new to Cakewalk....

[fenderlady]

The 1620, which is the one I bought was about $700. You can get the 1220 about $500. The Firewire card (A Mackie proprietary card) is anywhere from $330 - $399(list).

The 1620 has 8 mic inputs/pre-amps. With the Firewire card, you can string two Onyx mixers together. Which could get you 32 channels. Spendy stuff, but very awesome!!!!!

One caveat, the Onyx Firewire only works on XP or O/S X on the Mac side. Processor speed must be Pentuim 4 or Athalon, or on the Mac a G4.

 

[fraserhutch]

never know. i could do a live show with that. but I dont know when i would wanna. and as I said before for studio use, for drums. not only could I get everything piece miced, but i could still have around 4 distance mics left for placement.

In that case, I would think you'd perhaps want to get some other flavours of preamps happening.

16 channels of identical preamps is a good idea if you're getting them from a Neve or SSL console, otherwise I'd look into other solutions. Get JSUT what you need right now, cause I guarantee in the future you;ll want better pres for vocals and guitars, etc. I think you'd just be throwing your money away this way. My $0.02

 

[warble]

I agree with Fraser....I thought it would be cool to slap two Firepods together, but 8 of these pre's is probably enough. Save some $$$ for a better, high quality pre or two down the road. I'm not saying the pre's on the Firepod are bad, they are pretty good IMO, but I'm still planning on getting into a higher end pre eventually.

With the Mackie, looks like you'll be sitting at around $1000 for 8 channels. I'd go for the Firepod for $600, unless you need that mixer. Seems you could achieve nice drum tracking with 8 inputs (not sure how many pieces we're talking for you, but for the kit I use):

Kick: 1
Snare: 1
Overheads: 2
Toms: 3

That's what I've been experimenting with, and it's been working thus far. I guess with the eighth channel I could run another mic (high-hat, snare bottom, etc.) but with two decent overheads, it's amazing what you can get in a decent room.

 

[strungout]

I agree with Fraser....I thought it would be cool to slap two Firepods together, but 8 of these pre's is probably enough. Save some $$$ for a better, high quality pre or two down the road. I'm not saying the pre's on the Firepod are bad, they are pretty good IMO, but I'm still planning on getting into a higher end pre eventually.

With the Mackie, looks like you'll be sitting at around $1000 for 8 channels. I'd go for the Firepod for $600, unless you need that mixer. Seems you could achieve nice drum tracking with 8 inputs (not sure how many pieces we're talking for you, but for the kit I use):

Kick: 1
Snare: 1
Overheads: 2
Toms: 3

That's what I've been experimenting with, and it's been working thus far. I guess with the eighth channel I could run another mic (high-hat, snare bottom, etc.) but with two decent overheads, it's amazing what you can get in a decent room.

the kit I'm going to use has 2 bass drums, 4 toms, snare, hi hat, china, ride, 2 crashes, splash, and sometimes an extra cymbal somewhere. so I might have to really depend on the room when only using 8 pres since I'll be cutting back and not micing each and everything.