. That's essentially because the purist classical/jazz set want to hear everything as it really is, with the quiet bits quiet and the loud bits loud. Rock/pop/rap etc want, to paraphrase Meatloaf "everything louder than everything else". Compressors are very good at making things sound louder than they actually are (by using a compressor with the makeup gain set to "make up" the gain your robot took away, you're actually increasing the average volume of your track (by making the quiet bits louder), and is for some instruments a real part of how we expect recordings to sound. Most vocals, basses, bass drums, snare drums and acoustic guitars in popular music are run through compressors. Analog tape and distortion (eg from guitar amps) also act like compressors, and in the mastering stage compressors are often used on the mix as a whole to make it sound louder (ever wonder why some CD's are louder or quiter than others? It's often because of compression at the mastering stage).

Some compressors also give a certain characteristic "sound" to the signals they process. Joe meek is a good example of a brand whose compressors give a special sound to the signal as well as compressing. If you see the letters/numbers distressor, LA2A or 1176 around here, they're very expensive compressors that make things sound great, and all of us pretty much want them (including those that have them, who want more of them). Compressors are often described as having "character" (giving that special sound ) or "transparent" (compressing without changing the way the signal actually sounds much, which is also a good thing).

If you want more info, I'd suggest looking at the articles section of this site which has a bunch of excellent articles. If your head is about to explode, don't go there!!!

So do you need a compressor? Maybe. You have a huge learning curve ahead of you in terms of recording - it's a lot of work and you need to read and experiment a lot. If you feel like you have to plug in a compressor just because someone told you to but you're not sure what to do with it, it may end up messing things up more than it helps. Badly used compressors sound terrible. Also, most software packages come with at least one (I'm not a computer guy but I use protools free (which is free!!) for editing, and it has a compressor plugin), so you're probably going to have a software one. but a hardware compressor (eg. behringer autocom $69 composer $80 or much better FMR audio RNC $175) may be useful by helping to stop your soundcard input from being overloaded by to loud a signal (this is called limiting, which is exactly the same as compressing with a really high ratio so that nothing over the threshold gets through). Your choice, your budget. Good luck.

Hope this helps,
Steve
 
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