PC Gear Question

E

Ed Dixon

New member
Getting into PC recording. Looking at MBox, Tascam US-122,
M-Audio gear, and others.

Most USB gear is USB 1.1 based, which is slow. I have trouble believing that they produce good sound when the number of tracks rises.

Firms like M-Audio sell PCI cards that would seem to be a better choice. Others like Digidesign sell firewire units that are much faster than USB 1.1.

My needs are to generally record one thing at a time in a multi-track PC environemt. This will include mics, guitar, bass, and perhaps keys.

Ed
 
Most USB gear is USB 1.1 based, which is slow. I have trouble believing that they produce good sound when the number of tracks rises.
Click to expand...

The relative speed of USB is only a bottleneck for the audio coming in and out of the card. The number of tracks you have in your recording software is irrelevant, unless you had more than two/four inputs and a stereo output to route them to, which no USB device offers, since it would not be able to handle it.

My needs are to generally record one thing at a time in a multi-track PC environemt. This will include mics, guitar, bass, and perhaps keys.
Click to expand...

Then a USB 1 device would serve your needs just fine. But a PCI card or a FireWire interface with more inputs would allow you to multitrack and record other musicians should you ever want to do that in the near future. Gotta think about what you would like to be able to do, not just what you might usually do.
 
My concern is that I see lots of comments from various USB users on various boards about problems with that gear. I have already seen lots of problems with other non-music USB gear.

I see far fewer problems on those boards for firewire or PCI based gear, where bandwidth is not an issue.

My only real issue today is that some of my guitar gear is in the garage, and PC is in the house. Moving racks inside is a pain. On the other hand taking a portable unit like a Tascam 788 to garage has some liability as well.

Ed
 
The simple solution is to build another box for the garage. That's really the best solution too; you don't want a DAW to also have to be a general use PC. So start researching building a second computer, there a many threads here on that topic.
 
That's really not an option due to many reasons (heat, cooling, noise, space, kids, etc). This PC, or any of a number of other high end PCs there will work fine for a DAW.

I have a small effects system I normally use for rehearsal that I can use inside. If I need the other, I can bring in one 8 space rack at a time.

The real question for me is which interface unit to purchase. I don't want to spend a lot of $ here to start. My currently thinking is between Tascam US-122, M-Audio Audiophile 2496, and the Digidesign MBox. EDIROL also has a simple USB unit (I already have their UM-1 MIDI unit which works well). that might be suitable. The ones without a mic preamp would need some other gear on this end, but that mostly arleady exists in one form or another.

Ed
 
Ed Dixon said:


My only real issue today is that some of my guitar gear is in the garage, and PC is in the house. Moving racks inside is a pain. On the other hand taking a portable unit like a Tascam 788 to garage has some liability as well.

Ed
Click to expand...
That was my issue too.

I tried using my wife's laptop (with its built in sound card- and it sucked. Given the latency anything recorded longer than 30 seconds was off rhythm.

I thought about getting a USB sound card but the laptop is only 233mhz...

I ended up getting a Fostex MR-8 digital recorder- which can dump tracks (as wav's) to my computer through USB. Then I can remix on the computer and add tons of tracks and effects (note: haven't done that yet... still in the demo phase). Its small enough to cart around and can run off batteries (not that I ever intend on using the batteries).
 
That does open an interesting option I had not considered.

1. Get a low cost separate digital multi-track
2. Record some tracks using it
3. Transfer result to a PC and store as separate tracks there
4. Mix result down to one and move back to multi-track
5. Use multi-track to record additioinal tracks on 2-8
6. Repeat steps 3-5 as necessary for final result

PC software like PowerTracks from PG Music can handle 48 audio tracks. This way you can do them 2-7 at a time, and still keep things separate.

The only issuie I see is keeping each side in sync so that when new tracks from iteration 2 or greater are added back in to the PC, all is still in sync.

Ed
 
Ed Dixon said:
That does open an interesting option I had not considered.

1. Get a low cost separate digital multi-track
2. Record some tracks using it
3. Transfer result to a PC and store as separate tracks there
4. Mix result down to one and move back to multi-track
5. Use multi-track to record additioinal tracks on 2-8
6. Repeat steps 3-5 as necessary for final result

PC software like PowerTracks from PG Music can handle 48 audio tracks. This way you can do them 2-7 at a time, and still keep things separate.

The only issuie I see is keeping each side in sync so that when new tracks from iteration 2 or greater are added back in to the PC, all is still in sync.

Ed
Click to expand...

My MR8 has a built in Click track that it can send as MIDI time code. Everything stays in sync. If you do that transfer-shuffle game you just decribed, you don't even need to buy a new Compact Flash card for the MR8.
 
If you are not contending for the bus (meaning have some other usb device working at the same time) then a USB1.1 device is fine for recording one stereo signal or two mono signals at once. The only limitation is that you cannot record at 96/24 and playback simultaneously, although that can be worked around. I have a Edirol UA-5 and find it quite satisfactory.
 
mekkab said:
My MR8 has a built in Click track that it can send as MIDI time code. Everything stays in sync. If you do that transfer-shuffle game you just decribed, you don't even need to buy a new Compact Flash card for the MR8.
Click to expand...

Purchased an MR-8 unit today. Plan to use PowerTracks on PC to mix resulting tracks and Wav Manager to move tracks from PC to unit.

Ed
 
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