My recording rig ok ?

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mikeote1

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Hi

I need to Record 18 tracks Live to PC While Running 4 VST's and vocal effects, how does this rig sound ?

Desk:
Phonic Helix 24MKII Firewire.

PC:
Hyper 400W PSU

ASUS P5KC Motherboard

2 X 250 gig Hard Drives Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (2 fast hard drives as one for my operating system tasks and one for recording to).

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400

G.Skill 4GB F2-8000CL5D-4GBPQ DDR2-1000 RAM

Sound Card: Have not decided yet, what do you recommend for this ?

Texas Instruments Firewire PCI card.

Does that PC rig look up to it ?
 
Speakers: Have not decided yet, what do you recommend for amplying vocals and keyboards in a 7meters X 4 meters room with no sound proofing and Drums / Guitar / Bass playing at the same time ?

Power amp: Not decided yet, which would you recommend for above situation ?

METHOD:

13 recording mics into Phonic Mixer
4 inputs from midi/PC VST keyboards to Mixer
1 Vocal input to Mixer

Live Vocal Effects get processed by onboard 40bit Mixer effects

Output of Vocals/keys group from mixer to Power amp - speakers.

Recording Mics + Keys/Vocal data goes from Mixer to PC through Firewire and recorded.
 
Summary:
Does the gear / method sound ok ? Any Suggestions ?

Which sound card should I get for this ? (needs to be able to process the info and have 4 midi keyboards coming out)

Which Speakers to amplify vocals / keys ? (7X4 meter none soundproofed room, drums / guitar / bass playing )

Which Power amp ?

Thanks in advance for your help !

Mike

(I had to split my post into 3 as it won't let me post it otherwise, says page cannot be found...)
 
Well, I can't really talk about the recording stuff (yes, lol at the noob :P) but i can say taht that comp is almost perfect, apart from the PSU, you should look at the Corsair hx-520, as its one of the most reliable psu's on the market :D
 
Too many variables in this question to frame an intelligent answer. I do have a few observations, though.

1. Why so many tracks simultaneously? That may sound like a great idea, but you are taking on one hell of a lot of work - a lot more than you may realize.

2. It sounds as if you are presently at ground zero - my suggestion is not to tackle a huge project until you have plenty of hours under your belt, at which time you can answer most of these questions yourself. Start with something manageable.

3. It is a good idea to have the hottest computer you can afford. I echo the recommendation for Corsair RAM; it's what I use in my DAW as well and I chose it for the same reason Jonty recommended it.

4. Lose the Phonic board. It is hard to imagine a brand that will undercut Behringer on pricing and still deliver something that actually works. When you play this hard on low end pricing, you'll end up very disappointed. If you really need lots of simultaneous channels to record, spring for a Mackie Onyx mixer with a firewire board - 16 channels for about $1800. Or if you'll not be doing live sound, skip the mixer and look at the Mackie Onyx 1200F interface at about $ 1700.

If this is too expensive, then adjust your expectations and go for more modest I/O. It is far better to pay for better quality and fewer channels than the other way around.
 
Yea, to kind of second what treeline said, what you are trying to do is pretty advanced. You might want to work up to that. I have a remote recording rig where I record 8 tracks at once with no VST's and it took a little trial and error to get the connections (physical) and line level issues squared away. It is pretty involved going into a new place and finding a way to record 8 tracks out of their board using direct outs or busses etc. Not sure if you going to record off the board, or set up 18 mics, but either way is going to be a big production.

I guess what I am getting at, is that you might want to experiment with a smaller set up first...but one that can be expanded.
 
Thanks for the replies guys.

I've already ordered the Phonic Desk, have you used Phonic desks before ?

I'm very probably not going to do live sound with this so can be very carefull with it at home to stop it from falling apart, as i've heard a bit about bad build quality.

I'll let you know how the Phonic performs.

I've decided i'll see how recording goes into my laptop before I order that desktop.

Laptop is a Dell Vostro1000 AMD Turion 64X 1.8GHZ dual core with 2 gigs of DDR2 ram (533mhz) and recording to 500Gig 16MB cache USB2.0 hard drive, I gotta get a TI chipset firewire express card for it, (any one know one?).

Minimum amount of tracks I can live with is 15, 4 for seperate midi keyboards, 1 guitar, 1 bass, 1 vocals, 8 for drums.

Any ideas on which speakers / power amp to get for that loud small unsoundproofed playing environment ?

Cheers
Mike
 
mikeote said:
Firewire interface / TI chipset
Click to expand...

Here ya go. I've had good experience with newegg. Quick shipping.

Newegg.com

mikeote said:
Any ideas on which speakers / power amp to get for that loud small unsoundproofed playing environment ?

Cheers
Mike
Click to expand...

For studio monitors, try powered monitors - they work, they're very simple and the amps are matched to the speakers. Look at M-Audio or Event powered monitors. Look at the Behringer Truths as well (again look at the active monitors with their own amps). Behringer Truth 8" monitors have a decent reputation as starter units; they did much better than expected in blind tests a few years ago and have generated respect that the mixers don't have. An 8" monitor will give you better bottom end than a smaller unit and seems to be about the size needed to hear everything. I have Event TR5 units and love them - except - that they don't have enough low end. In retrospect I should have bought the bigger units.
 
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Thanks again for your great reply Treeline.

What i've read about the monitors you've suggested is that they are very good for basing a mix on as they reproduce the mix very truthfully. Though I think i'm going to use a decent set of headphones for mixing, as they are cheaper, any suggestions?

I need good live speakers, are the 8" Behringer Truths and Event TR8's the best bang for the buck at producing a powerfull and clear reproduction of live vocals & keyboards ? With Drums/Guitar/Bass being played very loud in a 7 meters X 4 meters unsoundproofed room ? The live speakers I've looked at seem to be larger, 12-15", is 8" enough for the situation above ?

Phonic recommended (ofcourse they would recommend Phonic), IMP15 speakers and a MAX2500 Power amplifier, how do they sound ?

I'll make a new thread named along the lines of:

Best bang for buck Live speakers in extreme conditions ?

So those who know alot about speakers will check it out.

Cheers
Mike
 
I can speak with some experience about the Phonic Boards.

I was using an Maudio Delta 1010 as my soundcard and wanted more inputs and also wanted to be able to have a more portable setup that I could record live shows with and still have seperate tracks.

I did some searching and found the Phonic Helix 24 MKII. I have owned it for a few weeks and I am loving it. 16 mic preamps and an easy to use firewire interface. I have used it both in the studio connected to my DAW and in live situations with a laptop. It has the feel of an analog interface and it still has enough inputs to get the job done.

Lets face it live recording aside it was fairly easy to use more than 8 mics on a drum kit. now I have the ability to record them all at once on seperate audion channels.

And even at its modest price it does something pretty cool that the Mackie boards cannot even at double the price. It has switches for each channel that let me select wether or not I want the signal for each channel to get recorded pre/post EQ.

There are pros and cons for both but I love that I have the option to do it either way.

For the money in my opinion there really is no comparison.
 
probestyle said:
And even at its modest price it does something pretty cool that the Mackie boards cannot even at double the price. It has switches for each channel that let me select wether or not I want the signal for each channel to get recorded pre/post EQ.
Click to expand...
what is the overall sound quality like?? what does the EQ sound like?? if its a decent sounding EQ and you can confidently "commit" your tracks in POST - then that would save a lot of processing power in the mix I geuss, not having to re-EQ at mixdown?? Pretty hard to guage at most live venues/bandroom situations and probably better to record in PRE and then make the EQ decisions later at mixdown time.

Keen to actually hear one of these for myself as they sound like great value and there are some decent reviews around in mags and forums..

cheers
 
I like the sound quality. In my opinion the preamps are pretty transparent. I do not notice noise on them. As far as the EQ. . . There are definately pros and CONS to recording PRE and POST. I leave the EQ switches set so that I record POST Eq. I do this because I can monitor the MICs in the control room while I am setting levels and such and if needed I can do small tweaks at that time. . . .but I still always have the option of running a flat EQ on the board and doing everything POST.

There are those out there that would never run an EQ on a track while they are recording and others that will swear by it.

I like having the option to do it both ways as the situation demands.
 
mikeote said:
Thanks again for your great reply Treeline.

What i've read about the monitors you've suggested is that they are very good for basing a mix on as they reproduce the mix very truthfully. Though I think i'm going to use a decent set of headphones for mixing, as they are cheaper, any suggestions?

I need good live speakers, are the 8" Behringer Truths and Event TR8's the best bang for the buck at producing a powerfull and clear reproduction of live vocals & keyboards ? With Drums/Guitar/Bass being played very loud in a 7 meters X 4 meters unsoundproofed room ? The live speakers I've looked at seem to be larger, 12-15", is 8" enough for the situation above ?

Phonic recommended (ofcourse they would recommend Phonic), IMP15 speakers and a MAX2500 Power amplifier, how do they sound ?



I'll make a new thread named along the lines of:

Best bang for buck Live speakers in extreme conditions ?

So those who know alot about speakers will check it out.

Cheers
Mike
Click to expand...

I would not encourge mixing with headphones..its a good way to check your mix's stereo feild...and other things..but I would not do a final mix on them...I have a pair of alesis mkll monitors...If you also put more tome onto room treatment that can solve alot of the LOW END issues!!!! Just a thought...good luck!!
 
Don't know if you're still considering the desktop comp but please swap out the power supply for a Corsair 520 or something similar. Enermax are also good as are Tagan. There are a lot of cases of those Hiper PSUs actually blowing up and taking the rest of the machine with them.
 
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