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Piano Recorder

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I’ve never done any recording. My son has been taking piano for five years and has become reasonably accomplished. He’s in a piano club and I want to record him and some of his friends performing their pieces and save to WAV on CDs. The recording is for family mementos. He plays a parlor grand (6’4”) in a reasonably acoustically neutral living room (by which I mean only that it is neither an overly bright nor overly absorptive environment (it does, of course, have parallel walls etc.). He plays classical music exclusively and the instrument is a mellow European piano.

My inclination is to think recording directly to a computer may be my best bet. The computer I would use is a 2+ GHz pentium 4 with a 120 GB and a 160 GB hard drive using XP Home (Audigy II sound card). In reading around, I get the impression I should probably use 2 small diaphragm condenser mics to record a grand piano. The equipment that I have seen discussed that seems to make sense would be a choice between Tascam US-122, Lexicon Omega Studio, and DigiDesign Mbox, and some of the mics that appear they might be reasonable choices are Marshall MXL 603, Studio Projects C4, and AT 3032.
As between these, if I were to buy something now without any further input, I think I would get the Lexicon and 2 Marshalls, a couple of mic stands and some cables. I would like to keep my budget under $1,000.

I’m looking for advice and ideas from those who know more about this than I do (that means just about anyone). Specifically, the Marshalls are about half the cost of the other mics. Would a totally inexperienced but reasonably careful person doing what I am trying to do get much benefit from the more expensive mics? Do I need a bunch of stuff I don’t know about? Is the software that comes with these computer input devices (the Tascam US-122, Lexicon Omega Studio, or DigiDesign Mbox—or other you might suggest) adequate, or will I really need something more, and is the learning curve of any one of them significantly easier than the others (recognizing that the more flexible software is, generally the steeper the learning curve—but I’m not sure I need a lot of flexibilty). All thoughts greatly appreciated.
 
Rent vs. Purchase

You shoiuld probably consider renting top notch mics as opposed to buying. Mics are the most important part of the chain. You're not stuck with someone else's opinion . You can experiment and find what you like and then buy, if you find that recording is your calling! ;)
 
Piano Recorder said:
He’s in a piano club and I want to record him and some of his friends performing their pieces and save to WAV on CDs.
Click to expand...

You don't want to save .wav files on CD, you want to burn a standard redbook audio CD (.cda format). Any burning software will do this, but make sure you are using the audio CD feature and not the data CD feature. That way you will ensure that the CD will play on most if not all CD players.
 
The hardest thing to mic (and get a good sound) is a piano. Not to discourage you, but it will take some trial and error at first. You sound like you are doing some great research on the equipment so my best advice is to get started. You will run into complications all the time, but in this situation that's how you learn. You are on the right track or maybe it's the left track?
 
Thanks for the replies. I'm wondering what I have missed--what I need for the most basic starting setup that I don't know about in addition to, as I mentioned above:

As between these, if I were to buy something now without any further input, I think I would get the Lexicon and 2 Marshalls, a couple of mic stands and some cables. I would like to keep my budget under $1,000.​

Do y'all think I'm making any serious mistakes here?
 
Piano Recorder said:
Thanks for the replies. I'm wondering what I have missed--what I need for the most basic starting setup that I don't know about in addition to, as I mentioned above:

As between these, if I were to buy something now without any further input, I think I would get the Lexicon and 2 Marshalls, a couple of mic stands and some cables. I would like to keep my budget under $1,000.​

Do y'all think I'm making any serious mistakes here?
Click to expand...

Just to throw a wrench into things, I would not buy the Lexicon based on their past history with sound cards. I purchased their Core2 card a few years ago and was very frustrated by their lack of support and knowledge of the product. I had all kinds of problems with drivers and then they discontinued it and the users were left high and dry.

Lexicon makes arguably among the very finest reverbs on the market, but their expertise is NOT in the sound card arena. To be fair, I have no direct knowledge of the new product, but I would think twice before using them. My guess is that this is not a product that they actually manufacture, but probably something that is OEM'd for them by someone else and they put their name on it. More often than not, this can lead to difficulties later on.

Personally, I wouldn't go the Protools route either. I don't like being locked into a particular hardware/software combination, but that might not matter to you in your application.

In the budget range, I would consider the new E-mu cards and/or M-Audio's products.

What has been said about microphones is certainly true- they are a vital part of the recording chain. Get the best you can afford. It's hard for anyone to tell you excatly which ones will work best in a given situation, on a given piano, with a given preamp, in a given space without experimenting. Some of the better music stores will let you demo mics before you buy. If that's a possibility, I would certainly suggest you do that.

No mention was made of any monitoring system. This, too, is important, but investing money in a good pair of powered monitors might blow your budget out of the water. Still, without decent monitoring capabilities, you won't be able to tell whether what you're recording sounds good or not.

If it were me, I'd consider something like the E-mu 1212M, a DMP3 preamp and a pair of active speakers like the KRK RP5's or maybe the M-Audio LX4 2.1 system. That would leave you somewhere around $400.00 for microphones and cables and such. I've never tried micing a piano (well, not for 30 years anyway) so I don't feel qualified to make suggestions there, but one microphone that comes to mind as being a really top-quality contender would be the Rode NT1-A which was voted as being the best microphone AT ANY PRICE a couple of years ago! Maybe someone else could offer some input on how they are for piano.

The problems with the Marshall's and all the other inexpensive microphones out there right now is quality control. All of these mics are coming out of China and there is a wide variance in results even within a given model. Marshall seems to have a better track record on this than some of the others out there, but I'd say it's still somewhat of a crapshoot. That and the fact that microphones are generally not returnable can make for a dicey situation. At the very least, I would recommend that if you get any of the low cost mics, be sure to test them in store, on a piano if possible.

If you go this route, then you will need some software, but there are a number of reasonably priced packages out there that would do a great job such as Cakewalk Home Studio, N-Tracks, Audacity (free!), or PG Music's Power Tracks. Depending what combination of software/microphone/speaker, you should be within your budget.

One man's opinion. But, one of the great things these days is that you can get so much for so little now!

Good luck!

Ted
 
just an idea to consider which will cost as little as possible.
consider a maya sound card from tracertek.com. they are pretty new so not a lot of user feedback. the specs look good. and only 100 bucks and does 24 bit.
for a little budget mixer i tried recently for a friend a little alto s series.
i was quite surprised at how nice sounding it was. i think about 120 bucks.
for mics i keep on hearing the mca are pretty good condensers for 60 bucks.
for software i use powertracks from pgmusic.com and love it.
only 29 bucks and you can do 48 tracks plus mix down to a cd.
so in total comes to about 310 bucks total. then you could also rent a hi end crown pzm mic as well to supplement the condenser if you wish.
ive heard some recordings done with the crowns on piano and been very impressed. a less costly alternative might be to find on ebay sometime a used shack pzm for 45 bucks or so. ive also been impressed with some recordings done with these. but one really needs to know and work on mic positioning.
just some ideas to consider.
 
This is crossposted in the 'Other Equipment...' forum.

PianoRecorder - see my detailed response there.

And next time, please post only in a single forum.
 
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