Various Recording Questions

[mattsparks]

Hello All

I'm attempting to put together my home studio. Before I gather all my equipment I have some questions that I'm really un-sure about. If anyone can help with any question, it'd be greatly appreciated.

1) I'm going to be using a 24-Track Mixer with a Creative Sound Blaster sound card. I use Sonar 2 for a recording program. Say I am wanting to record drum tracks (I do have drum mics) and I want to record each miked drum to it's own track in Sonar. So I can mix the snare, bass, toms, over heads, etc. Can I do this with the above equipment or do I need to buy something for my computer in order to do this?

2) I'm going to build a small control room inside the building I'm using for a stuido. I have no idea how I'm going to run everything into the control room. All the mikes and such going in, and all the headphones and such coming out. I recently recorded in a studio and noticed that at the bottom of the walls there were inputs and outputs that ran into the control room. I thought it was a patch bay, but then I noticed it had XLR and 1/4 in's and out's. What is this? Where can I buy one?

3) I'm also having trouble understanding out effects and things like pre-amps go into the mixer and effect the sound coming in. If anyone can explain this I'd really appreicate it. I'm frustrating myself trying to figure it out.

Thanks a lot! I hope these questions aren't too stupid.

 

[Outlaws]

Hit up a community college course in your area if they have one. You might be getting in way over your head right off the bat. You will get answers hear, but to run your board and the finer details of all this is a shit load of information. Its one thing to start with a 4 track cassette or a 8-16 track digital workstation, but to build a damn studio is $money$. You don't want to buy shit you don't need or change your mind on later because something else would do the job better.

Don't get me wrong.....you will get plenty of info here, you just might want to consider holding off buying all this stuff for a little while.

 

[Scott Mellish]

Outlaws is right,
That is huge step from practically nothing to a studio...but sounds like a lot of fun!
For what my advice is worth,

1. The 24 track mixer and sonar sounds good. But you are going to need another audio interface for you mixer to run to your PC. There are hundred upon hundreds of posts on this BBS about multitrack sound cards and AD/DA converters etc. and what is right for you is different for what is right for the next person.
How many aux bus does your mixer have?

2. As for a sound booth/control room setup, I think most home studios are done with a simple multicore and box. http://www.venuemusic.com.au/Products.asp?ProdID=2245
this is an Australian site, but you get the idea.

3. This is probably way over my head, so i suggest you do plenty of research before you buy. If your mixer has built in pre's perhaps that would satisfy to begin with till you work out what you want.

Hope i was of some help
Scott

 

[mattsparks]

Thanks a lot guys. I do have experience with recording, so I'm not getting in too deep yet. These were just general questions, I'm still doing a lot of research and the like.

 

[Cyrokk]

Hello All

1) I'm going to be using a 24-Track Mixer with a Creative Sound Blaster sound card. I use Sonar 2 for a recording program. Say I am wanting to record drum tracks (I do have drum mics) and I want to record each miked drum to it's own track in Sonar. So I can mix the snare, bass, toms, over heads, etc. Can I do this with the above equipment or do I need to buy something for my computer in order to do this?

In order to have each part of the drum kit sent to an individual track on the computer, you will need a soundcard with more than two ins and more than two outs to send each track out to a separate channel on the mixer (unless you want to do all your mixing in the pc. In your case, though, you already have a mixer and I would seriously consider using that instead of a pc for mixing).

Soundcards come in many varieties, and the major factors to consider are how many ins/outs you will need, what kind of computer you have (look for driver support, as some companies do not support certain motherboard/chipsets), and price. Look into Terratec and Echo for the less expensive and more limited soundcards, and Aardvark, Hammerfall, and MOTU for the more expensive and versatile soundcards.

Cy

 

[Outlaws]

I do have experience with recording, so I'm not getting in too deep yet.

If you have already picked out which 24 channel mixing board to buy and you are still asking how aux sends and pres work then you have already drowned.

There are a lot of boards with a lot of features that look good on paper until you find you can only do one thing at a time.........or they are really only 12 tracks at 96 htz

 

[13th_Omen]

I'm going to build a small control room inside the building I'm using for a stuido

If you have a building then you are not allowed to post here on the HOME RECORDING bbs!

Just Kidding!

You are where I was like a year ago. I wanted to go the PC route but wasn't sure what all I would need to get all my 16 tracks into the computer at once. I gave up abd decided to get a Yamaha AW4416 16 track digital studio. It has all that I need and i won't have to worry about all the additional problems of a PC (soundcards, software, etc.)