Suggestions on Equipment

[mudrummer99]

Hello all,
I'm new to all of this and was hoping I could get some suggestions on equipment to check out. I am looking to record music mainly at home but occasionally for recording in a smaller recital hall. The medium being recorded mostly will be vocals, guitar (acoustic) and piano with random percussion instruments from time to time. I think I'm looking for an audio interface for my XP based computer, I dual boot Vista so updated driver availability for this will be a plus, a couple mics (or more?), reliable software (if not included with the interface) and studio montiors. The budget for the interface and mics is about $5-700 and the monitors about $400. Of course decent quality at a lower price is always welcome. Interconnects and other extras are not figured into the budget, what I need is what I need for those but I would like some suggestions, again this isn't needing to be studio quality. Thanks for everyone's feedback in advance.

Mike

 

[Seafroggys]

Hmm how many channels do you want to record simultaneously? That's the key. If you are doing lots of overdubs, one of the cheaper USB/Firewire 1-2 preamp interfaces might do the trick. But you mentioned live recordings as well, which for the vocals (assuming there's one), guitar, and the piano, that's 3-4, and more if there is more then one singer. In that case, probably the cheapest you can get is the Presonus Firepod (or FP10) which runs like $400-500 by itself.

As for mics, you can get an SM58 for vocals. There's some good Naiant mics that work well with acoustic guitar, so that can save you a bundle as well. Not really sure what works well for piano mics, but if you wanted to save some money, I'm sure there's some Naiant mics that will work as well. 3 Naiant mics and an SM58 will run about $250, plus the stands and cables for another $200 or so.

 

[mudrummer99]

Thanks for the reply. For the most part, like 95%, it'll recording my wife (vocals and guitar/piano). Overdubbing that wouldn't be a problem if she needs more instruments on a recording. I figured for the live recording I would probably want something with atleast 4 inputs. I'm a big if I don't get what I want now, I will sometime soon in the future, so I usually just go all out so I'm happy with it so I don't waste my money on good enough for now item. I've been reading a lot and I kind of like the Edirol interfaces, like the 101. I have both USB and Firewire on my computers so either way is fine with me. Is there any advantage with going with one or the other? If you don't mind giving me suggestions for both 2 and 4 input units I would greatly appreciate that since I still have to get the cost past my wife, who is actually all about us doing this .

As far as mics, I don't want to go all out on an interface and skimp on these. I also don't want to spend more than necessary to get a very good quality, I'll look at those you suggested and see what I think. Again I'm willing to spend a little more and start with fewer to get a better item. The piano is actually an electric piano, so a mic for that isn't needed, just a balanced 1/4" input.

Other than that, any monitors that I should absolutely avoid, or do you pretty much get what you pay for just like home theater type speakers? Thanks again for the feedback.

Mike