Help with my band's Recording Setup!

[ibanez4life SZ!]

Hey guys! Not sure that this is the right place for it, but hopefully I can get some help!

So, I sat down with my drummer, and we decided it is finally time to invest in a good recording setup.

My original plan was to do this:

Buy a Apple laptop.....use a presonus firebox as an interface, each band member would buy his or her own mics....guitar would go into pic input 1, drum mics, mixed down with a mixer, into mic input 2, and bass either direct (3 or 4) or miced with the bass drum mic after words.

The advantages of that setup I saw was that each instrument would record as its own track, for simpler editing and fixing. All the editting would also be digital.

Now, this was my optimal plan, but we really want to get the recording setup together within the next week or two, and I will not have the funds for the laptop for quite some time, so we need to find an alternative.

What would you guys recommend? I have thought of a few alternatives....please either comment on these, or share and idea of your own!

- Get the identical setup mentioned, but work with our desktops for now, and later just use it with the laptop when we get it.

- Get a digital recorder (I have a few questions with this one....)
- This way, can instruments be recorded as seperate tracks, and then layered (each member lays his part down while listening to what has already been done so far).....or does it all record as one track? Is there any way we could export the seperate channels as tracks onto a computer to be editted?

Help me out guys! We want to go get all this stuff this weekend, so all help is greatly appreciated!

 

[ibanez4life SZ!]

No one that can help with recording setups here?

 

[sideburns]

I used ProTools LE with an MBox interface on a Powerbook G4 to do this entire recording.

www.myspace.com/dttk

If you have a desktop, use it. no sense in spending a load if you already have a computer. I did drums into a mixer and out into the interface, so I had to "premix" them. everything else was from mic's into the interface, and mixed down after that. It's not the best recording, but not bad for my first attempt. I really didn't like working with a digital recorder. I've tried just laying down ideas for songs in the past on one and I hated it. But then again, I don't know that much about recording yet. It also depends on how great of a recording you are going for. It's really hard to edit drums if they are just 2 tracks; left and right on the recording. Sorry if this wasn't any help.

 

[ibanez4life SZ!]

No problems with the Mbox? I've heard some bad stories.....

 

[ned]

I use a silent PC (www.mini-itx.com) in a 1U rack case with Cakewalk ver. 9 in the rehearsal space and use Sonar 3 to mix and edit. I use a Delta 1010LT to capture everything a once.

2 overhead drum mics and a kick mic
guitar direct
bass direct
3 vocal mics

 

[Boogie4Life]

Not to throw a wrench into your time frame here,but you MAY want to talk to some studio engineers in your area {if any} and pick their brains.Tell them what your looking to acheive with your $$ budget and see what some of these guys suggest. Some of them wont give you the time of day but some guys will not only give you ideas but might help you with your first session.Unfortunatley as far as I went into digital was Adats. The point is see if you can hookup with a few guys that do this for a living,tell 'em whatcha your trying to do and give them your budget then go from there.You may have to wait another week to buy the stuff but it would be well worth the wait in the long run.

 

[Elpelotero]

our singer is an engineer freak and he bought the DIGI002 by Digidesign, which comes with a protools pack...its basically the top of the line in terms of quality (not channels!)..granted there's a few things out there possibly better, but this is generally considered the industry std.

don't buy a computer if you already have one! most can run protools and if not, a cheap ram upgrade or w/e you need is easy to do. instead, i suggest you invest into the pro tools program (w/ plugins if you're really serious) and a really good digital mixer...digidesign, mackie, etc. i'd shoot for about 1-2grand for all of this. most computers work fine. you may need a bigger harddrive depending on how many songs you want to do.

basically with this mixer and the program we can each record into a separate channel....we can have kick drum, snare, cymbals, etc, all on separate channels! sweet stuff! then bass, guitars, vocals, etc, etc, each own channel. once you record a piece/s, it is very easy to go back and layer over a track to fix up mistakes etc. very very easy. i don't know engineering and i picked this program up very quickly. it will do ALL of the things you can dream of. unlimited experimentation and won't go out of date for a while (like your mesa!)

and yes you can export the tracks.

 

[ibanez4life SZ!]

Sounds good guys!

Any opinions on the presonus firebox? Or M-audio firewire interface ($300)......I think I would be going with one of those in the setup.....

Keep the help coming! Everything so far has been great!

 

[JoeVFR]

Ibanez,
I have been looking into a digital recorder myself. My band spent a little time in a studio so I picked the engineer's brain. He was pretty impressed with the DAW's (digital audio workstation) It's in all in one unit, so you won't have software compatibility issues. You can record up to as many as eight tracks at a time on most of them. They have their own effects and with the Roland VS series, you can also install third party effects. The cool thing is that behind every track, you have virtual tracks. Let's say your guitar is on track 8. If you don't like your solo, you can use track 8 virtual track #2 and re-record it. You can do this up to 10 times without losing any of your other takes. That's the beauty of digital. The computer setup you're looking at would do that as well. I just like the DAW's because they are more portable and you don't have interface issues. Many of the units come with up to 24 tracks. But, you can't record that many at once. I think at the most, you can record 8 at once. Most of them also allow you to burn a cd when you are finished recording.
Good luck.

 

[ibanez4life SZ!]

Sounds good!

We're still looking around......haven't made a concrete desicion yet, though I think I'm leaning towards the laptop route.....just seems like where most recording is going now.

 

[psychocircus]

Sorry for piggybacking on these thread but...

I am looking at buying a Deltra 1010LT to record my band live direct from the mixing desk. In a beefy machine (P4 3Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 400Gb HDD) would I have any trouble recording all 8 tracks for 2 hours straight? Or am I likely to lose synch?

 

[ibanez4life SZ!]

One last question....

I am stuck between the presonus firebox and the mackie onyx 400F.....

What are you opinions on the two? The mackie is pricier, but I think I might just lay out the cash for it....

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Mackie-Onyx-400F-10-Channel-FireWire-Interface-with-192kHz-Output?sku=180311

Opinions?

 

[barneyc4]

I currently have a laptop and a Shure SM57 mic. I want a simple laptop recording rig. Have you found yours?

 

[ibanez4life SZ!]

Well, all you have to look for is a firewire interface (or another type, but firewire seems to be the best way to go!)

I think I'm going to go with the Mackie I mentioned earlier....better quality, and more options should I need them in the future.

Something smaller, and less expensive, would be the presonus firebox!

 

[paleamberglow]

i am an audio engineer so hopefully i can help you out. everything you mentioned sounds good, although I'm not sure about the Firepod and mixing down the drums to one track. For one thing , if you absolutely have to mix them down, do it in stereo / 2 tracks. You should consider the Mark of the Unicorn 828mkII which is what I have... it can record up to 20 tracks at one time which is plenty and I can record each drum and the cymbals independently w/o mixing down. then i can eq and edit each drum via software after it's recorded. It's only $150 more than the Firepod. The advantage of the Firepod is that the mic preamps are a little bit nicer and you actually have more 'preamps' per se. with the 828mkII you get 2 mic preamps, and the rest of the inputs are 1/4" with no preamp, so you would need to feed the tracks into the 828 from an external mixer with those inputs. I think the manufacturer "Echo audio" makes another firewire interface with a few more inputs than the firepod. hope this helps, -david

 

[ibanez4life SZ!]

I don't think I would be going with the firepod one way or the other....if anything, it would be the firebox.....

How does this look? It seems like it would do the job very well:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Mackie-Onyx-400F-10-Channel-FireWire-Interface-with-192kHz-Output?sku=180311

 

[paleamberglow]

sorry, i misread your post where you said 'firebox', i thought you said firepod..hehe..

that mackie unit looks like it would be a really solid piece of gear plus you get a lot of extras with it. but as far as features go it's not that much better than the Firepod... i think the only differences are that it can do 192 khz sample rate (firepod only goes up to 96k) and it has channel inserts on the first 2 preamps. But if you really don't need / want more than 10 channels to record your band, either piece would be great for you. the firebox is great too but only has a total of 6 inputs.

still, i think if you're gonna be spending around $700, you should check out the MOTU 828mkII

cheers

 

[ibanez4life SZ!]

Thank you very much for all your help! It seems as it will be either between the Mackie or Motu! I'll be sure to look into them! I looks like I'll be taking the trip today! I'll reply on how all goes!