Another starter recording thread

[pyrohaz]

Hey guys, im in need of total help to find me a cheapo usb interface!

Unfortunately, im a cheap as guy and have spent all my money in electronics (my first major profession, some electronic equipment is F*ckin' pricey!) and my budget is <£180

Im looking to record a few local bands for a proper cheapo price to get some easy money! (No, im not expecting to churn out some Abbey Road recordings, but I enjoy recording and am studying music tech at this current moment in time.) So far, i've been looking at:

Tascam US800 - £199, a tad over my budget really :/
Alesis Multimix 8 USB 2.0 £189 still a tad over but closer lol

I'm looking for ATLEAST 6 inputs to I can get some tasty drum recordings up with panning capacilities etc. My normal setup for recording drums is: Snare, kick, XY pair of overheads and SOMETIMES a single tom mic between the high and mid tom (depending on whether there is a mid tom). Otherwise, when recording other instruments like guitar, I normally go for 2 mics and a DI so thats 3 channels.

Obviously, I wouldn't simultaneously be recording all of these at the same time but I would need enough tracks for the drums.

I'd be recording straight onto my laptop into Reaper (its an amazing piece of software! I could probably say its starting to grow on me over Logic [which we have in college]).

Laptop Spec:
Emachines E640
AMD Phenom N830 x3 2.1Ghz
3gb DDR3 PC3-10600 RAM
Radeon HD4250 graphics
Seagate 5400.6 SATA 3GB/s 250gb HDD 8MB cache 5400RPM HDD
Fujitsu MHY2120BH 120GB USB Backup Hard drive
Medion 500GB USB 2.0 Secondary Backup Hard drive

I hope thats good enough spec for some recordings lol i'd make sure to back up constantly to ensure no lost data!

Cheers!

 

[evenmix]

Behringer U-CONTROL UCA202 USB-Audio Interface this interface sounds suprisingly good and is under 30 us dollars .the lexicon alpha is better {not great } priced at around 80 us dollars

 

[pyrohaz]

I thought that them 2 interfaces couldn't simultaneously record more than 2 channels at once? I would like atleast 6 so I could record a drum kit lol cheers though

 

[atticproject]

the Tascam your looking at is ok... the preamps arent very good on the tascam i had mine is quite old now tho 16in 16 out thing.... the best on a budget is something like M-Audio Delta 1010LT (£149) if you have a pc desktop as the latency is very good and you cant beat pci connections for speed. If you only have the laptop its a bit sticky place to be... they arent that great for studio work on the whole. If i was gonna spend £200 on the us-800 id just get another £66 quid out of the bank and get the US-1800 with 14 inputs as lets face it if your gonna record drums you are going to want more than 6 channels. There is nothing worse than spendin so much and a few weeks later wishing you got the next best thing lol.

 

[pyrohaz]

Hmm, that sounds like a plan, im thinking of the US1800 now then its only a bit more which isn't bad thanks a lot lol for future reference, can you point me towards some cheapo preamps? I was looking for a rack mountable unit with atleast 6 pre's in for a pretty cheapo price. I don't really know where to start searching!

Cheers