Recording solution?

[southbound]

Hey eveyone, just looking for some opinions here.

I'm looking for a solution to record my band and am torn between all the different options. What we've done in the past is use an akai 24 track HD recorder, laid the drums down first on 8 seperate tracks and then tracked the instruments afterwards with Bass going first, rhythm guitar, then lead and vox last. Finally patching in over parts we were not satisfied with. This worked pretty well, but we dont have access to that recorder anymore and are looking to purchase a solution of our own. I have a MAC g4 with plenty or processing power and have been looking at the Mackie Onyx 1620 and a potential way to run direct to the computer, but I'm just not sure if it'll have the ease of use that the standalong HD had. We've already got a nice 24 channel analog board, a half rack with power amps, compressor/gate and all that fun stuff and I'm wondering if it would be best to just get something like a MOTU rack unit and patch from our current board to the MOTU and into the computer. Any suggestions? what software would you recommend? We've been using Vegas...

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I'd say offhand that if you already have an analog board you're happy with, get a nice A/D interface to your computer instead of the Onyx, and use the few hundred dollars you save for either a couple of nice microphones and/or a quality preamp or two for them. While the Onyx has some rather nice pres on it, when you combine the cost of the Onyx and its Firewire option, you're paying a lot of mony to duplicate your mixing capabilities. By keeping you're current mixer and getting a couple of nice pres and mics along with a good interface like a MOTU, you're still getting all the lines into your computer, but you're also getting a one or two of channels of really nice tracking through an even better signal chain with the quality mic(s) and seperate pre(s).

If, OTOH, your current mixer is of dubious or only servicable sound quality, then maybe you'd be better off just to upgrade to the Onyx and upgrade all your channels to something better than what you have now.

Vegas is a very nice program. While there are many subjective tastes as far as look and feel go when it comes to software, and there are plenty of other good choices, you'll not find any editing platform that sounds better than the Sonic/Sony software (and many of them that sound worse.) Plus, if you are used to Vegas, you know how to use it, and you have no major dislikes with it, then there is no reason to change, IMHO. Icing on the cake is that if your band ever decides to produce some demo videos, you have the perfect video editor right there at your disposal as well.

Just one opinion, and not the only valid one. Oh, look, in fact here come some more...



G.