Buy a mixer or mix off of cake walk ...any suggestions?

[ONEsnowRIDER]

I'm new to recording ...very new. Should I purchase a mixer or use the mixer on cake walk? Got about 300 $ for a mixer, or I already have cake walk 9...

Thanks for the input.

 

[TexRoadkill]

Unless you have also have a multi channel soundcard you won't be able to do much in the way of hardware mixing.

 

[ONEsnowRIDER]

Unless you have also have a multi channel soundcard you won't be able to do much in the way of hardware mixing.

Oh, ya, sorry I've purchased the MOTU 2408.

 

[dachay2tnr]

I'm new to recording ...very new. Should I purchase a mixer or use the mixer on cake walk? Got about 300 $ for a mixer, or I already have cake walk 9...

Thanks for the input.

You're going to need preamps to feed mics into your sound card. A mixer can supply those, plus give you additional versatility. However, once the tracks are recorded, you will use Cakewalk to do your mixing.

My guess is that ultimately you are going to want a mixer AND cakewalk - although for $300 you're not going to get much.

 

[JR#97]

Mixing in cakewalk works just fine. But you might want to get an external mixer control surface. For $300 you can pick up a used digital mixer that can act as both a mixer and a control surface. I use a fostex vm200. It has motorized faders and adat i/o to mate up to my pc. Works like a charm. Beats mouse mixing any day.

 

[Sennheiser]

24 Channel

A little higher than $300 but,
20 Channel

Nice mixer. It's what I use.
M-1516

A digital offering,TMD1000

And another, USB Digital mixer

And those are just TASCAM consoles. There are a lot od SoundCraft, Allen & Heath and others offered in your price range. Well, maybe not the Allen & Heath, but close. Save a few more bucks and buy a nice one.

 

[ONEsnowRIDER]

Mixing in cakewalk works just fine. But you might want to get an external mixer control surface. For $300 you can pick up a used digital mixer that can act as both a mixer and a control surface. I use a fostex vm200. It has motorized faders and adat i/o to mate up to my pc. Works like a charm. Beats mouse mixing any day.

Ya, I was thinking mixing with a mouse would be a pain. I think I'll save a few more hundreds and try and get something a little nicer.

Thanks for the input. I love this site.

 

[gorbyrun]

Plan on using Cakewalk to record and playback, do some tweak volume adjustments, clean up unused parts of tracks, punch in and stuff, but mix the seperate tracks together in the best analog board you can get. Plan on not wanting to do compression or reverb in Cakewalk. Do some searches on the board and you will find opinions on just about every mixer ever made.