Did I screw up or What / Steinburg CI2

[in4amess]

Looking to get started recording some personal acoustic stuff. Meaning vocals and acoustic guitars. Knowing absolutely nothing about recording music. I went to the local Guitar Center looking for guidance on some entry level equipment. After some questions they suggested a Steinburg CI2 unit that uses Cubase AI5 software. The reasoning He gave me made sense but was I led astray? Is this what a beginner needs it seems very complicated?
I don't want to waste time and money on junk.

 

[mattr]

Looks like a reasonable and fairly simple little interface - should be good to get you going with. If you're only planning on recording acoustic stuff then you won't need many inputs (the CI2 has two) and so that might perfectly adequate to keep you going for a long time into the future. So long as the shop's pricing is reasonable, then I would say it was a good suggestion That's not to say that its your only option - there are many other interfaces out there that would suit your needs - but no, you didn't screw up. I would also take a quick look at something like the the M-audio Fast Track Pro.

You looked into mics yet?

 

[Chili]

Looks like it'll do the job for you. There are cheaper units out there that do much the same. This unit has the AI knob for controlling parameters in Cubase. With just one knob, I think it kind of falls short of the intention of having a controller. In fact, I personally don't like controllers and prefer to do everything in software.

To get you started, this unit should work fine. You've got two yamaha mic pres with phantom power and the jacks are neutrik, so that probably means it accepts liine level inputs (kybrds, external mic pre's, etc).

You could have gone cheaper without the AI knob (useless in my opinion- others will disagree), but what you've got will get you started.

Good luck, have fun and welcome to the site.

 

[in4amess]

As far as mic's, I've got some cheap stuff we use with our protable PA system. I'm hoping they'll suffice to get me started. Right now I'm just wanting to get some stuff into the copyright office and help the family learn and grow our music. I just wanted something of good quality that we wouldn't out grow in a year and I could build upon from there.

 

[Jim Lad]

Nice purchase.
You're definitely off on the right foot.
It's all complicated at first.
Have some fun with it and make sure you pop into the Steinberg forum.