prIz,
when you get ready to burn a cd of your songs or encode them to mp3, you are gonna need either a mono or stereo mix of yourstuff. assuming we go stereo what you have is a wav. file that is basically a two track recording. however, this two track recording is a combination of other tracks, which have been processed and mixed together so that they all sound good in unison and split between the stereo spectrum. when you create this stereo wav file it is crucial that you have a good listening environment . basically creating this file is a matter of setting up the software mixing environment so that the song sounds like you want. recording this is just a matter of saving the file as a stereo wav file. up to this point your song has been stored as a project file of some sort in whatever sequencer/multitracker you are using....of course, i'm assuming you plan to mix everything on the pc...if you have a cd burner you can save alternate mixes and make a cd you can listen to on different systems and stereos to see how the sound varies....you can then tweak your mix....
so before you make your stereo file you have a bunch of tracks...tracks are typically midi or digital audio tracks...this goes for programs like cubase, logic audio, cakewalk, n-tracks...and now, acid....midi tracks don't contain sounds they are commands like sheet music...in this case the sound module is the piano player...sound modules are either hardware or software.....if you are doing it mainly on pc, software synths are the way to go..there are also software samplers. in this area reason is an excellent program, fruity loops is cool too.....anyway, to create midi tracks you need to create midi files...there are a variety of ways to do this...
in addition to midi tracks there are digital audio tracks...you can have a track in stereo or one in mono...i only record a track in stereo if there is some kind of stereo sound i got that i want to record...otherwise mono is the way to go..you can easily turn this into a stereo track later....now you may want to record in stereo...let's say you want to record a duet and you don't want to overdub, or say you are in the barbershop quartet...so you want to record four tracks, not just two , or in stereo...a card with multiple inputs does come in handy if you want to record a drum set too. this way you have mutiple tracks of a single performance.....this give you much more control of how the source is gonna sound in the final mix...if you record everthing in mono you are stuck with the 'mix' in the first take....unless you have some sexy girlfriend you want to do a duet with or a drumset you want to record, you can easily get by doing everything in mono....this is where the pc tricks can really kick in...and obviously you can record an identical track over again and mix it with the original....this will make things sound better in most cases. once you have some tracks on the pc the possibilites are wide open.
the omni and the direct pro are mixer, preamps and sound card all in one....this is what makes these devices so attractive for the money....this is prosumer territory not professional....however, that is a line that gets more blurry with pcs....and anyway this is home recording....
both the omni and the aardvark consist of a pci card that goes into the pc and a breakout box which houses the preamps and analog inputs....mixers are used to handle multitrack recording and these boxes are very limited , two to six channels....the idea is that you will be mixing the entire project with software, where you can have any number of tracks...most software allows for a lot of tracks for the final mix...
desktop recording is pretty much like desktop publishing....
