
Armistice
Son of Yoda
Out of curiousity, how much did your cello cost?
Out of curiousity, how much did your cello cost?
I'm betting I could take you and a, say, $500 reasonably humble cello into a professional recording studio and achieve a better sound outcome than you, your obviously high quality $5000 cello and your $500 studio will manage.
If I have only 1 knife in my kitchen, it will be a 7" santuko blade or a 9" chef's knife. Either will work for EVERYTHING that I ever need to do in a kitchen. Would I rather have a paring knife for peeling lemons? sure, but I could do it with the santuko. Would I rather have a carving knife for meat? sure, but I could do that with either the 7 or 9 as well.
If I got an A&H zed and a c414 would that be good enough? There must be better gear than a zed and a 414.... where do you draw the line between a plastic spoon and drop-forged steel?
If you had music exploding out of your ears and only a few hundred dollars in your pocket, what would you do if you wanted to get it down?
plastic spoon on carrots....
which part of my plan is really that bad?
If I want to get some demos out that are better than an iPhone recording but only have a few hundred dollars, something must be worth buying.... Should I just stick with the phone recordings? Come on, guys, give me a break.
If I said I was going to get a 57 and a focusrite scarlett you guys would not be laughing at me, would you? That's within my budget, right? It's just not what I need. There is so much choice out there that there must be SOMETHING that will fit my needs...
And while everybody keeps saying "omg eww onboard" and "hahaha have fun with your behringer" nobody will tell me why on either account - a couple people tried to tackle the a/d question, but I don't think it's a generally understood concept - people don't a/b an m-audio mobile pre against an apogee 16x converter so except on paper (snr, "clean" gain, bit depth, sample rate, driver stability - which is not quantifiable but only available through anecdotal evidence) it's a bit of a mystery.
If I got an A&H zed and a c414 would that be good enough? There must be better gear than a zed and a 414.... where do you draw the line between a plastic spoon and drop-forged steel?
FunkDaddy this is not at you personally, I've just gotten this vibe all over, but I read a bunch of threads before joining, and I didn't see much of this. Maybe I'm having an off day, maybe it's me. Sorry if I'm being dramatic, don't want to be an internet-ass. Just sayin.
If you had music exploding out of your ears and only a few hundred dollars in your pocket, what would you do if you wanted to get it down? Everybody has been there at some point, right?
As to your question regarding onboard sound versus interface there are several factors:
1) it's not just the chips but the analog front end of the converter that feed them signal. This front end will determine how well and accurately fast transients, high frequency/low frequency and many, many other things are handled and given to the chips to convert as you record, and just as important when you play back. You can't mix what you can't hear. Onboard sound typically not good in this area. Limited space on the motherboard, need to keep costs of the entire system down and in all fairness, it's not what these mass produced, generic playback converters are designed to do well.
2) Stats around signal to noise ratio, THD etc don't really tell you a whole lot, they are usually measured in perfect conditions using a 1khz sine wave. Generaly speaking a pure sinewave is not what is being recorded or played back in real world application.
3) Headroom. this is a big deal, how much room do you have over nominal (Line) level. Good converters will give you lots of head room or even user defined calibration so that yo can ensure the whole signal path is calibrated to the correct levels. So that, if you get a little excited and hit that snare a little too hard one time or aggressively bow that string in the middle of the take, you don't ruin an otherwise great take with digital clipping which cannot be undone. This is very easy to do on cheap, low headroom converters where it may not even be clear what line level is actually calibrated to be.
4) Locked sample rates. Several onboard soundcards have locked sample rates. What this means is that no matter what you set the sample rate to in your DAW, your sound card will record at a fixed sample rate (I believe some of the cheapo soundblasters and realteks are locked at 48khz) this means you are not really recording at your target sample rate, you are recording at 48Kz and then your DAW is having to resample internally to the new sample rate. This adds a great deal of strain to the system, can induce resampling artifacts, increases latency in your recordings and means you actually get no benefit (if there is any to be had) from using differnt sample rates
5) ease of use. External sound cards usually provide standard audio connections that makes pluging in mic's monitors and other audio gear much less of a headache the tring to get everything to end up with a stereo 1/8" jack
Behringer
*A lot of it comes down to reliability. Their stuff is cheaply made using cheap components and breaks down easy. It's a pain in th a$$ if you are in the middle of a session and your interface, mixer, or whatever just up and quits. At that point there is the question of is it worth having to re buy the same piece of crap three times over, in the end it would have been better just to buy something good to start with
*Noise.. as I mentioned above most stats are measured under perfect conditions with a pure sine wave. When actually use a Behringer piece to say try and get enough gain to get your vocal or cello up to line level through an SM57 you'll find a lot of noise has been added at the higher gain settings
*It's also kinda cool to hate on Behri
*THere are a couple of good pieces ADA800 and CT100 or even th BCF2000 (at least at it's price point) for example but a lot of it really is crap
I still say if I had only a couple of hundred bucks in my pocket I'd go for an all in one rather than getting the absolute lowest of the low end of everything as individual items and then use the remainder of the money to find some decent used monitors (because you can't mix well what you can't hear well) I think it would just work out far, far simpler, you'd spend way less time trouble shooting and more time on the music (which is after all the whole point) and the results would probably be better at that price point.
It would be a real shame to spend $500 bucks on the lowest of the low end individual pieces and find that it's really not a lot better than what you were getting on your iPhone. It would be nice if all you were paying for was a name and market hype, but somethings really cost more for a reason and some things really are dirt cheap for a reason. Sometimes you hit a gem in a pile of coal but lowend stuff is usually cheap for a good reason...
I think because I have OSX but not normal apple hardware I'm in a unique spot... I get to use CoreAudio drivers which are the only Apple drivers (there is no asio vs directx or whatever windows has).
And I'm not really understanding why my converters are so bad. I get that they're cheap and not meant for what I'm doing, but my motherboard was cheap and wasn't meant for running OSX but it's rock solid and performs great... see what I'm getting at?
My mackie Hr624s weren't designed to be door stops but they hold the door open really well; I think I'll buy another one.
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Steenamaroo again.
This sounds quite reasonable - sorry to have been so demanding!
As far as the standalone recorder goes, I did build this hackintosh specifically for music production and half of my music comes from sounds I design in Reason, so line out from that same card would have to be included, and i would lose all sorts of sequencing capabilities.
SO.
If I'm looking at [mixers] in the $100 and under range (for 2 or 4 pres) would the pre's still be better on an interface like a fast track or saffire or the tascam unit's I've looked at? i could get an EMU 0404 or a DJ interface (they never have pres so they're cheaper) and a soundcraft mixer, or something of that sort if it would be more flexible - like I said before I want gear that can grow with me (at least for a couple of years) if I get a standalone 8 track, it will have no use if I get a decent signal chain to the computer.
Curse my eyes for getting a motherboard with no PCI slots (only PCIe) not sure if that's a dead technology or just not born yet...
might hold off on choosing a mic at this time and try out what I have already (no ldc) and the BX5a Deluxe are stupid deal of the day today...
I guess I'm not trying for a budget studio, but rather an overdub studio. That make sense? I play keys, bass, guitar, uke, hand percussion, cello, and I sing. And I want to do it all ;-)
Even if it's hard to put a finger on it, it seems generally accepted that it's something you don't do. Why? Who knows for *sure*, but I don't want to be the one wasting money to find out (unless I get a mixer and PCIe card, then I'd a/b it for everyoneheh)
so my options are to get a mixer and PCIe card (0404, etc) or a USB interface. Either route staying under $200.
Is one choice better than the other?
I'm limiting myself to this. Sorry for the analogies about the onboard audio, I'm no electrical engineer, and I had a clean signal on my last pc from an ART mp studio into the line in so I assumed. thought I could save $100 to put towards something else.
Even if it's hard to put a finger on it, it seems generally accepted that it's something you don't do. Why? Who knows for *sure*, but I don't want to be the one wasting money to find out (unless I get a mixer and PCIe card, then I'd a/b it for everyoneheh)