Just starting home recording

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Metalchild23

New member
Hey whats up? Im new to this forum and new to home recording, i actually havent even bought any equipment yet because im alittle tight on money and want to make sure of what im getting before I get it. All i really have for equipment right now is my computer thats strictly for recording and a Creative Labs Audigy2 Platnium which was given to me. Im going for multi-track recording. I dont have a band i write most of my music. My main instrument and concern is drums but after I lay down drum tracks I also like to write guitar and bass to it and would like to get this all down to some day start a band or form a solo album. Im just learning and I dont expect to have top notch equipment but could someone please guid me to something good? Feel free to message me on AIM besides posting ill be more than happy to talk to anyone. Metalchild23 is my sn also. Thanks alot
-Neil
 
For drums the audigy isn't going to do it. Check out m-audio for inexpensive multichannel cards. You will also need mics and mic preamps (or a mixing board)
 
I was planning on picking up a mixer and mics and all that im just not sure what I need to get all of this to work. Im pretty much asking for maybe a reference to everything I need. I know it sounds like alot but it would really help not so much telling me mics and and software thats a giving just anything else. Sorry if im confusing.
 
There is no easy answer, but this is as close as you're going to get:

If you need someone else to tell you what recording equipment to buy you have NO BUSINESS RECORDING.

Research first. Buy later. It will be cheaper.

Trust me, you don't want *me* to tell you what to get because the cost of the microphones alone will probably make your bank account weep. For starters I record guitar with either a MD421 (350 bucks) or a RE20 (400 bucks) and an AKG 414BULS (700 bucks). Thats over a thousand bucks for just the microphones. :)

As far as a mixer goes, I can't work with anything less than a 24 channel 8 buss anymore. Allen & Heath is a good place to start at 2500 bucks, but a Neotek Elite is so much better... at 13k.

As far as recorders go the HD24XR at around 1500 bucks used is what I have, but I want to upgrade to either a Radar or HDR24/96. Those cost anywhere from 4000 to 17,000 bucks. :eek:

Trust me, spend the next year learning EVERYTHING about recording from books, interning, finding an audio engineer that will show you the ropes, tour a few studios, reading articles on the internet, posting questions here, looking at and comparing equipment of all types.... and in the meantime save as much money as you can.

Then next year you can buy your setup and have the comfort of knowing that you saved a ton of money and actually have some skills to make use of the stuff.

Also, throw away your Musician's Friend catalogs. 99% of the recording equipment in there sucks. Get Sweetwater's catalog (it has some of the good stuff in it mixed in with crap), or browse around Mercenary Audio's website... then you'll see some real recording gear.

Honestly, if you don't feel that your recording gear is making you broke, you're just not trying hard enough.
 
mc. ive posted lots of info in the past year on affordable good sounding solutions covering mics, recording software, sound cards, speakers, pc configuration etc etc.
just search under my name.
then if you have Q's just ask. also post your pc confign in full
so i can make decent suggestions.
peace.
 
Sure, wait a year or two or longer so you can study and learn everything about recording and then on your tight budget save 20k to 30k so you can buy top of the line equipment. Just make sure you don't forget all the songs you are writing since you won't have anything to record them on.....
 
Cloneboy Studio said:
There is no easy answer, but this is as close as you're going to get:

If you need someone else to tell you what recording equipment to buy you have NO BUSINESS RECORDING.

Research first. Buy later. It will be cheaper.

Trust me, you don't want *me* to tell you what to get because the cost of the microphones alone will probably make your bank account weep. For starters I record guitar with either a MD421 (350 bucks) or a RE20 (400 bucks) and an AKG 414BULS (700 bucks). Thats over a thousand bucks for just the microphones. :)

As far as a mixer goes, I can't work with anything less than a 24 channel 8 buss anymore. Allen & Heath is a good place to start at 2500 bucks, but a Neotek Elite is so much better... at 13k.

As far as recorders go the HD24XR at around 1500 bucks used is what I have, but I want to upgrade to either a Radar or HDR24/96. Those cost anywhere from 4000 to 17,000 bucks. :eek:

Trust me, spend the next year learning EVERYTHING about recording from books, interning, finding an audio engineer that will show you the ropes, tour a few studios, reading articles on the internet, posting questions here, looking at and comparing equipment of all types.... and in the meantime save as much money as you can.

Then next year you can buy your setup and have the comfort of knowing that you saved a ton of money and actually have some skills to make use of the stuff.

Also, throw away your Musician's Friend catalogs. 99% of the recording equipment in there sucks. Get Sweetwater's catalog (it has some of the good stuff in it mixed in with crap), or browse around Mercenary Audio's website... then you'll see some real recording gear.

Honestly, if you don't feel that your recording gear is making you broke, you're just not trying hard enough.
Click to expand...


Damn, take it eazy on the man, remember YOU started off somewhere low budget TOO. ;)
 
Carter said:
Damn, take it eazy on the man, remember YOU started off somewhere low budget TOO. ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah in 1988! I also spent about 3000 bucks for a small mixer, 4 track cassette recorder and some microphones--after I'd spent a year researching it. I was 17 at the time.

I didn't get a 'large' setup until 1999.

Also, I never had to ask anyone what to get. Now I asked opinions of people that had specific gear, but by the time I started buying up a real recording setup I knew precisely what was what. For example at the time I avoided Nubus equipped Macs because I knew that was going to be replaced by either USB or Firewire--most likely Firewire on the Mac.
 
Cloneboy Studio said:
Yeah in 1988! I also spent about 3000 bucks for a small mixer, 4 track cassette recorder and some microphones--after I'd spent a year researching it. I was 17 at the time.
Click to expand...

WOW That was the same year I got int the game I was 20. I got a small mixer, Yama mt120 4 track cassette recorder, one microphones and a Yamaha sy85 keyboard Dont remember the total cost except for the sy85 $2000,But I do agree with what you just said in this post. Hows the weather up north? :cool:
 
I have a question since we ARE in the newbie forum...

I have a Lexicon Omega and cannot get the drums tracks to record/work. I am not recording my acoustic drumset. I just want to create them myself to see what it sounds like. :confused: What am I doing wrong?

I just wanna play!
 
Us older guys that started out with 4tracks can remember when there weren't that many choices for gear. There is so much out there that it can get real confusing even to someone who has been around for a while. I have recorded hundreds of songs on casette 4 track and have been using a stand alone digital multitrack for the last three years and I still feel like I'm new to the game. I don't think the original poster wants to make his studio a full time business, I just think he wants a little guidence. That is why we are here isn't it?
 
Metal-

Don't let Cloneboy frighten you. I'm not sure why, but he just doesn't think anyone should record unless they've already learned everything and spent a year's salary!

I, too, started long, long ago. I got out of it for a while and came back a few years ago.

See, 25 years ago, everything cost a fortune! A small mixer was a thousand dollars. Reel-to-reel 8 tracks were several thousand. Home based recording was not much more than a dream.

But, the times have changed and while I agree that it would make a lot of sense for you to do more research before purchasing anything, with the low cost of equipment, there is no reason that you can't get started fairly soon.

As Manning suggested, do some searching on this forum. There is at least one thread everyday asking the same question as you asked. Also, read the homerecording.com site in front of this BBS. Lots of information there.

Cloneboy, I have to disagree with your assessment of the equipment out there. True, the things you work with are superior to most of what we're dealing with, but, this is a HOMErecording forum. Frankly, the poor sonics of his recording environment will likely be far more of a problem and hindrance to getting good quality than his gear. The gear available to the home recordist is light years better than all but the best gear of only a few years ago. It's almost absurd how good the tools we have at our disposal are now.

Ted
 
Thank alot

Thanks alot Manning and Tedluk and everyone else who gave me advise, ill check out the homerecording site and im planning on getting a few books too look over, I hope to start buying alittle after christmas, hopefully some sales and I think ill have some basic knowledge to whats decent, or I hope so anyway. I do have 2 more questions though. What might be dome good books to get into and I do right now have an Audigy 2 Platnium, I cant return it cause I got it for free but do you think its good to use just as a soundcard?

Thanks alot again for the advise, ill bee searching this fourm all night and takeing down some notes im sure it will help out. Ill keep you guys posted with how im making out with things

Neil
 
I use a 'normal' soundcard for my computer sounds. (the windows noises, winamp, realplayer, you know, normal stuff) That way it keeps that garbage out of the 'good' sound cards way. Windows generates some noise so it's really neat to be able to send it someplace out of the way.
 
bruzeviolet said:
..What am I doing wrong?
Click to expand...

Posting in someone elses thread on a different topic. I see you've started another thread. Kudo's to you. :)
 
Well my point is that if you are new to recording--and especially if you are on a budget--you can't afford to buy wrong stuff and sell it at a loss, or spend time mucking with a system that doesn't fit your needs.

Because there are so many ways to record and so much equipment it *IS* confusing for anyone that is new... all the more reason to do some research.

I just can't in good faith recommend a newb a few thousand bucks of equipment that may or may not suit their needs. It's better that they made up their own mind, and the only way to do that is to acquire some K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E.

Maybe I'm too careful myself but I research ANY piece of gear that I buy whether it is a 10,000 dollar mixer or a 50 dollar XLR cable.

I'm not rich enough to buy crap. :)
 
I understand that, Cloneboy, but what your posts generally seem to be saying is that, first, "I want everyone to know just how cool my gear is and how much I spent on it", and second, "Unless you know as much as me and spend as much money as me, you shouldn't be recording so get lost until you know more."

As I pointed out, this is a HOME recording board. If it was 20 years ago, you would have told people to not waste their money on a four-track cassette recorder because you can't make good recordings on them. But that's where you and probably thousands of others started.

Of course he's going to waste some money. We all do. But if he's learning, then it's not really wasted is it?-

For a few hundred dollars, he can buy a stereo soundcard, a small mixer and a couple of basic mics and a pair of small monitors. Sure, it won't sound great, but he'll learn the basics of recording. With those components, he can learn mic placement, track management, instrumentation and orchestration, arranging, how to create a stereo field, mixing, how to apply effects, etc, etc.

If you're really worried about his finances, then you shouldn't tell him to wait a year and learn everything he can and then spend tens of thousands of dollars on the best equipment he can get. Talk about a way to lose money! You start small. You add and replace as you learn. THEN, if you remain interested, you take the big plunge!

If you truly, truly were concerned for his finances and sanity, you'd tell him to forget all about this and take up croquet. ;)

Ted
 
farview. if windows beeps and burps sounds drive you nuts (me too).
just turn them off in the won OS.
peace.
 
Tedluk, that's PRECISELY what I'm saying... but before spending even 1000 bucks (which is what your "cheap noob setup" is going to cost) you should research that and figure it out.

Obviously a rapper will need a different noob setup than a guy into rock.

I think it is important for people to make up their own minds, and not conform to a cookie-cutter basic audio setup.

Sorry you take such offense to me on a personal level, but you read in a lot of stuff that I'm not saying at all.
 
manning1 said:
farview. if windows beeps and burps sounds drive you nuts (me too).
just turn them off in the won OS.
peace.
Click to expand...
It 's not so much the windows noises, it is the hiss that windows just makes all by itself, even when it isn't beeping and burping.
 
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