Laptop recording questions

[GuineaMcPig]

Hello everyone-

I'm excited to get into home recording this summer with one of my good buddies. He'll be doing all the vocals, and I'll be playing all the instruments (guitars, bass, keys, synths, misc. percussion, everything but drums). Right now, I'm planning out what I'll need to acquire to get good quality sound out of our setup.

I'm running a Toshiba Tecra 9100 laptop that has a processor speed of somewhere around 2 gHz, a 40 gb hard drive, and 512 mb of RAM. I understand that in order for things to run more smoothly, I should get another 80 gb hard drive for recordings and another 512 mb of RAM.

The thing that I'm a bit lost on is which audio interface to get. Considering I'll be playing all the intstruments one at a time, I don't need a whole lot of inputs...any between 2 and 4 would be fine. An analog line input would be nice for recording a synth, and I would like a line out to go to a power amp for monitors. I would also like a MIDI input and output. And I would like it to be connected to my computer via Firewire or USB.

Most of the interface that get recommended (Echo Layla, RME Multiface, etc.) here seem like overkill for me. I've been looking at the M-Audio Firewire 410 and the M-Audio Omni Studio, but some feedback would be nice before I make any rash decisions.

One other concern I have is how to keep the laptop noise out of the recordings that we'll be making. We might have a closet that we can turn into a decent booth, but we might have to have the laptop in the same room as all the other gear. What do people hear do to silence their computers?

I still have to choose which software I'm going to use, which will be another thread in itself. This is complicated stuff for a newb!

Thanks for helping me out!

~Jordan

 

[futurestar]

I've heard good things about the Echo Indigo I/O card. I think it sells for $179. It only has 2 ins/outs, but the quality should be very good. I have an Echo Mia soundcard in my PC and it sounds great. Keep in mind you'd probably need a decent mic pre as well if you don't have one already, so you may want to consider going with a Firewire unit that has mic pres built in to kill two birds with one stone. I would personally upgrade to 1GB of ram if your laptop is going to be your only rig for recording/tracking. As far as a second HD, I've heard that it's highly recommended (I have two HD's in my PC).

 

[biotek]

you should't need anymore than 512mb of ram... going higher is just overkill unless you're editing video...

 

[minofifa]

you have toshiba techra? hmm never heard of it but i have a toshiba satelite with the exact same specs. sonar 3 runs smooth for me. I would have to disagree with biotech about the 512 ram. Although 512 is very good, my system bogs down with effects and several tracks. I found out i can't upgrade my hunk of crap so i'm getting a desktop soon. My audio interface is a tascam us122, not bad but i will soon be switching to the M-aduio omnistudio soon. Echo's are good cads.