External Audio Hardware

[willywonka]

Hi all,
everyone seems to have a wealth of knowledge here, so i thought it might be a good place to ask this question.

My dad is a bass player whos been wanting to do home recording for years! He owns a pretty good touch sensitive MIDI keyboard and of course has a pretty nice bass, and is tearing his hair out at the thought that he's only 1 midi cable and one bass input away from being able to sequence it all on his computer...

Can anyone help with recommending the best audio interface for him? I'm thinking the Audiophile USB... but im not sure if his system's going to handle it!

He's got a dell optiplex (unfortunately, its a low profile case) which is 1.6hgz, 256mb ram, and an 100gb hard drive that i just brought for him so he doesnt have to worry about how many bass riffs he records in WAV format for a decent amount of time!

He's really liking the hypersonic and hypersonic2 VSTs for its cool drum kits and whatnot, from what we've seen of it it seems worth buying! He's also been able to play around with a standalone demo of the Hammond B4... which is apparently crucial to his production needs! Is he going to need cubase to use hypersonic and the B4 VST, or will something a little more toned down (cheaper) do? The Audiophile USB seems like its going to do the trick becuase according to the description its going to provide low latency from his MIDI keyboard, and it looks like its going to be able to have a bass plugged in to it too! But all this ASIO this and USB that has really confused me!

Thanks in advance for any advice it's appreciated!

 

[Tifstorey]

It all depends on your budget to be honest. There are so many out there to choose from.

You have the Presonus Firebox at £250ish which uses firewire to connect to the PC (Providing you have a firewire port on your computer). This is faster than USB so in terms of recording, you will get a much lower latency when recording. http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/5031

We also have the Audiophile which you mention, however, they also have a firewire version which, again, would be a faster option if you can do so. http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/3357

There are many out there but i dont want to go over the top and confuse things. The best thing about the Presonus Firebox is the fact it comes Cubase LE which will let you record both MIDI and Audio in.

It doesn't show the minimum spec requirement for it, but im sure the computer would be ok if your dad was only recording one input at a time.

Hope that helps a little,

Good luck

 

[willywonka]

thanks for that...but unfortnately there is no firewire port available on the computer, and i would presume that there is no 'external' version of a firewire hub or something as such... lol... imagine that... a USB firewire hub...

so the audiophile usb is pants then i assume?

 

[Tifstorey]

Not a problem, FireWire would be better, but there is nothing wrong with USB. The only difference is basically the speed so the Firewire Audiophile is exactly the same as USB audiophile in terms of recording. It's a good bit of kit, i would say go for that.

Thing you need now then is a software programme. As i said in the other post, Cubase is a nice programme, pretty easy to use and can record both MIDI and Audio. I dont know of any free pieces of software out there, although i do know they exist out there, maybe someone else could shed some light onto that..