Question...Making the Switch to DAW...on a budget?

R

Richie Woods

New member
Question...Making the Switch to DAW...Can I on a budget?

First off I'm new and I have enjoyed this site very much. Many knowledgable people! I have dabbled in home recording for about 5 years now. Here is the deal...

I have a Korg D8 and have been making decent demos with it for some time now, but... I'm limited (as I am sure you all know). I do all my stuff direct (drums machine, guitars, bass, keys, vocals). No live bands or live drums.

Okay, I want to put that baby to rest and put my computer to work. Some specs on my computer... It is an HP with... Pentium III 700Mhz, 256 Ram, 64 mb video card, 2 gigs of HD, and a factory installed sound card (sorry, not sure of the details, but it is minimum).

My situation is this...LOW BUDGET. I want to sell my Korg D8 (they are going for about $150 to $200 on ebay). It sucks to have to sell it, but I'm hurtin' for a change in studio equipment and I want to see what I can do with what I have got.

Thanks for reading this far!
Here are my questions...

I realize I can expand in the future with a DAW, but what can I add to my computer (specs above) to get myself started in DAW recording now? A Delta 44 audio interface? Some shareware like n-Track? What else?

Really, all I need are the basics to get recording now...can it be done?

Thanks in advance!!!
 
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Well, I just checked back and I'm talkin' to myself. Help!

Okay, here is a plug... If interested, check out my demos. I myself like "Sound Reality", "Fry Daddy", and "Back to Basics". I got some good sounds on that little Korg D8.

http://artists.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/The_Rich_Cayer_Project/

Now please, can anyone tell me if I have the basics to start a decent DAW? (see first post...thanks again!)
 
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And a sound card/interface. I use the M-audio Omni-studio/Delta 66. It was something over $400 I think.

You probably ought to hang onto the Korg while you build a war chest for the other stuff. If it's only worth a couple bills, selling it won't get you enough money to step up very far. When the new box is done you can sell it and get a decent mic or micpre.


lou
 
Thanks for the welcome!

You are right, I should stick with the D8 and save some bucks to upgrade my gaming PC to a full fledged DAW. I have had enough of gaming with that rig and I now want to make as much music on it as I can (my ears are getting bad).

For monitioring I have always used headphones. So far so good with that...again, it is the budget!

Thanks again!
 
I've collected some articles and ideas about this
and put them up on
http://www.pfarrell.com/prc/starting.html

How low is your low budget? The
above article talks about getting started
for a couple hundred bucks.

I've got two 1010s, the big brothers of the Delta 44,
and like them a lot. And N-tracks is cool software,
well worth the money.

You will need mics, stands, cables. Allow
at least $100 per channel for this.
You will need something to preamp your mics.
The cheapest approach is to buy a small mixer
like a Mackie 1204 VLZ or a little Behringer eurorack.
And you really will need at least a pair of $100
headphones to mix on, you really, really need
some studio monitors costing $600 to $1200 a pair.

You have a couple of critical decisions, such as:
1) how much do you want to spend today?
2) how much are you willing to spend over time,
say the next year?
3) do you want to get gear now that you can learn on?
or gear that you will want to keep for a long time?

For example, the behringer will work fine to learn on,
and some $80 shanghai LDC mics will sound fine.
Once you get up to speed, you probably won't like
the sound of either, so you can sell them on eBay,
but you will take a loss. Look at it as rent.
 
Wow. Some great info to think about! Right now the budget is really low. The wife and I had a store that went out of business and the bills got to get paid. You have given me something to think about. I want to learn REAL bad as far as working my tunes on my copmputer, but I do not want to sacrifice what I have right now. Tis time for some thought...

I think my best option is to continue to work on the Korg D8 and start a little nest egg that will turn my computer into something worth talking about...make sense?

But then again it is that "I want to learn now" feeling that keeps making my mind spin!
 
Forgive the next "newbie" question...

Seeing that I have a digital stand alone and a half-way decent computer, can I have them work together? You know, maybe monitor what I am doing on the D8 through a program on the computer monitor? I assume I would need something like the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 PCI Digital Audio Card to transfer the signal.

Does that make sense? Don't ya hate newbie questions? Don't ya hate being a newbie? I do (technically speaking) Should I shut up now? Okay, I will. :p
 
I'm not a D8 expert, so you should check with folks
that have one. Look at
http://www.bogartz.com/d8/faq.html#T05
for info on connecting a D8 to a PC.

You do not want to consider typical comuter speakers
as suitable for monitoring recordings and mixes.
They do not have any accuracy of frequency response.
You would be better off with a set of $99 Sennheiser 280
or equivalent headphones, and you won't be that
well off until you get real studio monitors.

Not "hi-fi" speakers, not home theater speakers and
not PC speakers.
 
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out after I post this. I beleive I can have my synth, D8, and drum machine all connected to the PC via a midi connection. I'm also getting n-track. I might get a good start at doing more with what I have right now. I am going to play around.

And yes, I would never use PC or home stereo speakers for monitoring. Hopefully I'll get some nice appropiate speakers for that...until then I will use my Nady cans.

Thanks for the input!
 
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