PC based vs. Standalone

A

airbornemama

New member
I've posted a similar thread in the newbie category but truly, the people that know the most wouldn't be the newbies, eh?

I have extensive experience in the live music production world but know next to nothing about multi-track recording other than helping the engineer out from time to time on some post-production mix-downs. I would like to have a very humble recording system on a minimal budget that will work to record a small band of 4 to 5. (from concept to completion)

Any help and insight would be very appreciated!! Thanks.
 
Two different schools of thought of this topic.

IMHO, the beauty of a standalone unit is that it only does the recording/mixing/mastering thing and doesn't share system resources with Windows, Internet, e-mail...you name it. These are dedicated machines designed to do one thing well. If you buy one of the smaller units like Korg D12 or similar, they are very portable so you can easily take the unit to the gig or someone else's practive space.

The downside (for some) is that the editing functions can be kind of time consuming/cumbersome because you're working with a tiny little screen and a limited amount buttons, so you do a lot of scrolling through through various menus, etc to accomplish anything. That was my experience anyway, there are plenty of folks here who will disagree. Ultimately it depends on your work habits. Some of the high end units have CRT and mouse ports so you can work with a regular computer screen and mouse.

The PC route is nice (for me) because I like everything displayed at once of the monitor and I like using a mouse and keyboard to do my editing. I've turned off all the bell and whistle crap that comes loaded with most PCs (instant messenger, etc) to keep the system resources from getting bogged down.

Most people already have a PC laying around so it's a simple matter to buy a modest outboard unit to get the digital audio in and out of the PC.

I probably missed a lot of points, others will certainly chime in.
 
so, if I go PC

If I were to go the PC route, the most important thing to me would be a lot of inputs, XLR and 1/4". What is the recommended system to take care of this?

And thanks for the info, its really been a big help!
 
Im with Phyl

Im in total agreement with Phyl.
I prefer to do my recording on a standalone and then importing my tracks to cubase. Sometimes I will use outboard effects sometimes I use what addons I have for cubase. Depends on my mood and the sound I am trying to achieve.
There is nothing like having the full waveform right there in your face along with all the other tracks. No scrolling to problem.
I am in the practice of shutting off everything I am not using when I am in record and mix mode. Its not like Im gonna chat on AOL while mixing. Neither do I need an antivirus then. I made the files...I know their clean! So everything gets turned off. All except Cubase and the absolute neccesary windows stuff.
 
Re: so, if I go PC

airbornemama said:
If I were to go the PC route, the most important thing to me would be a lot of inputs, XLR and 1/4". What is the recommended system to take care of this?
Click to expand...

What do you count as "lots"?
There are many I/O systems with eight inputs (and outputs)
that take 1/4" TRS balanced. And others that take
a combination of XLR mic inputs and TRS line level.

There are cards with built in mic preamps, and others
that expect you to have a mixer or extrnal preamps.

It all depends on what you want, and how many tracks
you think you need to record at once.
(all the PC DAW packages will let you have more tracks
than you can use, easily 64 or more.). But
the number of simultaneous record tracks is a major
driver of your cost. If you have to have 16, then
you not only need 16 mics, you need 16 preamps (or
at least a 16 channel mixer) and you need 16 channels of
A-D conversion.

I find that I really can't do the kinds of music I like
with fewer than about eleven mics, but some folks
have the talent to do it with two.
 
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