looking to start a home studio; need advice

[no-sleep]

I'm looking to start a home studio... Well I will be getting a Mac, but currently have a PC. So all my concerns about equipment are geared towards Mac but would like them to work with my PC also.

I want to record vocals, guitar, drums...
I want to be able to record them all to their seperate tracks, vocals on one track, guitar on one truck, drums on another track...

How will I be able to do this right?
I'm looking at the Mackie 1402 for a mixer, I need it mostly for the drums, but it seems like it will serve me well for vocals/guitar and later on.

It comes with 6 mic inputs with their own preamps, so if I have 4 inputs dedicated to mic'ing drums and 1 for vocals and 1 for guitar... Is there anyway to output all 6 inputs to their own track?

What other equipment do I need?
Am I thinking straight here?

 

[NYMorningstar]

Hey no-sleep, welcome to the BBS.

What you might want to do is research this BBS and decide for yourself. There are extensive variables involved in making a decision on what's right for you and this question has been asked and answered hundreds of times here. If you don't have the time to do your own research then you need to be more informative about yourself to get a good answer like telling how much experience you have and how much money. It doesn't make sense to spend all your money on a piece of equipment that you don't know how to use or would never benefit from. Best advice is to take your time and read, read and read somemore. G/L

 

[Jeyan]

morningstar is right, do your research and do your math, I think Protools or Motu would be nice to have with a mac. Little expensive but worth the money.

 

[Jeyan]

morningstar is right, do your research and do your math, I think Protools or Motu would be nice to have with a mac. Little expensive but worth the money.

 

[jdier]

Reading these pages is a great place to start, but if you are going to post questions you need to give a little more info. Do you want to become a famous engineer who records the stars at your house and use this system for the next #1 hit single, or are you looking to make some respectable demos for yourself and your band?

The other thing you may want to share is why you are getting an apple. I do not want to imply that it is bad to get one, but from your post you almost make it sound like you are getting one, even though you have never had one before, just so you can do music. Well, you can do music on a PC as well.

One key will be what sound card do you want to buy (which one will do what you want with the quality you want - think # of simultanous inputs and # of outputs, then think about quality which is measured in KHz - 96 KHz is very good, many home recording people seem to use 48KHz)

The next key will be the software you want to run to do the tracking and mixing. I am not a good source for info since I only use SonarXL. My Q10 came with a lower version of it which I upgraded to the top of the line version for $200. For the record, it works well for what I do.

I had an interest in building a home studio and I wound up buying a nice PC from www.advanceddesignky.com and then putting two Aardvark Q10's in it.

This set up allows me to record 16 tracks at once and do all of my mixing/editing inside the computer with no need for a mixer like the mackie (since the Q10 has built in preamps and phantom power for mics.)

I came to my decision based on a few things: 1. I wanted to stay PC if possible since I was already familar with PC's. 2. I wanted to buy as few pieces of gear as possible and the Q10 eliminated the need for external mixers and preamps, and, with the inclusion of Sonar I had enough basic effects to get me started. 3. Cost, The Q10's were about $700 each and the PC cost about what a PC costs. 4. I bought from ADK because they were a lot of help in explaining things that I did/did not need to get started. They also preloaded all of the software (which is no big deal) and tested it to make sure it worked right.

One other thing that you should give some thought to is microphones. They can be a large portion of the money you spend depending on what you want to do.

I would suggest starting with some standard mics like 3 shure sm57's, then pick a mic for the kick drum, and then look at a vocal mic.

Just some thoughts. If you want any more info from me, let me know.