Request Purchasing advice for recording basics.

[Doofusfire]

Hey All,
New to the forum and so far impressed, although there is a lot of information that is zooming over my head at this stage!

After reading arcadeko's excellent post on the very basics of home recording I want a little advice on some equipment that will work for me, I am on a very limited budget so I can’t afford to get something that is frivolous or over kill for the job.

Little background, I am the bassist in a 4 member band, Vocals, Backing Vocs, Guitar, Bass and Drums (we might be adding a keyboard playing in the future)

What I want to know is what do I need at a bare minimum to record a jam but separate tracks for everyone?

I am not worried about mic sound and I am happy to take a line from each amp to a track to mess about with afterwards.

Luckily our drummer has an electronic kit for practice so I can take a line or stereo out form that for practice recordings.

If we were doing something that was not just for our own use I would probably look at micing up his natural kit then at this time I don’t want to spend out on loads of mics!

What I want to achieve is a "live" recording where we can all play together (I realise that the vocal mic will pick up more than just the vocal, Happy to over dub that if necessary) The main function is to listen back to what we did where we went wrong listen for improvements. I also want a musical notepad to "jot" down Ideas and hear them back.

I would like suggestions on kit.

I am making the assumption that I could get away with just an alessis multimix 8/8 USB2? and a DAW? Monitoring is fairly important as we may all be using headphones to play and I would like to use the monitor feed if that is possible. I have heard that monitoring especially with Digital can play with your mind as there is a slight delay from playing to hearing the note. I have been unable to get monitoring to work with my existing card (bearing in mind I am using ASIO4ALL Drivers on an on-board sound card I was not expecting too much)

Can anyone think of a cheaper way to get started bearing in mind what I am trying to achieve?

Please let me know if you need further info.
(I have recorded before but I was not engineering, so I understand some principals were using a Tascam 8 track so I know about bouncing etc. not that I will need it with a digital set up!)

All advice and suggestions welcome.

My PC is an AMD Phenom II 3.2Ghx with 4GB RAM and plenty of storage!
It does not have fire wire but I could get an inexpensive PCI Fire wire card if USB2 is not really what I am looking for.


Much appreciation for any suggestions answers; I'm off to browse the rest of the forum

 

[moresound]

Down load Reaper as your DAW and USB is fine no need for firewire.
Just shop around for a good interface with the proper amount of channels that you will need that also has mic pres on it ..... then of course microphones, cables, stands, monitors ............

 

[Doofusfire]

Thanks for the reply moorsound, I should clarify my questions a bit!
Getting a good interface is what I need help with I have no idea what is good and in reading a lot of reviews I find I still dont know when finishing the article!
I like the look of the Alessis simple and straight forward easy enough to get a good input level, but after looking thought absolutemusic.co.uk (my local store) I am still not sure!
Part of the reason I think I am going for 8 inputs is to have enough for drums shoudl I get to that point looking at the bang per buck so to speak a lot fo the 4 channel interfaces dont seem to be that cheap!

So lets say 8 interfaces, what brand / model would you recommend?
Dont worry about mics stands monitors etc, all I want at this stage is something that will let me record obviously decent quality will give it a longer life, I am not planning on beoming an engineer I just want a basic recording solution. Who knows when budget allows it may get more complex!

 

[mjbphotos]

Do some searching (by brand name) in these forums, you'll see lots of opinions!

 

[Doofusfire]

Well I made a choice today and went for an inexpensive Alesis iO2 express, after reading a lot more on the forums I think I need something basic to see if I have the drive and develop the skills to be up to the standard I want to be!
I figure if I don't make any progress it can go on ebay and I havent lost too much. Maybe I shoudl just focus on my bass playing! Will let you know how I get on.


the first thing I have noticed is the incredibly low latency monitoring, for that alone it is worth the price!