Audio Interfaces for laptop.

[pads01]

Hey,

I am wanting to be able to record drums and have each individual track on my laptop for editing for example on cubase have one track for snare, kick and overheads etc., if I buy a USB interface such as this Lexicon Lambda Digital Audio Interface
will I able to achieve what I want to. At the moment we have just plugged our mics through a mixing desk and then an audio direct into the laptop onto one track, not very good results.

Some help or suggestions of good audio interfaces would be good, cheers.

Paddy

 

[pads01]

Also, if i were to get two 2x2 interfaces could I run them together for 4 channel input?

 

[Supercreep]

Hey,

I am wanting to be able to record drums and have each individual track on my laptop for editing for example on cubase have one track for snare, kick and overheads etc., if I buy a USB interface such as this Lexicon Lambda Digital Audio Interface
will I able to achieve what I want to. At the moment we have just plugged our mics through a mixing desk and then an audio direct into the laptop onto one track, not very good results.

Some help or suggestions of good audio interfaces would be good, cheers.

Paddy

Product: Lambda | Lexicon Pro

I think two mics and two line ins are all you get. I didn't see anything about daisychaining multiple units.

I imagine you could use your mixer to sum all the tracks to a stereo pair, but you won't have individual tracks to play with. You'll need an interface with more mic inputs to get where you want to go.

 

[glomu]

recording drums, unless yours is a digital kit, requires as many inputs as possible, 4 simply would not do. You are looking for a minimum 8 channel input device.

 

[Shadow_7]

Also, if i were to get two 2x2 interfaces could I run them together for 4 channel input?

Yes and no.

I've used 2x M-Audio Mobile Pre's at the same time. For 4 inputs, although I only used two of the tracks (one phantom power, one not). And at relatively low sample rates 16/48.

Caveats

- Had to script CLI based capture to minimize the latency of launching two capture applications, one for each interface. Since I could NOT use one application to record from both devices at the same time.

- There will be slight clock differences between the two devices over a long duration. Possibly more than 1 second per hour even for the same brand, model, yada yada yada... Between my FH1 camcorder and Korg MR-1000, closer to 1/5th of a second per hour. But enough to need adjustment for anything longer than five minutes in length.

Better off with something like a Zoom R16 IMO. Unless you have a firewire port, then you have other options. And the above was using two different USB buses. Not all laptops are wired that way. And if you use a USB hub, epic FAIL. Or really anything USB on the same bus. Keyboard or mouse or whatever. More so with an HDD on USB while capturing audio on USB and saved to said USB HDD. Not advised at all.