New to this and need help spending £500 lol

R

Ryan Elliott

New member
Ok so im sort of new to this and i need a bit of help

so i had a Macbook and i used garageband all the time it was easy and i never got any lag from guitars and live monitoring what so ever but its now dead =(

so save spending money on a new mac i want to use my PC to start recording my bands demo but every time i try with all sort of software all im getting is lag on everything! i need to multitrack so cant really have any lag what so ever

now im thinking it could be this crap USB to 3.5 guitar jack i have

so i was looking to buy a new mixer with a USB interface would that make any differences? im looking to get a Behringer Xenyx X2442USB just so we can plug in drums and mix up the amps

or if anyone can find me what i need we have £500 to spend and we need drum mics, mixer

any help would be awesome thanks

Ryan
 
Hi.
For computer based multitrack recording I'd ditch the mixer 100%.

These are just examples. Nothing wrong with them but there are alternatives to each......but


Tascam us800 £188
akg d112 £105
shure sm57 £90
2 x samson c02 £100

That eats most of your budget, but those prices are just the first hits in google shopping.

I'd buy all of this stuff used on ebay or something and save a packet.

How many inputs and mics do you need simultaneously? That interface has 6 mic pres. Usually the limit is 8 before you have to start adding things on.
 
i see where you are going with that and i like that better then the mixer but what about the Toms mics sorry if its a silly question im not the drummer lol
 
Nah, not silly at all.
It depends on what you're doing really. For a standard rock or pop kit, I'd be inclined to keep things as simple as possible.

The great advice that you'll hear a lot round here is to get a great sound from the overheads alone, then supplement that with the kick and snare mics.

If you're doing some kinda mad death metal then maybe that's a different story. :p
 
Ok yeah i can see that working ill look in to that a lot more, whats the best software would you say? Acid Pro 7 seems ok to be but as i said im having lag.

but if you are interested in the sound of my band you can have a listen at VenomAndApathy.Co.Uk we paid £260 to get that 3 track demo and we dont really want to pay that when think we could DIY it lol
 
Do you have an experience or previous knowledge?
I'm not saying you can't DIY it, but a lot of people come through here thinking the same thing, then quickly realise it doesn't always work like that. :p

If you're having lag, it's probably just down to your hardware not having decent drivers.
Any 'proper' interface will have better drivers and better capability in terms of latency.


The best bit of advice I can give you is this. PLEASE take it....
Setup the kit, record a bit, listen, move things, record a bit, listen, move things, record a bit,...................
For days. lol.

So many people just set it all up and record ten songs badly, then come here to 'fix it'.
Just aim to have your dry recordings sounding perfect, and honestly, the songs will almost mix themselves.

When you choose to record at home you sacrifice many things, but you gain time. Definitely make the most of that.

Oh, and don't track too hot. Keep the levels faaaaar away from 0db.

Hope that's useful to you. Just give me a shout if I can help.
 
Yeah i have a bit but the only thing i can say is it was acoustic so we just plugged in to the mixer then right in to my macbook with headphones on and it worked fine for what we needed if you listen to Black Widow on the site thats what i did dont know if its any good?

just never recorded drums before but i have the time and im willing to keep at it

i dont think it would be my PC its a AMD 6 core, 8GB DDR3, GTX570 and a 2TB hard drive
it might be drivers!

and dude thanks for all your help, thanks man
 
Ryan Elliott said:
i dont think it would be my PC its a AMD 6 core, 8GB DDR3, GTX570 and a 2TB hard drive
it might be drivers!

and dude thanks for all your help, thanks man
Click to expand...


No sweat.
It won't be the PC. The drivers thing is pretty common. Built in sound cards and cheap adapters usually = weak performance / high latency.
Moving onto an interface with proper drivers solves the problem.


That track sounds nice. Opening line could have been the Levellers. ;)

Vocals are buried a little, but no big deal. You're the vocalist, right? He's usually the only guy not turning himself up!

I forgot to answer your question about software earlier.
Look at Reaper. It's extremely highly recommended, free to try (full version), and very cheap to buy.
 
so something like the Tascam us800 would be fine then and fix the lag?

that track was from back in the day when times was easy to set up and record lol

but no im just the guitarist that is left with all the work of finding things out and fixing up web pages
front man is a big Levellers fan
 
with drugs and hookers you WILL be good though!

if you don't consider yourselves good, i suggest something super simple to just record yourselves playing, like a portable recorder... record your jam sessions and solo practices, then worry about getting pricey gear when you consider yourselves good.

All those classic bands and albums you probably like were developed using a single microphone...
 
Steenamaroo said:
These are just examples. Nothing wrong with them but there are alternatives to each......but


Tascam us800 £188
akg d112 £105
shure sm57 £90
2 x samson c02 £100

That eats most of your budget, but those prices are just the first hits in google shopping.

I'd buy all of this stuff used on ebay or something and save a packet.
Click to expand...

Tbf, steen's advice on these kinda things is usually bang on, and this is no exception :)

the only things i'd add/suggest that you think about is what gear do you already have and possible tom mics;

If you don't already have them, don't forget you'll need stands and cables from all the mic's which is never quite as cheap as you may think.

All the mic's steen suggested can easily cover a lot of other duties (57's especially can do pretty much anything!), but it may be worth looking at a Large Diaphragm Condenser (LDC) as well, especially for tracking vocals. in the £150 range (new price) there are some more than useable LDC's such as the Rode NT1a, MXL V69, sE X1, and the Avantone CK6. again, keep an eye out on ebay for second hand.

I also whole heartedly agree with steen in terms of keeping drum micing to a minimum, especially if you're new to it, and spend the time really getting the most out of the mic's and the space you've got. Alot of great records have been made with only 2 overheads, a kick and a snare mic. however, if you really, really do need some tom mic's then it may be worth either picking up a couple more SM57's (you really can never have enough) or have a look for some second hand sennheiser e604's; the advantage being that the clip on to the tom's rim so don't need extra stands and sound pretty good, the downside being that they're not quite as versatile as an SM57 yet still cost about the same price. However, i would suggest only really thinking about picking up some mic's for toms once you've got a pair of OH's, a kick, and a snare mic and really played around with them. if you find yourself lacking toms in your recordings, experiment with your OH placements.

There are, as i'm sure you've seen, dedicated "drum mic sets", and in your price range Samson and Red5 Audio both make great little sets, but unless you've already got some other mic's for other duties i'd say maybe steer clear of these and spend the time and money investing on more multipurpose mic's.
 
Yeah i have taken it all in and i have had a good look around but like you said i never did take in for the leads and stand =(

so on my shopping list so far i have a Tascam US1800 Rackmount Interface and Stagg DMS-5700H 7-Piece Drum Mic Set

that comes to £399 then the stands and leads come to £99

dont know if the drum mics will be any good really finding it hard to get it all for under £500 with post but i did have a talk with the rest and we said we could buy a new mic every month and use that just to get us started

as for stuff we already have we have loads its just not the best or its a bit beaten up

we have

3 Dynamic Vocal Microphone
Behringer C-1 Condenser Microphone
3 boom mic stands
1 Mic stand
1 Table Top Mic Stand
Alesis MultiMix 6 FX

and some other stuff just cant think off the top of my head
but ill put pics of the room we have and the drum kit cos we got about 3 of them for some reason!
 
Ryan Elliott said:
so on my shopping list so far i have a Tascam US1800 Rackmount Interface and Stagg DMS-5700H 7-Piece Drum Mic Set

that comes to £399 then the stands and leads come to £99

dont know if the drum mics will be any good really finding it hard to get it all for under £500 with post but i did have a talk with the rest and we said we could buy a new mic every month and use that just to get us started

as for stuff we already have we have loads its just not the best or its a bit beaten up

we have

3 Dynamic Vocal Microphone
Behringer C-1 Condenser Microphone
3 boom mic stands
1 Mic stand
1 Table Top Mic Stand
Alesis MultiMix 6 FX
Click to expand...

lol, tbh stands and leads only ever spring to my mind because the last time i bought some gear with a tight budget i did completely forget both leads and stands and ended up having to spend another £100 odd before i could use all my shinny new gear :(

the US1800 is a great little interface (there's a couple of people here who swear by it..... i wanna say Jimmy has one???) I've not tried any of the stagg mic's but, as a whole, stagg gear has gotten better over the past 5 years so i'm sure it'll be more than usable. I know i said it earlier, but if you do wanna go down the drum mic pack sets, the Red5 Audio 7 piece drum set is surprisingly good for £159.

With the gear you've got, i would be really tempted to go for an SM57, a D112, and a pair of SDC's over a dedicated drum mic set as Steen suggested purely for what i was saying earlier about versatility, and if you needed tom mic's you could either use the 3 dynamics you've got, or try the C-1 (especially for floor tom), but at the same time i do appreciate that with the drum mic sets that you could leave them all set up on the kit and then still have all the other gear for guitars, bass, vocals etc, and as the US1800 has enough inputs I can see how much easier it would be just to be able to leave all the mics set up in your space.
 
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