recording help please give advice

[monoe]

we play a button accordion a 12 string acoustic guitar, and a electric bass
and 2 vocals. Right now i have and omni studio with the delts 66 card i bought a studio projects b1 mic and i got sonar 3. Right now im recording everything 1 at a time on seperate tracks and the bass staright in to the omni interface and it all sounds like crap really really home made. i have acoustic foam on the way for my room but i really need help on the recording equipment

right now i have 1500$ dollars to spend what could i get that would at least make us sound descent ive heard some live recordings that sound pretty good using equipment crappier than what i got
the style of music we play is norteÑo example los tucanes los razos exept for the drums we dont like the drums in our music

if what i need is more than 1500$ just add on to around 3000$
thank you for any advice

 

[Monkey Allen]

Hold onto your money and investigate how to set things up better. If you reckon people are getting better results than yours, with crappier equipment, then you probably just need to get things set up better.

 

[Kevin Deschwazi]

Hold onto your money and investigate how to set things up better. If you reckon people are getting better results than yours, with crappier equipment, then you probably just need to get things set up better.

I agree.

Recording environment is a vital and often overlooked part of the equation so it's good to see you have room treatment in mind. If you haven't already taken a look, the studio building forum here is excellent for advice on acoustic treatment.

You have the gear to make very respectable quality recordings (although you might want to get a half decent DI for that bass) and you're working on treating your recording space. With no disrespect to you I suspect the missing link is in you learning how to use the gear you have to the best of its capabilities.

I'd break things down one at a time. Try a search in the mic forum for techniques/mic recommendations for recording accordion. If you don't come up with anything then start a thread on it. People often ask about recording fairly obscure instruments and someone usually has experience with it and can offfer some pointers. The collective knowledge on this BBS is pretty amazing. Then move on to the next thing you're wanting to improve.

Getting decent sounding recordings is not easy and for most of us it takes a long, long time to develop the necessary skills, unfortunately it's not usually something you can just throw money at.

One thing you didn't mention which is very important is monitoring. If you don't have a decent monitoring setup for mixing then that's something I'd look to spend some of that money on.

Good luck with it.

 

[reshp1]

^^^^^^^^
This guy's good

2 points worth reiterating...

The bass is going to sound really dead into the soundcard directly. It's a matter of impedance, the line in jack you are currently plugging into on the Omni is designed for low impedence signals. The bass (i'm assuming you don't have active pickups) is designed to work with high impedence devices, when you plug into a low impedence device, you tend to lose a lot of high end and definition. A cheap DI box will help tremedously

Also, ditto on the monitors. A good pair of monitors makes a world of difference. A good set of isolation headphones are really handy for mic positioning especially if you are recording yourself, although it isn't a good idea to try and mix on them. I really like my Sennheiser HD280's