Mass A/D Converter?

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moosensquirrel

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Hey, all.

I'm running a mixer into my computer via E-MU 0404 PCI for band recording. We're on the verge of buying a beast of a soundboard with 20 Direct Outs, one per mic preamp. For the most part, I'd like to record each person and instrument by itself, but it gets a little silly for drums if I want to be able to apply reverb and compression to each drum mic during the mastering. I'll have all the preamps, and I already have all the software tools, but my sound card only has two analog inputs.

In short, what's the easiest and cheapest way to convert six or eight separate tracks to digital simultaneously?

I honestly don't need any mixing function, preamps, hard disk writing, nothing except more inputs for my sound card. What would you recommend?
 
MIXING DAMMIT!!! Not mastering.

Sorry - Long freakin' day of people calling me asking me to MASTER THEIR VOCAL TRACKS and such. One after another. I swear, someone must've been playing a joke.

MIXING!!! M-I-X-I-N-G. To Mix. To mix things together - Such as a bunch of individual instrument tracks. Mastering is a completely different process.


Anyway...


There are about 800 different interfaces out there to choose from that have 8-ish inputs. If you already have preamps, MOTU's 24-I/O will give you (Yep, you guessed it) 24-I/O.

Other than that - Compression on every track? Doesn't that maybe seem a little... Oh, forget it...
 
Yup, joke's on you. Now that you know, I'll tell the others to leave it alone. :cool:

Well, no, not compression on every track, but you get the idea. I'd just like to have more options than two channels at once, which is what I've got now.

I've been reading tips on recording drums, about having a mic above and below the snare, and ten you reverse the phase on the bottom on. I've read you can put something hard on the floor to reflect the sound of the snare, like a baking sheet for direct reflections or a few rocks for more dispersed. Other tips say to record with the drum set evenly set between two walls, one to the left and one to the right of the set; then you can put a microphone about six inches from the wall on each side aimed towards the wall and away from the set, to catch a better feel of the room and to provide a lot more detailed stereo image. I can't speak for everyone else, but I love closing my eyes while listening to music and locating each individual sound source. Gives me shivers if done nicely!

But, along with all these tips about micing the drums, they also say that you should compress this and that, and provide specific (delayed) reverb to the various mics. If the snare overpowers the rest if the sound on the wall mics, they need to be compressed. One tip was to mix in a ~55Hz sine gated to the kick to fill out its sound, or to give the snare the fullness of reverb and the attack of without by delaying the start of the reverb by 20ms or so. I've never tried any of these, but it sounds like fun to experiment. :)

Back on subject, what part of cheap and easy do you not understand?!? I looked up the MOTU 24-I/O on their website and was fairly impressed by what could be done, and then I looked up the price on an e-tailer. "Oh, gosh."

I was hoping to aim for $100 - 300, but if it is more than that, I may have to wait. The mixer still needs to be paid for, not to mention the drum mics! Any ideas on a mass A/D converter? Is it worth saving longer for?
 
The 24-I/O is about as cheap and easy as a 24-track conversion tool gets.

But if you're looking for mega-super-unbelievably-cheap-and-don't-really-care-about-quality, just browse 8-channel FireWire converters at GC, MF, Zzounds, etc.

Don't know if any are going to be even close to as low as $300, but there will certainly be plenty to choose from.
 
Before tonight, I thought there were only hard disk recorders for studio pros and those little USB jobs for the cheap electric guitars played by sixteen year old guys with Han Solo haircuts.

But just see what a little research can do!

If I was desperate (x4)

Perfect Concept, Built to Soda-Can Specifications

My Current Soundcard Will Hate Me

Gettin' There

I'm really torn ... because I know that the DAC (or in this case ADC) is so important for the sound, but at the same time ... we're a young band, and we probably won't even stick together forever. Maybe we could use the second option for a demo CD, and either the fourth or your suggestion for an actual album down the road.

I appreciate the help, though.

Does anybody make a DB-25 to PC interface? Gosh.
 
The only thing that's even close to what you're looking for is the FirePod.
 
Well, thanks for the input. It wasn't the answer I wanted, but that doesn't mean it's not the truth.

If anything comes to you that makes you shout 'Eureka!', be sure to let me know. Otherwise, I wish you all the best. :)
 
On the reasonably bright side, the FirePod is really the only thing you'd need in the input chain. Built-in preamps. Certainly not very nice preamps, but arguably cleaner than most "super-budget-friendly" console preamps near that price range. It gets a whole lot of noisy and generally useless (for recording) circuitry out of the chain.
 
You do have a point. Part of me wants to defend whichever mixer we settle on, but the less circuitry involved, the better.

Two questions:

Would the Firepod preamps be cleaner than those on the Mackie Onyx 24-4?

Which $200-400 8 channel Firewire interface would you recommend?
 
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