What to buy?

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LilGoodi2shoes

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Im looking to buy a digital 4 track studio to record some songs me and a mate are just jamming on. Im not to fussed about effects e.g various guitar sounds reverb etc as I have a line 6 pod and assume? I can still use this to get any guitar sounds I require. It would be handy if it came with a built in drum machine that can be programmed as we have no drummer and know no1 who we could get in. I have about 500 pounds to spend and was wondering what would be best for me. I have no previous experience with recording so any pointers in the right direction would be appreciated.
 
Lets see......do you have a computer? If so, you can get n-track for free (there is a forum for that) or Cool Edit which has 64 tracks, effects, and a whole lot more (also a forum for Cool Edit). As far as drum machines, I would look on eBay. Very good prices. I used to have an Alesis SR-16 which had some really good sounds, but I've heard the Boss machines are good as well. What type of music are you doing?

Peace~
 
Yeah I have a computer but thought the portable option would be better due to the size of the room me computers in an neighbours who dislike a lot of noise e.g. the vocalist warbling. The portable I could take to work where we jam. There seems to be a lot of choice of studios an I havent a clue whats good bad etc. We only want to record stuff for ourselves but I would like something with a programmable drum machine but dont know if there is a studio with this feature. Music is glammy 80's style metal btw e.g poison, ratt etc
 
Yo One Shoe for each foot:]

Get at least an 8 track box. You don't really want to bounce tracks as you will not only lose sound quality, you will lose the ability to tweak an individual track.

Say, you record guitar and drums and bass. Well, that leaves you one track open with a 4 tracker. So, you judiciously bounce the drums/bass to one track -- well, that's all right but now when you push up the fader, the bass/drums each get louder equally -- thus, you can't tweak the bass without tweaking the drums.

Hence, buy an 8 track box. I have a 16 track box but seldom use more than 8 tracks as I'm not into movie production, etc.

I also have a Yam MD8 which does a nice job but it sits in my studio most of the time resting. 16 bit CD's sound great.

Well, look around, you have many choices.

Green Hornet:cool: :D
 
Ta so any ideas which 8 tracks are good or is there somewhere I can go where this stuff is reviewed and compared against each other? I've tried some sites but I guess its a case of i'd like someone to say i've tried this this and this and this ones the best if you know what I mean.
 
I dont really use much hardware for recording as I do all of it on the computer, but try www.harmonycentral.com

They have alot of usefull info and links to help ya out.
Good luck!!

Peace~
B
 
YO 2shoes

wait, wait, wait.....You jam AT WORK?!!! Y'all hirin'?
 
We dont actually Jam while working just use the premises out of hours to crank up volume etc.. btw im from England so...
 
although not state of the art, you can pick up a used Roland VS840 on ebay these days for about $300 American. Not a bad way to step into the stand-alone recording game
 
There's the Fostex MR8 Digital 8 track, which includes digital reverb and delay. It has a USB port so that you can transfer files in .wav format to your pc. But it doesn't have a built-in drum machine.

It only costs $300 (US), which is the cheapest digital 8 track I've ever seen and outprices some 4 track recorders. I plan on getting one for songwriting and preproduction type work once my home studio is finished.

Cy
 
If you wanna go the VS studio way, I'd prefer to buy a used VS880 or even better a vs880EX on ebay. Both machines have a hard disk inside, which allows you to use better recording modes with less audio compression artefacts. I found them for down to 300€ on ebay or in these private advertising papers...

I second the opinion of NOT buying a 4-track; it simply isn't good for anything...

We play in a punk rock/thrash pop band and used 14 tracks at our latest recordings.
5 tracks of drums
2 rhythm guitars
2 accoustic guitars
bass
lead guitar
additional guitar
lead voice
background voice

This would be killing you on a four track with no v-tracks...

OTOH, some of these newer four tracks with flash cards might be very convenient to transfer to PC, so you could record your drums to the box, add bass and rhythm guitars and transfer the whole thing to the PC, do a rough mix there and record the next 3 tracks the next rehearsal... But I'd go for a vs880 or vs880ex. They're transportable and have decent sound quality. If you buy a 840, tkae care for it being the 250MB version...


Oh yes, one more thing: I'd DEFINITELY go for a machine that has some 'nice' effects in it. It's much more expensive to use external effects and you will need them after a short while. If it has some compressors - even better. You WILL need them to get a decent 'full' sound. If you record everything through an external compressor, you may get along without it... Oh yes, look for the EQ. Even though the Roland EQ is said to sound rather unmusical, it is still better to have such one than to have one with fixed settings for high mid and low frequencies and/or Q...


Ciao,

aXel
 
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