C
chhogg
New member
I'll start by apologizing, because I am sure there are posts out there that answer each of my questions. Nevertheless, I have not found anything that consolidates all of that information.
I am trying to put together a small home studio to be used primarily for recording demos of rock-based music.
I have an M-Audio Delta 1010LT soundcard that I purchased when refurbished ones were ridiculously cheap, a pair of inexpensive dynamic vocal microphones, and a variety of amplifiers and instruments.
Here are my questions:
1. My plan at the moment is to build a DeMuDi (http://demudi.angola.org) computer, use my M-Audio soundcard, and do my recording, editing, and mixing in one of the free programs Audacity or Aurora. Does anyone have experience comparing these pieces of software to commercial offerings such as Sonar or M-Audio Live 5?
2. The Delta 1010LT has 10 mono inputs. Two of these are XLR jacks with built-in pre-amps, while the other eight are RCA jacks.
2a. To use a dynamic microphone, I should be able to just connect it to one of the XLR jacks on the soundcard and use the built-in pre-amp, right?
2b. To "directly" record an electric instrument, can I use Radio Shack style converters to go from the 1/4" phone jack on the instrument to the RCA jack of the sound card, or does this require a direct box as implied at http://www.homerecording.com/direct.html ?
2c. Why would anyone want to use an outboard mixer, when you could instead have every input saved as a track that can be fine-tuned later?
3. Should I expect to see a significant and important difference between the basic microphones we have and a condenser microphone in the $150 range? Is either one going to actually sound good with a bass?
4. Is there really a good reason to have studio monitors instead of basic computer speakers and headphones, if you are just making demos?
5. Tutorials on this website and elsewhere talk about the use of compressors and other such devices when recording. Is there a reason to not just do all of that in software after the tracks have been recorded?
6. Is there any piece of equipment that would be necessary or useful that I have not mentioned here? I am hoping to take advantage of a store-wide sale on Saturday for anything else we might want to have.
7. I understand that decibels are a base-10 logarithmic scale, and that it generally refers to a baseline of 0dB being the softest sound a person can hear. That doesn't seem to correlate at all with sound pressure levels when recording. It seems as though 0dB in this case refers to the highest SPL that can be represented in the data format, such that all levels you record at are negative. Can someone clear this up?
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and hopefully for your comments as well.
I am trying to put together a small home studio to be used primarily for recording demos of rock-based music.
I have an M-Audio Delta 1010LT soundcard that I purchased when refurbished ones were ridiculously cheap, a pair of inexpensive dynamic vocal microphones, and a variety of amplifiers and instruments.
Here are my questions:
1. My plan at the moment is to build a DeMuDi (http://demudi.angola.org) computer, use my M-Audio soundcard, and do my recording, editing, and mixing in one of the free programs Audacity or Aurora. Does anyone have experience comparing these pieces of software to commercial offerings such as Sonar or M-Audio Live 5?
2. The Delta 1010LT has 10 mono inputs. Two of these are XLR jacks with built-in pre-amps, while the other eight are RCA jacks.
2a. To use a dynamic microphone, I should be able to just connect it to one of the XLR jacks on the soundcard and use the built-in pre-amp, right?
2b. To "directly" record an electric instrument, can I use Radio Shack style converters to go from the 1/4" phone jack on the instrument to the RCA jack of the sound card, or does this require a direct box as implied at http://www.homerecording.com/direct.html ?
2c. Why would anyone want to use an outboard mixer, when you could instead have every input saved as a track that can be fine-tuned later?
3. Should I expect to see a significant and important difference between the basic microphones we have and a condenser microphone in the $150 range? Is either one going to actually sound good with a bass?
4. Is there really a good reason to have studio monitors instead of basic computer speakers and headphones, if you are just making demos?
5. Tutorials on this website and elsewhere talk about the use of compressors and other such devices when recording. Is there a reason to not just do all of that in software after the tracks have been recorded?
6. Is there any piece of equipment that would be necessary or useful that I have not mentioned here? I am hoping to take advantage of a store-wide sale on Saturday for anything else we might want to have.
7. I understand that decibels are a base-10 logarithmic scale, and that it generally refers to a baseline of 0dB being the softest sound a person can hear. That doesn't seem to correlate at all with sound pressure levels when recording. It seems as though 0dB in this case refers to the highest SPL that can be represented in the data format, such that all levels you record at are negative. Can someone clear this up?
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and hopefully for your comments as well.
