Re: recording novice needs help
Your timing is good- There is a lot of potential out there in the $1000 area that rivals the best we had in analog studios 20 years ago-
This group is considered the defecto standard, but would not suggest that you start posts here until you’ve picked up basics- If you just read and chase down related threads here you can find just about everything you need-
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.audio.pro?hl=en
The first thing you need to consider is the recording environment- If you are planning to record gigs and jams, there are many portable systems out there- They offer less room to grow, but can be completely workable as a learning tool- Look at Roland and Yamaha and note that you almost definitely want to record to a non-linear media (i.e. disk) instead of tape for editing purposes-
However, the most flexible and one of the most cost effect routes these days is the good old home PC- This is the way to go if you have a reasonably stable recording environment and a relatively fast computer and decent size hard drive- You burn 5mb per stereo track per min, so you really do need a lot of drive, but good news it is available and inexpensive-
IF you go this route, cubase and cakewalk make great user friendly apps that give you just about as much as you want- The industry standard is pro-tools on the mac by the way, but I don’t recommend that you go that route if you are on a budget- In reality Mac vs pc is pretty moot these days-
Next would be the input output environment and although 8 or 12 I/O is minimal for a wide range of recording opportunities (micing a drum kit can take 8 mics
, you will find a lot of 4,6 and 8 input devices in the less than $500 range- inputs are far more important than outputs these days-
There are lots of ways to get around needing a lot of inputs if you go this route- You can lay down a click track (just the tempo of the song) in something like cubase and then record a ‘scratch’ rhythm instrument- Then you can play these both back and add in a vocal, you can keep adding this manor until you get a full mix, but keep in mind, the number of inputs really only limits the number of tracks that you can record live at one time.
We used to need lots of outputs to send signals to external gear (reverb, compressors, etc) but today you can do all of this on the computer with plug ins, and there are lots of good ones out there and some of the best are actually freeware (search for voxengo and VST to get an idea)
This is what I was getting at before, you can replace a lot of real gear with virtual computer gear and this is where the most savings come in-
At the same level, you have to consider the recording environment- You will have a lot of problems recording masterable material in anything but a well designed environment due to weird things like standing waves- I wouldn’t worry about this up front as you will be in learning mode anyway- But where you really have to think this over is in the monitoring stage-
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