Advice on Upgrades

  • Thread starter Thread starter sean_mur88
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sean_mur88

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Hey all, I'm looking to upgrade my "recording studio". Right now my current setup is

Shure SM-58 mic
a pair of cheap joemeek condensor mics (for guitar)

Behringer 8 channel mic w/ 2xlr inputs

my mics and guitar go into the mixer, and the mixer (one channel) out goes into the 1/8" mic jack on my computer

laptop is 1.6ghz with 512MB of RAM, usb and soon to be firewire.

I have about 500 bucks to spend, just want to get a way of recording music at a higher quality and being able to have two mics go in on two different channels, unlike my current method.


2nd question ... my laptop has usb, and I plan to get either a firewire/usb adapter or a firewire card for a camcorder ... is there a performance difference between these two options?

As far as my current quality goes, I have a youtube page at www dot youtube dot com slash seanxmurray ... the "Mr. brightside acoustic cover" was one of my first recordings, and "all I want" is one of my more recent ones, just in case you want to hear how the current setup sounds and tell me that I should learn how to record before spending any more money.

Any advice/criticism is much appreciated, thanks
 
Before I make any suggestions can you describe your mic placements for guitar? Are you using a pop-shield on the vocals?

When you say 500 bucks, what currency? Presumably you mean USD?
 
yeah, sorry ... $500 canadian dollars. no pop filters or shields for vocals. guitar is generally plugged in directly, but when mic'ing it, i usually try an XY configuration around the 12th fret, about 1-2 feet away. no real room treatment, but the room is fairly large with irregular walls, and i have a 3 panel "temporary wall" with i guess what you might call corregated cloth that i use behind the mics.
 
Get a mid priced microphone, like the Rode NT1, and the rest in monitoring.
Some people might kill me for this but you might wanna try the M-Audio or Behringer monitors. They are the only budget monitors I have tried (I have the BX5a and I love them).
Oh, and get yourself a pair of mogami cables.

Edit: I just read you want to record two tracks... A friend just got the Alesis Multimix 8 USB and it works like a charm. You might wanna check it out.
 
Vagodeoz said:
Get a mid priced microphone, like the Rode NT1, and the rest in monitoring.
Some people might kill me for this but you might wanna try the M-Audio or Behringer monitors. They are the only budget monitors I have tried (I have the BX5a and I love them).
Oh, and get yourself a pair of mogami cables.

Edit: I just read you want to record two tracks... A friend just got the Alesis Multimix 8 USB and it works like a charm. You might wanna check it out.
Click to expand...

i will also vouch for m-audio monitors, for the money they are great. i've been using the sp-5b's. just remember that theres a lot going on in the lower frequencies that you wont hear with many low end, smaller monitors.
 
cool, thanks a bunch for the input. i personally thought that my mic was the least weak point ... i thought that once anything ran through my behringer preamps into my 1/8" line in on my computer it would sound like mud anyways. I definately need a set of monitors (currently using my aiwa stereo), and I'm looking into the ones you recommended. I'd still like more opinions if anyone has them, as I was kinda under the impression that some sort of preamp/interface would be a high priority, something with high quality ins and outs so i can get a cleaner recording/monitoring signal.
 
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