Basic studio equipment: what the hell should I get?

mkilly · Post by **mkilly** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 7:02 pm

Mostly I just record vocals and guitar and sometimes ukelele or cowbell or tambourine or bongos or whatever crappy percussion. Right now, I have onboard audio, and a terrible boom mic. I plan to do all editing and mixing and production on my computer. What's the best way to get audio from life to be audio on the computer? Should I get a USB sound card and is there some microphone that doesn't suck that can plug into a sound card? Should I get some widget that has a USB cable and I can record into that with whatever the hell microphones generally have as connecting cords?

So basically, what I want is a microphone, and some way to connect that to my computer. Also, if one day I should want to record electric guitar, what would be the best way to do that (presumably putting a microphone in front of an amp isn't the best way to do so)?

jack · Post by **jack** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 7:14 pm

buy a mini mac for $500 (which comes installed with garageband). get an M-Audio Quattro or ART Tube or some comparable pre-amp for about $100. get a decent large diaphragm condenser mic for about another $100. for that $700 investment, you will have more or less all you need.

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 7:15 pm

I think you want the same sort on answers that I wanted a few months ago - and a lot of helpful people threw their 2-bobs-worth in here:

http://songfight.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=257

I just recently bought a Tascam US122 - USB interface with inputs for mic and guitar
http://www.tascam.co.uk/newproducts/newprod_US122.html

Its a big improvement on my old method of plugging a cheap mic straight into my laptop. And it seems pretty idiot proof.
It also comes with a bundled version of Cubasis - which isn't idiot proof - soon I'm going to have to resort to actually reading the manual.

It cost me about AUD$300 and I teamed it up with a AUD$70 mic (halve those numbers to get a rough estimate of USD)
So far I'm quite happy with it

joshw · Post by **joshw** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 9:11 pm

The only thing you really need is a nice 2" tape multitrack. Those are all the rage these days. You'll need a mic, too, but you can just use the one that came with your computer.

ken · Post by **ken** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 10:45 am

Hey Mk,

I suggest you get an M-audio Fast-track USB:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/F ... -main.html

It is a USB deal for $99 with one mic input.

Then you will just want a condensor mic to use with it. I suggest the Studio Projects B-1. I use it all the time.

http://www.studioprojects.com/b1.html

Sells for $79. You also would do well with a Shure SM57 for $79.

Definately worth your time to buy this stuff used on ebay for cheap.

Be well,
Ken

Freddielove · Post by **Freddielove** » Sun Jan 16, 2005 4:15 pm

FWIW I have been quite happy with the Tascam us-122. From the message boards I've read on the subject, it seems to work a lot better with macs than with pcs. Also the Cubasis that comes with isn't worth much. It was almost impossible to set up and was not easy to use either. If your on a mac, Garage band is a much better way to go.

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Sun Jan 16, 2005 5:21 pm

Freddielove wrote:FWIW I have been quite happy with the Tascam us-122. From the message boards I've read on the subject, it seems to work a lot better with macs than with pcs. Also the Cubasis that comes with isn't worth much. It was almost impossible to set up and was not easy to use either. If your on a mac, Garage band is a much better way to go.

Yes - I have a PC and I am having a few teething problems with the Tascam - most noticable is a slight 'crackle' on music coming out of it. I've read that if I fiddle with buffers or something, I may be able to fix that. Whatever - I bought it to get the sound into the compuer, and it seems to be doing that job well - the crackle isn't on the actual recordings.

Disappointed to see your appraisal of Cubasis. I was hoping I had a wonderful piece of software I was just a bit to stupid to use properly. Maybe I'm not so stupid then - the software just sucks. Luckily I still have my old version of Cakewalk

Rabid Garfunkel · Post by **Rabid Garfunkel** » Mon Jan 17, 2005 1:31 pm

Cubasis, Cubasis, baker's man. Being a stripped down version of Cubase, it's got more or less the same learning curve as that application.

It takes a while, but if you've got nothing else, you can make it put out nicely enough. [/two cents]

toddlans · Post by **toddlans** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 1:12 am

get a 24bit/96k pci card (something like an m-audio or whatever) and then some kind of preamp (an audiobuddy is a good investment for 70-80 dollars, those ART tube MPs can acutally sound pretty good as a bass di box. then get either an MXL v67 or a Studio projects B1 large diaphragm condensor(these could be used for about anything), if you do a lot of electric guitar get a shure Sm57 too or maybe just the 57 at first. Then use Kristal, its free and can use VST effects. This is a very good quality setup for the price you pay. Keep in mind i'm saying this is probably what i'd go with if i wanted to keep costs at a minimum not what i'd get for the best quality, but it would be one hell of a setup for somebody that doesn't own anything yet and doesn't plan on constantly upgrading. you'd be looking at about.....
$100 soundcard
$80-$100 pre
$100 mic
roughly depending on what models you get and where. when it comes down to it though whatever will probably work good enough if you learn how to use it well (mic placement, gain management, mixing) if you put any serious money into anything i'd make it in this order Monitors>Bass traps/room treatment>mics>preamps>decent outboard compressor>convertors

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 9:24 pm

If you want to be able to record two separate tracks simultaneously and want a MIDI input (for a keyboard or drum machine), I recommend the Tascam US-224, which is the little brother of the US-428 (the box I used to record Songfight Hot and Bothered, if you remember it).

If you only need single-track recording and also want to get a MIDI controller and don't want to take up a lot of space, check out the <a href="http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/M ... l">M-Audio Ozone</a> - it's a complete (minimal) recording studio with mic, line, and MIDI inputs, a small MIDI keyboard, and stuff like that. Also it comes with a scaled-down copy of Reason, though I don't know what's been removed from it. (I just got an Oxygen8 tonight, which is basically just the keyboard controller part of that.)

Also, I agree with jack about the Mac mini if you're going to sink any serious amount of money into hardware and software. GarageBand is a surprisingly capable piece of software, and when you outgrow that, Logic Express is just phenomenal (and costs only $150 if you claim to be a student).

However, $700 is definitely an underestimate for a start-from-scratch Mac mini-based setup; you'll also need to add more memory (256MB isn't nearly enough!), you'll probably want an external firewire hard drive (another $120 or so; the internal drive is kinda slow and will fill up right away anyway), and also the Mini doesn't have any inputs out of the box so you'll need to get something for that. I'd say to get the Tascam US-224 (or 428, or Ozone, or whatever) instead of a preamp; the preamps which are built-in to these all-in-one recording interfaces are Good Enough to start with and you can always add a dedicated preamp later if you think you need it.

All of that is assuming you want to be able to do a hell of a lot of stuff though. You probably just want to add some decent recording hardware to your system so you can record vocals and guitar and mess around with other stuff, in which case I think the Tascam US-224 is enough for starters.

(Also, putting a mic in front of a guitar amp is a classic technique which works quite well, though personally I prefer just going direct from the guitar to the computer. I don't know if the US-224 has it, but the US-428 has integrated switchable DI boxes for impedance matching, and I think the Ozone does as well.)

Software-wise you can probably just stick with CoolEdit Pro for a while, and then just mess around with whatever's latest and greatest at Guitar Center or whatever until you find something you like. CEP's pretty capable as long as you don't need softsynths or MIDI.

JonPorobil · Post by **JonPorobil** » Sun Mar 20, 2005 10:05 pm

You say you want to do all the dirty work on your computer. Jack recommended a $500 minimac, but I'm going to assume you don't want to buy a whole new computer. So what kind of comp are you running? What do you already have?

I mean, your stuff sounds alright to me. I've never heard you try anything that required much mixing skill, though, so I could be wrong.

Anyway, before anyone can tell you what you need, it helps to know what you don't need.