What mixing desk, and what features are important?

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Liam_Monster

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Firstly Good Afternoon. I'm very pleased to have found this forum and can see that i'm likely to be using it a lot, so very happy to find people who have a passion for music.

I've been wanting to do some home recording for awhile and am about to purchase a mixing desk with a budget of only about one hundred english pounds sterling . . . However I don't have much of a clue about the whole area.

Previous recording i've done by plugging my acoustic directly into my sound card which is a very average at best sound blaster live . . . , however I managed to get very clear results, but recording my electric guitar in this way seems impossible as the signal is weak and full of gain.

I notice that mixers seem to be analogue, digital and often have USB, what are the benefits and weaknesses of these things and what functionality should I be looking for considering my budget?

I play in a band and we want to be able to make better recordings than we have so far.

I've been looking at two mixers on the internet the Yamaha MG8/ FX and the Yamaha MG102C (it won't let me post links but they can be easily googled).

Now these both look really similar and are a similar price, which one is best and what makes it better. Would it be suitable for my needs? I'm mostly looking at Yamaha's as I play a Yamaha APX900 and so have a lot of respect for them but maybe they're not as good at mixers and I should be looking at other brands? Any suggestions?

Anyway sorry that my first post just seems like a million questions but I'd really respect and appreciate any advice that you guys and gals can offer!
 
Any advice at all would be brilliant, i'm pretty much a beginner to it all. I'm going to be recording vocals, drums, bass, and two guitars.
 
The quality of Yamaha mixers is always good these days. No matter the size of the mixer, but you could easily try other brands like Behringer.

Plugging in soundcard....when the soundcard is 24 bits then the following must be done:

If the meter on the mixing desk is:
0VU (+4 dBu)then it should come in at -14 dBFS on the soundcard, when the soundcard is bought in the European tradezone. When it is bought in the American tradezone it should come in at -20 dBFS.
The analog meter should never come higher than +7VU, when the cliplevel of the mixer is +20dBu.

They all say that soundblaster is a bad card, I cannot verify that, and people often talk nonsense.

Analogue always sounds better.

When you are a beginner it doesn't really matter what mixer you get, as long as it is a good quality, but these days there isn't any bad quality anymore. Don't buy occasions.
 
nononsense! said:
The quality of Yamaha mixers is always good these days. No matter the size of the mixer, but you could easily try other brands like Behringer.

Plugging in soundcard....when the soundcard is 24 bits then the following must be done:

If the meter on the mixing desk is:
0VU (+4 dBu)then it should come in at -14 dBFS on the soundcard, when the soundcard is bought in the European tradezone. When it is bought in the American tradezone it should come in at -20 dBFS.
The analog meter should never come higher than +7VU, when the cliplevel of the mixer is +20dBu.

They all say that soundblaster is a bad card, I cannot verify that, and people often talk nonsense.

Analogue always sounds better.

When you are a beginner it doesn't really matter what mixer you get, as long as it is a good quality, but these days there isn't any bad quality anymore. Don't buy occasions.
Click to expand...

and................begin!
 
Liam_Monster said:
Previous recording i've done by plugging my acoustic directly into my sound card which is a very average at best sound blaster live
Click to expand...
Creative Labs isn't exactly known for quality. They mainly sell so well due to games compatibility. I would recommend some of the better Terratec or M-Audio boards instead.
I notice that mixers seem to be analogue, digital and often have USB, what are the benefits and weaknesses of these things and what functionality should I be looking for considering my budget?

I play in a band and we want to be able to make better recordings than we have so far.
Click to expand...
If it is for studio recordings only, you basically could just use a soundcard with enough channels available and mix it all afterwards on the disk. You still need mic preamps, though.
If you do live performance, there is certainly no way around an external mixer, but I haven't done this yet. Anyways, I would choose one, which let me record all the separate tracks, so that the mix can be tweaked afterwards, if necessary.
Liam_Monster said:
i'm pretty much a beginner to it all.
Click to expand...
And far too impatient.
nononsense! said:
Analogue always sounds better.
Click to expand...
For certain effects (especially guitar and synthesizer effects), I would agree, as they still didn't succeed in emulating the sound of tube amps and field-effect transistor feedbacks.
I do not agree for recording in general, though. If it is properly done, and NOT like shown in my signature, digital can actually sound really good.
 
you really didn't give a budget...a computer for live recording if "unattended" may be risky, if you want to play and record without worry, get something like a HD24 a 24 channel hard disc recorder and a good mixer that has recording channels in and out, a cheaper Soundcraft FX16 for example...then you can go back to the studio and dump the files (via lightpipe-firewire) and mix and edit. Also the harddisc will work at home with the mixer...should be less than $2500
 
Firstly thank you very much for the replies, very helpful!

My budget for the mixer is about 100 pounds (english sterling) as i'm just starting out with the whole thing and the purpose is to record passable demos for a myspace page. I'm not interested in recording live and the recording will probably be done in my secluded flat.

I'll have a look into Behringer too. The budget also isn't set in stone it's just a rough guide, if I felt that there was a huge benefit in paying more to achieve my aims of basically recording a passable demo then I would deffinitely consider it.

I'll have a look at whats out there and ask your advice on them.
 
Liam_Monster said:
What is the bus number, what does it mean?
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Substitute the word "group" for "bus" and it makes more sense. It's the ability to assign a lot of tracks to one group and control the overall level of that group with one slider.
 
Harvey Gerst said:
Substitute the word "group" for "bus" and it makes more sense. It's the ability to assign a lot of tracks to one group and control the overall level of that group with one slider.
Click to expand...

So a 4 bus mixer means you can group the inputs into controllable sets of 4?
 
ok, a few basic questions you need to answer first:


how many simultaneous recording tracks do you need?
What kind of computer (incl. detailed specs) to you have?
 
Actually it stuck me that you REALLY need to go and read a few FAQs and articles on the whole thing so you get a rough understanding of the basic components you'll need to start recording.
 
Liam_Monster said:
So a 4 bus mixer means you can group the inputs into controllable sets of 4?
Click to expand...
Yes, that's exactly what it means. For example, let's say you finally have the "perfect" stereo drum mix all set up. You can "bus" (or "group") that mix to Buses 1 and 2. Make Bus 1 your "left mix" and Bus 2 your "right mix".

Those two bus sliders would then let you raise and lower the overall level of the drums, without changing the relationship between each separate drum.
 
MessianicDreams said:
Actually it stuck me that you REALLY need to go and read a few FAQs and articles on the whole thing so you get a rough understanding of the basic components you'll need to start recording.
Click to expand...

You are completely right and I will be doing that as I'm starting to see the need. I'm beginning to realise that it's a lot more complicating than playing. But I really enjoy things like this so i'm looking forward into reading a lot more into it. I think i'm edging towards getting a Behringer mixing desk.

My current PC is an embarassing spec. It has an Amd processor which runs at 1ghz and 512meg ram. The sound card is a Creative sound blaster live, this computer might be upgraded around christmas however, I have a laptop thats a bit better (AMD 2400. with 768 meg ram, not really sure about the sound card on this one, i don't use it as the plugs broken and I haven't got round to needing it since i graduated from uni. However i'd buy a replacement plug tomorrow if i had a need for it.

We've tried recording a bit before and we did our parts separately each on their own track as a friend had a very basic setup but he didn't seem to know what he was doing either!!, it was really difficult to make it sound good and like the instruments were playing together, even though it was in time, it had a lot less punch than when played live; in future we'd want to try recording the guitars at the same time (a bass and two guitars), then add the drums and finally the vocals last. Is this a terrible way to do it?

What we'd be recording is generally a drum set, a singer, a bass, and two guitars which vary between yamaha acoustics, deans, gibson les pauls and fender telecasters, hopefully a Gretsch at some point too. Pretty regular really, i suppose we're up for finding out what the best way to record is.

Thanks again to anyone thats commented so far!
 
Liam_Monster said:
Which of these would be the better buy? They seem a bit similar to me . .

http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/14070

and

http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/5336

Perhaps the one with USB? Also i've noticed there's 4 bus mixers, 8 bus mixers etc becoming progressively more expensive, what is the bus number, what does it mean?
Click to expand...

I would certainly go for the Yamaha in this case. The preamps are clean (good thing, usually) and the overall quality of the board is built to higher standards than the Behringer. I have the smaller version of that board, the MG10/2, and it has yet to fail to impress me. I don't need anything more than that little thing for what I'm doing (solo stuff, the occasional collaboration with friends). The version you're looking at is fine for small bands like you described, just make sure you get a soundcard that has four inputs if you want to record several instruments at the same time.
 
I do like Yamaha a lot, my acoustic is the best thing i've ever bought. Is having USB connectivity a feature that would be missed though? What does it actually do ? Just transfer it to the computer without the need for a soundcard with more imputs?
 
Liam_Monster said:
You are completely right and I will be doing that as I'm starting to see the need. I'm beginning to realise that it's a lot more complicating than playing. But I really enjoy things like this so i'm looking forward into reading a lot more into it. I think i'm edging towards getting a Behringer mixing desk.
Click to expand...
Definitely read into it more before you make any decisions whatsoever. I'm not convined that a mixing desk is even in your best interest yet. There's a lot of other factors involved here.
Liam_Monster said:
My current PC is an embarassing spec. It has an Amd processor which runs at 1ghz and 512meg ram.
Click to expand...
Don't worry about it. There's nothing wrong with those specs whatsoever when it comes to basic multitrack audio rcording and editing. That's the VERY last of your worries.

And as far as the SoundBlaster, there are options out there letting you run multitracks into your computer via Firewire or USB, completly bypassing the soudcard. This is often a very good idea, as gaming audio cards, while they don't sound awful, just are not a great way to go, even on a budget.
Liam_Monster said:
We've tried recording a bit before and we did our parts separately each on their own track as a friend had a very basic setup but he didn't seem to know what he was doing either!!, it was really difficult to make it sound good and like the instruments were playing together, even though it was in time, it had a lot less punch than when played live; in future we'd want to try recording the guitars at the same time (a bass and two guitars), then add the drums and finally the vocals last. Is this a terrible way to do it?
Click to expand...
Not at all. But the question there that plays into this whole thing is just how do you intend to record the whole band at once; what recording method? If you plan on individually tracking each instrument, you're going to need to spend money on many microphones first, and this is going to cost a lot more than a few hundred dollars. if OTOH, you plan to just "record the space", meaning to set up a stereo mic pair and just hot record the entire band in stereo (which is also a valid option), then you had better a) make sure that you are in a good sounding room, and even more importantly b) make sure you guys as performers and musicians are actually ready to record, menaing not only that you guys can play, but that you can play consistantly and play to the right volume for recording (not necessarily the same thing as playing for a live audience.)

For a hundred pounds sterling you should be able to rent a halfway-decent studio and house engineer for a day. Assuming the engineer actually knows what he's doing and is not just another Internet mook with hacked software, you'll get far better results faster than trying to become your own engineer on a budget.

G.
 
The yamaha mg series are good little mixers with good sound quality. I use one and i'm surprised at the sound quality i get from it.
 
SouthSIDE Glen, you're probably right about it being better to pay for some time in a studio but i'm also enjoying the whole challenge of doing it ourselves even though it won't be as good, i enjoy playing with the equipment and have an interest in the area. I'm probably as intrigued by the recording process as I am with the playing.

I'm thinking that i'm going to get the Behringer desk simply because it has USB so I won't need to replace my sound card, a yamaha model with USB looks like it's going to cost a third more than the Behringer and because i'm not exactly expecting to record anything too exceptional I don't think it's worth paying a third more for a usb yamaha.
 
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