multi tracking

[lester paul]

i have a thee piece band and a vocalist what is the inexpensive way to get to record us all at the same time ,each with a different track on cakewalk ?i have a peavey mixer and all the mics,ineed to know about soundcard upgrades and the like. this place rocks thanks in advance.

 

[dachay2tnr]

If your Peavey mixer has direct outs or channel inserts for each channel, then you just need a sound card which will handle 4 inputs (of course, that assumes one mic for each instrument, and one for the vocalist - if you want to split the drums to individual tracks, you will need more inputs).

One word of caution, though. Unless you have some method of isolation while recording you will get bleed on all the tracks. Particularly with anything loud - amplified guitars, drums, etc. This can be a problem when you hit a clunker and it gets recorded on all four tracks (of course, I'm sure you guys never do that ).

What we have taken to doing is to record a "rough" mix with all the insturments simultaneous. This is to get the tempo and feel established, and then we re-record each instrument individually afterwards to get the isolation. This helps tremendously when mixing and/or patching mistakes.

 

[garrigus]

Hi Lester,

Check out the cards from aardvark-pro.com, midiman.com, and echoaudio.com. They all provide a variety of good-quality audio interfaces with multiple connections.

Best,
Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - Author of the Cakewalk Power!, Sound Forge Power!, and SONAR Power! books, and Publisher of the DigiFreq music technology newsletter. Learn about more cool music technology tips and techniques, and win free music products by getting a FREE subscription to DigiFreq... go to:
http://www.garrigus.com/

 

[crosstudio]

i use the WaveCenter card with the Tango24 rack mount breakout box from Frontier Design (www.frontierdesign.com). This gives me 8 in/out connected to a single card.

I use the tech21 sans amp on bass, the whirlwind director DI box connected to the external speaker out of my fender - deville amp for guitar, and the keyboard directly into the mixer pre-amp. I use clamp on drum mics (audio technica) so they don't bleed too much, and i use a directx gate (cake's remove silence actually) to get rid of any noise that's going on between the playing of that particular drum piece.

this way, only the drums and vocals are "in the air", and i can re-record them individually if necessary after i get the whole band down.

it's work nicely for me; however, i can still use my 2 hands to count the number of times i've recorded a totally live band so someone who records bands more often may have a better way.