Creating a poor mans recording studio- best options

[Heritage Softail]

Looking for a moderate priced way to record jamming or for practice sessions. Used to use an old Tascam 4 track with no frills. I am slowly setting up a music room/poor man studio. I will lay in my own bass tracks and probably use a drum machine of some sort or import tracks. I have all the guitar equipment covered and have an SM57 mic. Have about 1K to spend. What is the best way to get there.

 

[mrd]

I would recommend a decent sound card, mixer and monitors.

For mixers, you can pick up a cheap 8-track for a few hundred bucks, maybe even less. I used to use an Art 8-track mixer. It's nothing fancy, but for the purpose of patching together mics into a single L+R main output that your sound card can take, it does the job. The pre-amps aren't great but passable for sure. Also it's handy if you ever wanna use it for stuff like ripping old vinyls or tapes to your computer, or basically any application where you'd like a digital copy.

For sound cards, I would check out some of M-Audio's cheaper cards, they make some good stuff. The goal with sound cards is to get a response time that is as close to 0ms as possible. What this means is that, while you are recording, you want the lag between when you actually play to when your computer records the digital waveform to be as little as possible. I have an M-Audio Delta 1010 which is a dedicated rack-mounted sound card. It advertises a 0ms lag time, but Cubase reports it as 2ms. The cheaper M-Audio stuff will still have very good response times. For reference, most consumer-level sound cards have response times of up to 1 second, which is absolutely catastrophic for recording music. In some songs, 1 second of music can equate to several bars.

As for monitors, I also have some cheapy M-Audio ones. Looking to upgrade soon, but right now I have the LX4 set. They were a few hundred bucks. They aren't too bad. I would think of them as a spruced up pair of stereo speakers. I would suggest going to the local audio shop and asking to hear some monitors in action. My local Long & McQuade has a "monitor wall" with various pairs of monitors hooked up and ready to listen to. That way you can just come in and say "my price point is $xxx, show me what you have" and they will show some options for you.

I think you should be able to nail down some decent gear for $1000. I reckon the mixer should be cheapest.

Also, a good computer is necessary too. Keep your HDDs defragged on the regular, and a fast CPU with as much RAM as you can throw at it is good. Also, schedule your CPU to prioritize background tasks (IE: incoming audio streams from the sound card), rather than programs.

 

[spanny]

Line 6 toneport

 

[iFreedom]

Build your own pc, about $600. Buy a DAW, although I've heard, but don't endorse, that you can torrent this. Get some plugins, i.e. reverb, delay and compression. Get an A/D converter just under $100. You are golden and you can do worlds more than with your old 4-track. I know because I used a fostex 4 track with a dr550 drum machine for years. You know, lay 3 tracks and bounce to track 4?! hahahah. DAW, like 32+ tracks - no bouncing req'd!

Remember latency kills.

build pc - $600
maudio pre - $120
sonar studio DAW- $100
plugins - sky's the limit on these
monitors - $200
ezdrummer - $?
prices in cdn

of course many options out there including mac instead of pc - for the trendy type :wink:

have fun

 

[mrd]

ezdrummer is about $180 CDN.

 

[toneguy86]

I don't record a ton of stuff--have a few multitracked personal projects and lots of 2 or 3 track band projects, single tracked rehearsals and demos, etc.

I paid around $120 for a Lexicon Alpha interface and (I know this is not perfect, but it works) just went into what was at the time the only computer in the house (a Dell). It comes with a free copy of Cubase LE. You get something like 2000 uses. It'll be awhile.

I use my regular band SM57s and 58s and while it isn't perfect, it works for what you want.

Examples on my band webpage: www.bigroadband.com

Mark

 

[scottywompas]

I haven't personally used it yet but Reaper is free to try and only $60 to buy.

I here good things about it's capabilities.

Scott

 

[gonzo]

reaper is a good choice.


it's not super powerful, but it IS a good clean platform, that gets you fully into the PC side of things, with plugins and everything that is 'in the box'


but being tied to a PC means you can't go to the drummers house to capture his drums as easily as taking a portable rig.

lots of roland and yamaha and tascam portable hard drive all in one units are out there....

if you go that route, you get the mixer, preamps, inputs, effects, all built in and portable.

if you do this, look for units that can output and record UNCOMPRESSED data (not sound compression, DIGITAL DATA compression) in the form of 24 bit files, out to a computer, then you can mix ITB

 

[Heritage Softail]

Found this one: Tascam DP-02 Portastudio 8-Track Hard Disk Recorder with CDRW
Two XLR inputs / EQ frequency button for finer control over the mix / Headphone output / 40GB Internal Hard Drive / Includes two effects.

$399 and with my $50 coupon.. $349 is bearable. Is this thing any good?

 

[gonzo]

Eight-track recording at uncompressed 44.1k/16-bit audio quality


that's not very good.

24 bit is considered 'acceptable' these days....
yes, you burn redbook to 16 bit, but that's not the point.
the headroom of 24 bit is vastly superior to 16 bit.

for doing demos, and NOT finished product, this would be fine.

 

[kiff]

Those harddrive recorders are cool because they're portable, but I'd really recommend going pc. I think you'll be glad in the long run if you do. It's soooo much easier and you have a lot more control over automation, millions of plugins for effects or virtual instrument (syths, drums), etc...

I'd get something like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/PreSonus-Firestudio-Project-Computer-Firewire-Interface_W0QQitemZ160417476278QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item2559a06eb6

and for a DAW Reaper is pretty cool and practically free (the demo is fully functional).

 

[gonzo]

kiff-
that's kinda what i was suggesting, to enhance what you're saying:


get a portable daw, that can output 24 bit uncompressed WAV files.

use the DAW to do the audio capture.

USE a PC setup, to the do the mix.

using something like REAPER is cheap and a great start into DAW software.

then, you've got a dual setup that works together, or seperately.

getting the portable daw, allows you to (temporarily) avoid having to buy mic preamps, mixers, patchbays, digital convertors, effects units, and all that.


being able to output wav files, dump them into a nice DAW, lets you do the mixing with complete control and automation (depending on the DAW) and allows you to send tracks back and forth to other guys working with wav files in PC's.....
all that stuff.

 

[gonzo]

but just to be clear, and the point i think kiff was making...

the PC setup is almost always superior to the portable units.


i work in SONAR, i like it a lot.

there's lots to consider, when you put together a more pro-leaning rig...

but for 'poor man', i think the portable mixed with the pc based mixing software is a pretty good setup.

 

[cremona]

mac and garageband

 

[Heritage Softail]

but just to be clear, and the point i think kiff was making...

the PC setup is almost always superior to the portable units.


i work in SONAR, i like it a lot.

there's lots to consider, when you put together a more pro-leaning rig...

but for 'poor man', i think the portable mixed with the pc based mixing software is a pretty good setup.

I have this laptop, pretty new. I will start looking into this PC based stuff and soak that in for a while. Lots of new info.

Thanks to all that contributed to this thread!

 

[paintballnsk]

define poor? Poor can easily be a $60 preamp, outputted to your computer's mic input into audacity.

Get a Presonus 1394 firewire, comes with cubase LE and bunch of other stuff to get your started for like $200

You need a decent computer. doesn't have to be super, but whatever it is, go buy a TEXAS INSTRUMENTS CHIPSET FIREWIRE CARD. If you can't read the caps on that, then give up now, you might as well go use your little sisters cassette recorder. They only cost like $40-60, make it happen. Whether you go steinberg path or digidesign, you're going to NEED this card or something absolutely compatible with whatever interface you decide on using.

Now you need a condenser, I don't know, something that costs more than $40 will get you started. And get an SM57 off ebay for like $50 to $75. You can record anything with an sm57, sometimes not as well as others, but it will "work" for everything, but excels in snare and guitar cab micing and some other things.

That's about bare-bones for a piecewise recording setup. If you want to record drums you're going to need a better mixer and more mics, or go buy some triggers and a brain and midi output to ezdrummer lite (comes with cubase le).

Next best bet is to go buy any one of these:

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/recording/studio-recording-packages

Eventually your stuff will get as good as it can get for a demo until you dump a few hundred into sound conditioning a room and getting better mixing monitors.

The beauty of the new digital recording age is that anyone can setup a really decent studio for less than $1500, as opposed to half a million. The rest comes in experience and time. $50,000 in studio equipment, sound conditioning, and software will let you produce pro quality tracks in hours. $1500 in recording gear will get you most of the way there but will take you longer and frustrate the crap out of you.

I still have a lot to learn. It all depends on what you want to get done. Most basic of basic setups, I wouldn't go less than $500, or you're better off using Audacity and your computer's microphone input.

 

[Heritage Softail]

I am looking at the 750 number, already have a laptop, SM57. Unfortunately don't know ANYTHING about using a PC for mixing/recording. Just another thing to learn. I do know how to program in Visual Basic and a little about networking. I will read up on Steinber and Digidesign. My guitar instructor does some studio recording. I will hit him up also for some ideas. Thanks for the chipset info.

 

[paintballnsk]

Well being a VB programmer is certainly not going to help you use a DAW any better than a trained monkey haha.

I've had nothing but bad luck with laptops and audio interfaces. I guess you could try an external texas instruments firewire card in the laptop, but don't hold your breath. I got one laptop working OK with protools and cubase, but when I tried getting to work with midi or any midi driven instruments like BFD2 or Sampletank, forget it.

Recording and mixing.. you can learn the basics pretty quick if you have a friend that is willing to sit down with you and go over all the basics. Short of that it just takes a lot of playing around and experimenting.
I got a lot of help from a friend that ran a home studio in midstate new york. He had about all the same stuff I did, but he could mix really well. I could ask him 100 questions and have him listen to 100 tracks and get feedback, but if you can get someone to sit with you for an hour in your own studio and show you how to get things going, it's priceless.

 

[gonzo]

i use a pci card.

don't have any firewire.

don't need it.

 

[Heritage Softail]

i use a pci card.

don't have any firewire.

don't need it.

Change of topic.

Did you guys mix any of your CD? I have hit your links and the Bats Brew stuff sounds pretty good. You guys have a solid groove and tight sound.