old but new

[fatlittlekozak]

Learned to play a guitar 40 years ago and now I'm thinking of decent quality rcording not specifically for myself but amateur performers. Having played in a band for 35 years I.ve seen too many good musicians pass on without commiting their talents to recorded media of any quality. Therefore would like to be portable as well as have a small studio. Thinking of setting up to transfer all recordable media to digital. Also considering visual aspect as well as audio. I think that as well as present recording there is a lot of past (amateur) recorded material to be remastered. Have a hi-fi VCR and cd player as well as Sansui and Technics amps. Thinking of up grading computer to dedicated sound and visual machine. Use Akai gxc 704-d tapedeck I bought in the early 70's.
Have no mics. Budget about 5000 excluding studio. Have unfinished basement or empty garage(14' x 22').
questions are:
Analogue or digital or both?
Mac or IBM pc.?
Tapeing equipment,soundcard,mics, sound cleaning,editing????

Need help on the recording aspect keeping in mind that I may also look toward visual.

 

[cstockdale]

I would say go digital and use a PC or Mac: you can use all sorts of analog gear in teh chain if you need to preserve that analog sound. But if you are wanting to go visual too, having the ability to fully synchronize between audio and video will be immensely easier if you are using a computer to do it. If portability is essential then you are dealing with a laptop.

Seeing as you have no mics/mixer/monitors/computer/software, $5K is going to have to be carefully researched.

YOu need a laptop with as much RAM as you can give it, a large HD, possibly an extra Firewire external HD, and as fast a processor as you can afford. I haven't been laptop shopping in some time, but I imagine this is going to easily eat up $1K or more for a quality machine.

Then you need a multitracking audio interface. Check out firewire interfaces by M-Audio, Aardvark, MOTU, and decide how many inputs you are going to need at once. If you are doing primarily live recording, you will need quite a few inputs, and the cost of these interfaces goes up with the number if inputs.

Then, you need as many mics as you think you would need, preamps for those mics if the interface doesn't have preamps, a mixer is a more cost effective way to get multiple preamps at a reasonable price, plus then you can bus tracks together before recording them (ie put 6 mics on a drum kit but only record it to stereo).

Then you need software.


Bare minimum, you need the laptop, the soundcard/interface, mic preamps, mics, some sort of routing device (mixer possibly), and monitors.

 

[fatlittlekozak]

Thanks for the info. Your suggestion of a laptop is interesting.I hadn't thought of that.
To be sure I understand you correctly..... I can use the laptop with soundcard interface instead of a portable studio and be able to achieve the same results? How would digital video tie in? Could editing of both be achieved on site and have a finished product to burn to cd or dvd? In the immediate I would like to record a singing group that consists of aprox. 20 people and three instruments (piano and Guitars) and percussion (Tamborine). Iwas hoping to limit myself to three good mics.

 

[cstockdale]

Yes, a Laptop with a sound interface with the right number of ins/outs is like a portable studio, plus it gives you far more flexibility for sound editing, and keeping your video and sound in the same place. Video, I know nothing about, so I can't advise you there.

If three mics is all you are trying to run, take a look at theOmni Studio USB, or a Quattro USB (www.midiman.net). The Firewire 410 is also a decent device. With all of these, you will need additional preamps as the most any of these provide is 2.

I.e. A Firewire 410 plus a DMP-3 preamp would give you 4 good preamps, but 10 outputs might well be overkill. The Omni Studio USB plus a DMP-3 would likely be better. Either way, you can kiss $500-$750 of your budget goodbye right there.

Add a Studio Projects B3 mic in, which will give you an omnidirectional mic.

Take a look at software like Cakewalk's Sonar, Cubase, Logic Audio etc.

Do some more reading around here, check out the main page at homerecording.com and read articles. Don't rush into any purchase, because at this stage you need to learn more, and any purchase would likely be made not understanding the limitations/capabilities you have with a given piece of gear.

On a PC based system (or Mac for that matter), most software packages will not limit the number of tracks you can record, BUT, your interface/soundcard will limit the number of simultaneous tracks you can record. So, for example, a 4-in card to Sonar is basically a 4-track that you can overdub as many times as you like, but you can only capture 4 tracks at once (I don't do live recording, so I can use a stereo mic setup on acoustic, and a vocal mic at once, record those, tehn overdub as many thigns as I want).

If 4-ins isn't enough, but you want to stick to a laptop, check out the MOTU 828mkII, a firewire interface with 8 inputs.

Someone else may be able to say whether a M-Audio Delta 1010 can work witha laptop, I am not sure about PCI cards and laptops.