Starting a studio, not sure what equipment to buy...

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themanautomatic

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Hey people,
i've been playing guitar for a while now and i've come to the point where i wanna start composing and recording my own songs. Now basically i'm interested in making rock and anything heavier than that, without having to spend too much of a budget. So basically i'm considering buying an electric guitar, a digidesign mbox and a midi-keyboard... now i'm pretty certain about the guitar and the keyboard, but i'm having my doubts about the mbox... there's more solutions out there for recording guitar (and amplifying it), and what i take from this message board, protools isn't exactly the holy grail of digital music recording either. I have no experience in home recording whatsoever, but i don't wanna waste my time learning to work with bad software when there's something better out there. So what other options should i look into?
 
In terms of software, for home recording, you might want to check out Cakewalk HomeStudio 2004. In fact at http://www.cakewalk.com there is a workable demo available for you to try. I use their program called Sonar, but for a newbie, it might be a little too overwhelming. HS2004 does a lot of what you are going to need at the beginning.
 
What i'm most concerned about are guitartone and learning some basic recording techniques. I must say that pro-tools is one of the bigger reasons i'm buying the mbox... i'm just doubting if it will serve my purposes. I've been looking at line6's pod pro, and combining that with a good soundcard + some software should be able to do the same as the mbox + protools, for my guitar atleast.
 
zzounds has 100 dollar guitar plus behringer amp packages.
some reviews ive seen of the berry amps - people seem quite happy with thm. gotta start somewhere. once recorded in the computer you can always muck around with tone. check out simulanalog.com for a free guitar amp simulator and peddles too. if you use the multitrackers i use - ie powertracks and magix music studio you can apply pretty radical filtering to a guitar track.
i believe the new version of magix has an amp simulator built in.
if you want to save money , you could build your own mic preamps like i do for 10 bucks of parts. you can also use old speakers as microphones.
its an old trick , then plug it into the mic input of a cassette deck and route to the sound card input thus saving buying a mic preamp. if you listen to a song of mine called lets move it man at soundclick.com/bmanning you can hear what i did with pretty minimal and home made preamps and diy.
many of the songs on my site used either powertracks or magix multitrack software. frankly i'm an experimenter. more fun than buying stuff and sometimes you get happy accidents and neat sounds by building your own equipment. one thing i would suggest - a powerfull computer like an amd athlon and a good sound card with decent convertors. say a delta 44
or such like. also there is the maya soundcard for 100 bucks at tracertek.com
hope this helps.
on the subject of guitar tone i muck around with lots of guitar amps i buy at yard sales for 5 to 10 bucks. and mod around. take a listen to woohoo song - a 50's attempt song.
 
by the way i forgot to mention powertracks has lots of settings specifically for guitar players and effects and its the best 29 bucks i ever spent.
up in the menu are all the effects listed. there are thousands of possible settings . so take some time trying the demo. oops forgot - at pgmusic.com.
also the forum is superb with tons of experienced recording users . look for the powertracks forum. youll pick up loads of good techniques. ive found it very usefull in the past.
 
Thank you manning, i appreciate your advise... i've already looked into some options. My first concern is getting a guitar directly into a computer... i can make some noise, but seeing how i'm looking to play rock and metal, it's very difficult to get a good tone and not make a ton of noise. i've also posted this thread https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=129015 in which i've been a little more clear about what i'm looking for.

By the way, if you know about more budget soundcards, i'm very much interested. The Maya card indeed is interesting, because of the inputs.
 
if you dont want your neighbors to hear your playing thru an amp
you could always go direct to the soundcard through something like a rockman or vamp or similar device. these type of devices try to emulate certain modelled guitar amps like the berringer. i tend not to buy them as they change so fast and ive been burnt in the past by salespeople claiming "the perfect tone" !!
. frankly one of the best tones ive heard was a friend of mine with a bunch of beat up pedals through a pignose amp.
i got so tired of market changes i now rent any new guitar amp modeller.
that way i get a constant change in tones. i have not found yet the perfect amp in a pedal modeller frankly.
on the sound card issue just make sure the sound card manufacturer
says that his soundcard is compatible with your motherboard. its important to know what chipset your pc has. the maya is about the cheapest multi input i know of.
 
Well i've did some more research and i've decided on what equipment to buy. I already picked up my very first electric guitar, and i've decided to buy a Tech 21 Trademark 60 (I've been looking for one at a good price, and i'm close to satisfaction) for the guitarsounds... the direct out seems to be good for recording. As a recording interface, i've bought a M-Audio Omni Studio USB. Also, I'm planning on buying a velocity-sensitive midikeyboard, i've been looking around and the M-Audio Keystation 61es seems the most interesting.

Now i have to decide what software to go with, and i concluded Cubase would be the best complete solution (composing, recording, editing, mixing and mastering). The main thing is that i need to be able to play drums (and be able to make accents with the velocity sensitive keys) on my midi-keyboard and then be able to record my guitar over it, and then edit and mix. I just wanna get started on recording and i'd like to see every aspect of what i want to do covered in one program, figuring software out takes long enough as it is ;)

Other titles i know of are Logic and Nuendo, but Cubase received the most positive reviews. Can anyone give me some objective info on the software and what i should be looking for?
 
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