Home Recording (taking the plunge)

[jammermatt1]

I know this has probably been addressed ad-infinitum before, but put me in the corner for not paying attention.

Anyway, what are the pre-requisites for home recording on the computer? And what do you guys use (include cost)?

What I got:

Line6 Flextone II XL, XLR outs, and I think 1/4" cable outs
Dell 4600 with Intel P4 at 2.4 GHz (new)
Ram: 256 MB DDR
Memory: 80 GB
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP
Soundcard: Soundblaster Live! with 5.1 Support

Goals: Home recording for me, and maybe burn a CD, for me.

Price Ranges: 0-100$ to start
100-500$ (later) if I can stand to listen to myself.

Thanks (Hails to WFD)
-Matt

 

[tone4days]

well .. depends on exactly what you want to record .. if you only want to record your guitar, you're pretty much set .. just fire up the wave recorder s/w in XP, plug your Flextone line out into your soundcard line in, make sure the wave recording s/w input is set to accept signal from the line in, and go man go (you might need a 1/4" to teenytiny plug adapter to get into your sound card)

if you want backing tracks, you'll be getting into some additional s/w .. i know a lotta guys like the ease-of-use of the cakewalk guitartracks package .. i am sure it's under $100 ... if you want to get into singing, you'll need a mic preamp that'll let you get the mic signal into the computer ... m audio makes a nice one that is super easy to set up (usb port) for about $150

i am sure some other forum members who do this will be along shortly to give you even more details

good luck and have fun

cheers

t4d

 

[Fresno Bob]

Get more PC Memory and maybe a seperate hard drive. The idea for best results is to keep your HDD seek time to a minimum, and if you share a partition with your OS, seek time is drastically reduced.

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Get more PC Memory and maybe a seperate hard drive. The idea for best results is to keep your HDD seek time to a minimum, and if you share a partition with your OS, seek time is drastically reduced.

I agree: Get a seperate 120GB or so hard drive and at least 500MB memory ... I only use my PC for mixing, and the complete tracks are HUGE!!