Hallo!

[tommy2toes]

I recently made the decision to buy some gear. I am more a musician then a techy, but I do wish to experiment more with recording my accoustic guitar and mixing it with electronic elements.

This is a sample site of some of my current work:
http://www3.telus.net/tomjbo/

I have read probably about half this site in the last week, and have a better understanding of what I'll need.

My main concern is recording my accoustic guitar and vocals and getting something that is liveable for under $600.

So what I require is the bare essentials, don't really need a mixer as I can do that with software.

I figure something like this will work well with my comp:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MobilePreUSB-main-1.html

So the pre-amp/external sound card is $245.00 (CDN)

Plug that in, and then spend a couple hundred or so on a decent condenser mic

Apex 435 approx. $100 (CDN)

AKG K-141/140 headset approx.$100 (CDN)

Oh and one pop filter for the vocals. $5-10 (CDN)

Am I on the right track here? This world of recording is alot larger then I was previously led to believe. What a strange wonderful culture...

 

[manning1]

a lot of people have had problems with usb.
search under my name for lots of recording equipment tips posted over the last year.

 

[warble]

Welcome to the boards Tommy2.

To get a little more specific with your searching...

On the MobilePre:

http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/search.php?searchid=155627

I haven't seen rave reviews on the mobile pre unit. If possible, you might want to look at something with Firewire or even a PCI audio solution. I don't feel that USB has proven itself a good way to do audio on a PC.

For a condenser that sounds good on guitars and some vox, I'd check into the CAD M179. This is a nice multi-pattern mic (I own one) that somehow works well on whatever I've thrown at it. That'll run you about $150-200 (plus I think CAD is running their rebate on some of their mics until the end of October). You might also search the mic forum here for some other recommendations. The market is pretty saturated with under $200 mics.

Hopefully you can be provided with some tips/opinions that will assist you. Whatever you end up putting together, remember to have fun recording!

 

[tommy2toes]

Hey guys, thanks for the able responses. I have always had my suspicains about USB, I think an internal sound card would be more to my likeing anyways. (less components, and Not the Sound Blaster card as I read Manning1 mention in some other thread).

Looked at the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 and te EMU 0404 (both $135 CDN) in Long and McQuade today, thought about buying that and this AMX-100 - 10 CHANNEL INPUTS COMPACT MIXER:

http://www.altoproaudio.com/html/mixers.php

The mixer is really cheap ($100 CDN) and really could only have 2 outs (if you use L and R seperately). But I don't believe I really need alot of outs, as I am only going to be recording me at any give time.

Any thoughts on these products? Thanks for the advice so far, I had my suspicains about USB and now you guys have confirmed them...

 

[manning1]

at this price level. its difficult to comment.
if the amx has direct outs on the channels you could use thse to go to the sound card input as well.
the audiophile is popular with people here but apparently
the emu range has good convertors. so its pretty early days for user feedback.
search under my name also for comments about installing pci sound cards.
eg.dont put junk in other pci slots if you can help it. just use search for more tips in the past year i posted. mics,monitors,software etc etc.

 

[warble]

If it's between the EMU 404 and the 2496, I'd go with the 2496. I owned one previously and was pleased with the sound. Good things are said about it in here too.

To get the better converters on the new EMU products, you'd have to move up to a 1212m or 1820m. These new models have been getting some decent reviews and scoring well for sound quality - due in big part to the converters they are using. It's pretty early in the game though on these - I'd personally wait and let this product mature a little and let them get the drivers solid.

As Manning stated, if you go PCI try to keep the slots clear. I have my Echo sound card plugged into one PCI slot, and the other ones are empty. You could easily run into resource problems if you have other PCI devices. I'll stop before I get to technical

 

[tommy2toes]

Well that is a bit of a worry to me then, as my onboard LAN card went a little while ago and I installed a ethernet card into one of the PCI slots, my CPU is really fast though, a P4, and I guess if I run into resource problems I could always disconnect the ethernet cable when recording...(?)

 

[warble]

I have a network here too, but have a built-in lan port on my motherboard. I did have a LAN card in a PCI slot about a year ago, and it didn't seem to cause any problems (I was using Cakewalk then). Main thing is to get the PCI card it's own IRQ# - some motherboards, including mine, will assign a unique IRQ# to a card in PCI slot 3. I believe slots 2 and 5 share IRQ's with other devices.

You could certainly check your system configuration and see what's going on with IRQ's, etc. through the control panel.

 

[tommy2toes]

I just bought the Audiophile 2496 and it all seems to be fine.

I have been looking at better mixers too, but the more I look the more I think to myself do I really need all those inputs? I really only want to record me and my guitar and currently have no use for more then 1 or maybe 2 inputs. Maybe instead of buying a mixer I should focus more on a half decent pre-amp and mic, I mean why confuse myself with all this other analog stuff when I can just mix and record multiple tracks on my CPU. What the heck do I need a mixer for?

Less is more, yeah. What do you guys think? I am a newbie, 1 or 2 channels to record into should be sufficent, and the card actually has 4 ins...

 

[tommy2toes]

I think I know what manning1's response to this will be, after reading alot of threads on this site he will post something like

search under my name also for comments about selecting a good pre-amp and microphone, I have made plenty of good suggestions on here, etc etc

LOL!!

 

[warble]

There are certainly more opinions/advice around here than one man's...that's for sure.

The Audiophile has two RCA inputs. If you have a mixer already that you can output to the Audiophile, you should be OK. Not exactly sure what you're doing (I see you mentioned getting a mixer). A decent pre-amp and mic would definitely be a good choice. M-audio's DMP3 is a decent 2-channel pre-amp.

 

[tommy2toes]

That is the pre-amp I was thinking about, I figure a 2-channel pre amp is the best solution for someone in my situation as I don't really care to have a mixer...