At the risk of sounding like an idiot

[satchmo]

Oky doky.

Here's where I'm at and what I want to do.

Wanting to record my band for some decent sounding demos to shop around for gigs. We're kind of Radioheadish mixed in with a little folk, classic rock, and everything else.

So distorted guitars (tube distortion not digital), acoustic guitar, drums, bass and vocals.

Here's what I've got in terms of equipment.

Mixing board = Tascam M-1508
Digital Recorder = Tascam DA-88 or Adat (can't remember which model)
Mics = SP B1, Seinheisser Drum kit mics, SM 57, SM 58, Audio Technica vocal mic.

I've got a little Rolls phantom power supply for the condensors.

Now here's the question. What else am I going to need to get a decent sound (besides decent musicians of course). Budget is extremely limited. The pres on the board are sounding ok. Should I get an outboard reverb unit? compressor?

What do you guys recommend? I'm not looking for studio quality sound here, just something that will sound better than the one mic in a room takes we currently have. We'll be tracking all parts separately onto the 8-track machine.

Satch

 

[lomarrius]

Honestly, if it was me, I would try to buy a soundcard for your computer that has at least 4 or 8 inputs. You can get them surprisingly cheaply (maybe a delta 44) on ebay. Even with Cooledit or N-track, you can add reverb, or get various reverb plugins.

It might turn out more expensive if you have to buy everything upfront, but I found that in the long run, it turns out to be cheaper to record on software, because with recording on hardware the way that you are doing, it seems you "always" need something else to complete your setup. The way, I'm running, I'll show you what I have:

-Logic Audio Platinum (it was about on sale $500 canadian I think at the time)

-Dell P-4 2.8 Dimension 4700 (just bought this computer for $973 with flat screen, printer and a bunch of cool upgrades like serial hard drive and PCI-E vid card)

-Aardvark Q10 (8 audio inputs with preamps on every channel and phantom power on 4 channels) It was $750 used.

Of course, I also have a set of mics like yourself...a selection of shures, a set of drum mics, and a studio condensor.

As you can see, all in all to set myself up for software recording, it was about $2300 Canadian, which is (converting) $1900 in American funds.

A nice reverb plugin could be anywhere from freeware to a few hundred depending on what you want for sound.

 

[Rokket]

Which "8 Track machine" do you have? Like lomarrius said, mixing on the PC will most likely give you the results you want. Software costs anywhere from $1000.00 US all the way down to FREE, which is a good thing. If your 8 track is digital, you're half-way there. A good sound-card is necessary if you want to track straight to your pc through your mixer, but not if you have a digital multitracker with usb...
So again, which machine do you have?

 

[satchmo]

I have a DA-88 and the drummer's got an ADAT....