Help!

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musicman3eq

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Hi.... I am newb here so please bear with me.....

I have an amd 2500xp, 1 gig ddr 400, gf ti4800, audigy player, ata 133 80gb hdd.....

Basically my question is I want to record my band at home.... what do I need to do to my PC to allow me to record multiple microphones at once on to seperate tracks??

I have around £400 to spend (approx $750 USD I'm from the UK).... also I need to get a mixer out of that.... anyone got any recommendations???

thanks in advance,

liam............. :)
 
do you have decent mics to record with? if so, 750 should get you what you need. There are many soundcard options avaiable with muntiple inputs (your audigy don't cut it). but many require preamps, and for that you should get a mixer (you wanted one already anyways). for the mixer i suggest checking out yamaha, they make good stuff. also check out the soundcraft mixers.

for the soundcard check out:
echo layla 3G www.echoaudio.com
delta 1010 www.midiman.com
emu 1820 www.emu.com

other people will have more suggestions for soundcards as well. welcome to the board.
 
musicman. heres a way to save a lot of money.
yamaha mixer(90 dollars), into a multi input sound card(your choice cost ?).
and use powertracks multitrack software that i use from pgmusic.com.
(49 dollars). just try the demo and youll se why its so superb at recording audio (and midi tracks). it works well with multi in sound cards.
lots of powertracks users use delta 1010 sound cards for example.
it will take you through multitracking, mixdown through to doing a cd. peace.
read the user reviews / kudos at the pgmusic.com site on the left hand side.
if you tell me what instruments you play i'll give you other ideas.
 
Minofifa...

The mics I have are shure beta a and akg.... so I think they should do the job....

I also have some behringer 19" rackmount units (compressor, virtualiser and headphone amp)...... I also have behringer eurorack ub802 mixer but I'm not sure that will be adequate.....

Thanks for the advice....

Manning1.....

We will be using a Pearl Export 6 piece Drum kit, Musicman Stingray bass on a trace elliot stack, gibson Les Paul through a marshall amp and a telecaster also through a marshall amp.... we'll need around 8 inputs for the drums and 5 for rest plus vox.... although those 5 will merely be for a guide so they could be put into 1 input....

I think I'm going to need some serious equipment for all this!!!!! :(
 
well if you need that number of inputs you had better also think about your pc.
powertracks will handle the inputs from the sound card. i'm more worried as a computer engineer whether your amd system is set right to handle the number of concurrent recording streams.
for a start if you have one drive. it wont do the job.
so - how many concurrent mics recording AT THE SAME TIME ??
13 ??
 
I will be using inputs to the pc..... i think the Gina 3G looks quite for the price.....

Will my 7400 spin ata 133 HDD be able cope with that??? I will be a pc dedicated to purely recording. I am thinking of using Windows 2000 as my OS although if the hardware and software allows I may even go for Linux 8.1.
 
oh yeah and I was planning to use n-track studios at first because its nice and simple.
 
What manning1 is alluding to is that you have only one hard drive. Adding a second drive just for the audio-data files can improve maximum track count quite a bit.

Eight mics for the drums? I get a great sound with three. A pair of overheads, properly placed, should pick up everything well except for the bass drum. Of course, a lot depends on the drums and the drummer!

I've never tried to record more than 10 tracks at a time on my DAW. Good luck!
 
Oh, and Win 2K should be okay. Linux, of course, is a more efficient OS, but the choices of device drivers and audio software are much more limited.
 
sorry my typing is terrible.... I was intending to use 8 mics at once.....

the kit is a 5 piece and we'd like to have a mike on each tom, one on snare, one hihat, one kick drum and one overhead.....

although we could make do without 2 of the tom mikes....

So i should basically use 2 hard disks..... one for the system and one for the data stream from recording to go to???

And finally will a processor upgrade help?? how about upgrading to a 10,000 RPM Sata drive???

Thanks for the advice everyone I appreciate it!!!!
 
mman. best drum sound i ever heard was in a big studio.
two crown PZM's overhead, and kik and snare triggered via samplers. BUT - the room was great and the drummer great. total ...4 tracks on drums.
yes - two hard drives are good. for a second HD lokk at drives with 8 mb cache.
 
what does this HD look like??? I've been told by a friend that its the next best thing to SCSI.....

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=55454

I think a lot must depend on the mics used as well.... if you have great mics then you can get away with less I would imagine.

Just to recap.... a gina 3g sound card, with my existing pc spec upgraded to include the above hard drive as a second drive should be enough to get 8 inputs recording to eight tracks simultaneously????

Again thanks for all the help.... I'm pretty much a novice at pc recording.
 
raptors are fast hard drives. but if you dont know much about this stuff
i would suggest you get a pc tech to install properly.
by the way i used to use n track. but moved to powertracks which is also very easy to use and offers me much more usefull functionality .
just simple things you will find usefull like a drum machine built into the software, and lots of effects like echo, reverb, chorus.and one usefull feature you will find for your guitar amps which i cant live without as amps are noisy and that is a noise gate built in. after recording an amp track ,
powertracks can be used for subtle noise gating of the amp tracks.
just select the whole track and apply a threshold setting between
-20 to -25 db and youll see what i mean. its very effective.
also built in are usefull effects settings for drums, guitar and bass.
try the powertracks compressor on a bass or drum or vocal track sometime.
this is just an inkling of this softwares power. just try the demo.
and youll see what i mean.
 
powertracks sounds great.... how much more/less simple is than n-track???

I have tried fiddling around with cubase and that seems horribly complex to a newb like me.....

Do you have a recommendation for a mixer as well??? I think you said yamaha earlier.... any particular type??

I should be ok installing the drive I built my current pc myself..... I think its gonna need a mobo upgrade for the raptor though as it wont run SATA.... :(

still its worth it if it allow the band to record great music!!!! :)
 
powertracks can be as simple as you want or as advanced as you want.
it comes with a full video tutorial on cd rom. couldnt be easier for a beginner.
just go through the video tutorials. very easy.
yamaha mg mixer .
if you haver a pc currently just download the demo of powertracks and familiarise yourself. once youve spent some time there are many tricks and pointers i can give you. also notice on the pg site there is on line help.
so you can get replies instantly to questions. you wont find better support than THAT !
 
mman. no need to pull your wallet out till youve familiarised yourself.
just download the demo. then when your happy. pay for it.
thats what i do with each new version befor i pay.
actually to think of it its a no brainer as they offer a unconditional 30 day money back thingy anyway. so you get all the video tutorials up front.
 
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