Advice on buying new equipment needed

  • Thread starter Thread starter Herr Joachim
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Herr Joachim

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Hello.

I am using an ooooold laptop with an echo indigo soundcard.
I am considering to buy either a focusrite forte soundcard or a
universal audio 710 twin finity preamp and keep my echo card.
What would give me the best sound quality? I will be recording
mostly acoustic guitar, voice and perhaps piano.

Have a nice day all : )
 
Thanks for the advice. I'm using win xp . One reviewer of the forte soundcard said it worked with xp. I think my laptop has usb 2.0.
 
I think the RAM is going to cripple you when it comes to running any DAW, even if you're only doing a couple of tracks at a time. I know some people get away with just 1G or 2G of RAM, but never heard of anyone using less.
 
Honestly...Echo converters are actually very underrated and hard to beat without spending a lot of money for some upscale boxes.
Also, with XP...newer interface options may not support it or work well with it, but the Echo Indigo drivers were probably optimized for XP at the time.

AFA the Indigo I/O....if it is mini-plugs....that's not the best way to go, but in your case, the computer RAM is just WAY to little and a bigger issue than I/O connectors.
You could get by with Audacity on just 2 GB, maybe 1GB...but the minute you start getting more involved or adding FX/Processing...the RAM will choke up on you....but hey, give it a try with less and see how it goes.
 
Thanks for your input. I didn't know the amount of RAM affected the sound quality of recordings.
 
Herr Joachim said:
Thanks for your input. I didn't know the amount of RAM affected the sound quality of recordings.
Click to expand...

The amount of ram has no effect on quality. It has an effect on the laptop's capacity record. However, if you have used the laptop successfully before, then you should be ok.

I used to run Logic on a PC with a 16gb hard drive, 256mb ram and a 450mhz CPU ok. Some tasks it managed, others it didn't, and others were very slow. But it worked.

If you are just changing interfaces you should be ok. However, if your existing one is working for you, why change? Rather than a new preamp, consider getting a higher-end mike.
 
Thanks. I have two gefell um70 mics. Currently using an m-audio dmp3 mic pre. Was thinking the universal audio mic pre would improve the sound quality quite a bit. Also the focusrite forte pres might be a step up? Btw, i was mistaken about my laptop's RAM - it was 504 mb.
 
Herr Joachim said:
Thanks. I have two gefell um70 mics. Currently using an m-audio dmp3 mic pre. Was thinking the universal audio mic pre would improve the sound quality quite a bit. Also the focusrite forte pres might be a step up? Btw, i was mistaken about my laptop's RAM - it was 504 mb.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure those Gefell mics are rather good? I would doubt a new pre amp will alter or improve the sound of capacitor mics unless you have a noise or overload problem?

If you are sure the laptop has USB 2.0 (look for "enhanced in Device Manager) then I can assure you that the Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6 interface will work famously with XP....But yes, get some more memory if you can.

Dave
 
The UM70 seems to be recognized as a quality mic. It has the M7 capsule. I have a problem with noise when i record
fingerpicked guitar. The guitar is quiet. I'm getting a new one soon. Looking for a good deal on a gibson hummingbird.
 
Herr Joachim said:
The UM70 seems to be recognized as a quality mic. It has the M7 capsule. I have a problem with noise when i record
fingerpicked guitar. The guitar is quiet. I'm getting a new one soon. Looking for a good deal on a gibson hummingbird.
Click to expand...

I cannot immediately find a specc' for the UM70 but in a review of the later, transformerless model in SoS they said the new one had a slightly better noise figure, 13dB/Pa. but that noise was never a problem with the UM70 anyway.

Your mics Joachim would seem to specc at least as well as my AKG P150s* and I have no problem with those on a rather quiet Turner acoustic guitar. Maybe you DO need a new pre amp! It is unlikely that BOTH mics have gone noisy.

*Even when going into a Behringer X802. Using the present incumbent, an A&H zed10 sees no noise improvement with capacitors but Son preferred the sound of an SM57 on Ac guitar! That did really need the better A&H.

Can you post a clip? With "silences"!

Dave.
 
Audio on computers needs bags and bags of ram, or you get silences, clicks or pops while the computer has to stop, dump some files to hard drive and then start recording again. They use a buffer to store audio while they do this housekeeping stuff. So simply recording can be a problem. These daw systems all offer amazing facilities, but they all take memory to work, and because memory is so cheap, the designers bang away with their designs assuming people have four gigs or more of ram. I have an adobe subscription and although I can edit video on one of my pcs with it, I rarely even try because it only has two gigs of memory, and grinds to a halt and even crashes on occasion.

Less than a gig of memory tags the computer as ancient, as does XP, which will mean that at some point you will need to upgrade the driver to use new features but won't be able to, because XP compatibility has been deemed pointless.

It will work. It won't work well, and may well let you down. You have some nice mics, but reliable audio from an old PC is just going to be unpredictable.
 
Not to argue with Rob (cos he is basically dead right!) But.
Much depends on what you want/need to do. If the OP simply wants to record 2 channels of 24 bit, 44.1kHz audio he does not need much of a computer.

Until he sat on it, my son uses an HP Compaq, 850mHz CPU with 512 meg of ram and that would record to the above specc' for as long as the dinky 20G hard drive would last using an M-Audio Fast track pro. He used it for vocals and acoustic guitar because the laptop was virtually silent (as is my much later HP i3). The old lappy ran XP Pro.

The main computer was W7/64 2X 2.7G procc' and he built up a fair number of tracks with that with no trouble and just 2G of ram. Yes, I agree, he did not use much in the way of plugins. But as you say Rob, it would not cope with much in the way of video!

XP is fine if you have legacy kit and software. I have Adobe 1.5 which I (but mostly son) use now and again and although it DO work on W7/64 windoze don't like it! Better run on my last existing XP machine (which is giving me ALL sorts of grief atmo since a hard drive crashed and I have had to start afresh)

Dave
 
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