Recording Gear

*Tripper*

I'm in the market for a good recording thingy that'll record drums, guitar etc.

Have a budget of about 1000-1500 and willing to spend that much if it will get me a decent piece of kit. DOnt have a clue what to ask/look for? 8 track with a cd burner maybe?

Any help/links appriciated!

Royale with Cheese

Check out www.musicstore.de or www.thomann.de

For that budget you'd get more than 8 tracks. Have a 12 track with a cd burner. It's a Zoom, entry level really. It's decent enough for making demos, but that's all. Wouldn't get any real decent recordings out of it. You might want to get yourself some decent microphones to record with too.

TelePaul

Boss 16 Track CDR I think. But bear in mind most of these studio-in-a-boxhardware stuff will only give you about 8 pre amps and the rest line-level and stereo inputs. So if you want to track a band at once, You'll have about 4tracks for the drums, 1 for bass, 1 for lead, 1 for rhythm and 1 for vocals. That's how I'd do it. But that's assuming your set on hardware recording. Most of those multitracks are pretty good, with alot of effects and processing built-in. Only thing is, editing is harder

Software recording is a different story altogether, and if you have a pretty good PC at home, I'd recommend going down this road. Its so much easier to edit something when its represented visually in front of you. Theres also a huge amount of free software applications available to you to augment your set up.

Basically how good your recording sounds depend on the following; and not all of them can be bought!

Qulaity of musicians
Knowledge of the person mixing
Good quality instruments
Good quality Microphones
Good quality pre-amps.

DublinWriter

TelePaul wrote:

Software recording is a different story altogether, and if you have a pretty good PC at home, I'd recommend going down this road. Its so much easier to edit something when its represented visually in front of you.

Latency can be a big problem with software based solutions if you are adding lots of effects to channels in real-time.

Protools is an industry standard for pro-level recording. Last time I looked you could download their software for free, which might get you going, the hook being you'll need to buy their hardware if you want to do anything a bit more polished.

As one poster said, don't skimp on the mics. I used to mic my kit up with Shure SM58s. SM57's can be really good just on the bass drum if you want to get anal.

It would also help you if you studied some of the technical basics of recording, such as using compression to make the overall sound more powerful and exciting.

Best of luck!

TelePaul

DublinWriter wrote:

Latency can be a big problem with software based solutions if you are adding lots of effects to channels in real-time.

This used to be a huge problem with USB 1. Now most multitrack interfaces - like a PreSonus Firepod - are firewire based. Most also have a direct monitor function so you can monitor the dry signal.

frobisher

I reckon try and post here.