I'm a newbie!! - need help :-D

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Fox

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Well I am thus far more or less a complete new-comer to the wonderful world of recording. (I'm coming at this as a drummer, so have some sympathy :-). I've read Recording for Musicians for Dummies, a couple of mic' technique books, and I'm starting to read Yamaha's sound reinforcement handbook. This is just enough to tell me that I'm in way over my head.

I want to get into a system that will let me quickly (and hopefully relatively inexpensively) dive right into recording, and will be expandible.

I want first to record myself on drums, on a fairly large kit (7 piece, and assorted cymbals, etc.), and later hope to track bands live, so having lots of tracks available is a real issue to me.

What are the best options I have in terms of mixers/recorders? Effect processors? What pre-amps are good for recording drums?Computer based? Standalone? Cables? What do I need?

Thanks in advance!
 
i would think computer based makes alot of sense if you already have a decent system to start...this takes care of relatively cheap and expandible

a mixer is a must if you are thinking of recording live drums...most around here would most likely give the nod to a mackie...this also gives you very usable preamps for those drums...

if you go the pc route (or mac) you'll have to get an audio card with some type of break-out box or interface...this will be partly driven to how many channels you want to record at once...some cards have as little as two inputs, some as many as 8...aardvark Q10 and the delta card have 8 in's i think...

download ntracks from fasoft.com to get an idea of what a basic computer based system will look like...it's free....

check out other multitrack software by looking to see who offers free trial downloads..(i'm currently trying cool edit pro from syntrillium.com...personally i like it alot)

i would say put effects on the back burner until you get up and going...

just some thoughts...i'm a newbie myself, so take all this with a grain of salt...hopefully others will help out...

folks around here are very helpful...
 
cheap recording

hey.. i know wher ur comin from... i bought a nice behringer mixer... good for the buck...300 dollars.. 8 mic pres... and they may not be the best... but nady has cheap mic deals... if ur poor like me.. then consider them... and sound cards.... well m audio makes good ones... cool edit pro is a easy program to start on... good luck... my AIM sn is L2b2c if u have ?s
 
Thanks for the helpful/quick replies. My question is - is 8 tracks going to do it? If I individually mic' my toms - that's 5 mic's, plus a bass mic', a snare mic', maybe a hi-hat mic', and an a-b or x-y pair of overheads for cymbals, that's already 8 or 10 mic's. Would I just sub-mix these track together? (don't really understand that concept, could someone explain how this works? :-)

My current comp is a Dell Dimension 8200 with 512 MB of ram. Would this cut it? What kind of sound cards are good? Would I pick up another hard-drive for recording?
 
as per micing drums...

hit the search button and type in "micing drums" select "in title" and you will find a ton of info on this....if i knew the answer i'd tell ya...

you can try a similar thing with your other questions as well...there is SO much information from pasts posts that may be helpful...

your pc should be good to go...you'll need to check what version of windows you are running when you start to look at software...

sound card...lots of choices...see what folks around here say about the delta 1010 or the aardvark...just a place to start

also check out the computer recording/soundcard forum on this board...try a search for "best soundcard" or something like that...
 
I think you'll find that most engineers don't use that many mics on drums. You get a lot of phase cancellations caused by the sound hitting all of those different mics at slightly different times.

I would think in terms of a mic for kick....one for the snare.....probably a hi-hat mic and then a stereo pair to catch the toms and the cymbals and then another one or two for spot problems. Actually, personally, I use four...a kick, a snare and a stereo pair. You have to experiment with placement but the stereo pair are going to pick up everything and you can get them placed where it's balanced.

Welcome to this money-eating hobby.
 
Yeah I agree with the Ltn. If you were in a live situation with a venue of 20,000. Then yes use 10 mics. To record the drums, find a good room, set them up in the room, tune them so that they sound really good to you without adjusting tonality after you have recorded, and use 3-4 mics. Bass, snare, overhead. Or you can even get away with micing the room with one or two good mics.
 
What's your budget?
I can't get under 7 mics for an average drum kit but that's neither here nor there.
 
Insufficient budget data, dude. You are going in several directions at once, and some are in conflict You want to record your drums, but live bands also. Expandability comes with a PC, but not portability. Sounds to me like you should start with a high end standalone, but you want cheap. Reality check time here. Roland VS 1824CD, which I use, now available at GC for $1600. Then you add a few channels of more dedicated pre for critical vox and acoustic tracks, then a bunch of mics, stands, cables, headphones, monitors, power conditioner, and you're still looking at 5 grand or so. If you can do that, fine. Otherwise, you have to think smaller, because you can't expand a standalone, and moving a PC is a pain. Laptops generally don't have the balls for it, unless you got a $5000 laptop, so you've come full circle. If you've got the acoustic space in your studio to record a live band, congratulations. Get a good digital mixer and ProTools, a good mic preamp and a bunch of mics. Any way you slice it, what you want to do won't come cheap, if you want to do it well at all.-Richie
 
Richard Monroe said:
Insufficient budget data, dude. You are going in several directions at once, and some are in conflict You want to record your drums, but live bands also. Expandability comes with a PC, but not portability. Sounds to me like you should start with a high end standalone, but you want cheap. Reality check time here. Roland VS 1824CD, which I use, now available at GC for $1600. Then you add a few channels of more dedicated pre for critical vox and acoustic tracks, then a bunch of mics, stands, cables, headphones, monitors, power conditioner, and you're still looking at 5 grand or so. If you can do that, fine.
Click to expand...

I guess the reason it's coming off so confused is because I'm not really sure which direction the best one is. Portability is definitely not a requirement for me. I suppose I'm hoping to spend no more than 3-4 grand on my recording set-up (not including mic' costs). The two biggest things that I'm looking for, than, are live-tracking ability and expandability. Does this help clear things up at all?
 
My requirements were simular to yours. I went with a mixer and an HD24. Couple that with a computer and it's a VERY powerful system.
 
system options

Goin with trakrat...a mixer and a multitrack recorder of some sort (HDR24 and the like) would be a best bet, add in your computer with an interface card for the recorder and incredible editing options. THe multitrack units are the best for you i think, reliable, lots of channels, and easily expandable. a computer on its own is great but to record 48 tracks at once would kill my pc. however, using the pc for editing and effects will be valuable because effects plugins are more economical, and editing on those HDR units is a bitch! Good luck on your quest for large and cheap
 
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