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Need some advice on basic home recording

#21
OP, make damn sure you do your homework on which audio interfaces work well with your operating system. I'll repeat it again:

MAKE SURE YOUR USB INTERFACE WORKS WITH YOUR OS!!!

plenty of manufacturers will claim that their boxes work with both Microsoft OS's and Mac's, but in reality they're buggy pieces of donkey feces that will crash your computer every 15 minutes. Focusrite for example, tends to be fine with Apple stuff but will rarely if ever work on windows. MOTU gear is highly dependent upon which particular box you're using: some of the older ones only run on Mac, but I've been having great results with the new AVB model on Windows 8.

Do your homework, look up reviews on each box you're interested in, and check the product support forums for complaint threads.


As far as other gear like dedicated DI boxes goes, I'm gonna go against the grain here and suggest that you hold off on getting one just yet. It's very possible to get a great sound by just plugging straight into the USB interface and playing with the raw audio files. It will force you to experiment with EQ and compression plugins, which in turn will help you understand what they do, how they work, and how to make anything sound good. Outboard gear can wait until a few years down the line when you need that extra little bit of polish. It will be useless to you if you don't yet know the fundamentals of mixing and how to make everything jive together.

Good luck, have fun, and when you start to hit a wall (which you will), just keep on experimenting and reading until all the little pieces start to click into place. Once you get past the frustration of "Everything sounds like crap and nothing works", and start figuring out a few little things at a time, you'll be surprised by how quick you start thinking "wow, everything is sounding pretty good now".
 
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#22
I've been using the Audiobox USB and Studio one DAW and it works really well for getting song ideas down. I use the drum kit plug ins for basic ideas but you can build drum tracks with fills, intros, breakdowns etc. I mic my bass rig but also plug directly in when inspiration hits and I just want to get it captured.

(The drum plug ins are also really cool for solo practice. Sometimes I'll pick a kit/style, set a tempo and then record the jam...awesome way to song write....for me anyway)

There are a ton of tutorials online but I would suggest being patient. At first it can be a little frustrating and intimidating but hang in there and you can accomplish what you are seeking to do.

Best of luck!
 
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#23
i recently bought a focusrite scarlett 2i4 and downloaded the free tracktion 5 daw...
going bass -> zoom b1xon -> scarlett. works great (windows 7 / i5 / 8 gig ram)

i dont really have a clue about compression, eq and such, yet, but even bypassing the zoom gets me
really decent recordings and i tried a preset compressor/di patch from the zoom that kinda smoothed the signal

(and i´m also a huge noob in this regard, but basically just got it to capture ideas at home)
 
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#27
There's lots of good advice going on here and I agree with most of it - but here's my two cents worth... You probably don't need a mixer yet, you will only need one when you start to want to record multiple sources at once and even then it will mostly be for monitoring, unless you get a board that doubles up as a digital interface. Buy a good interface but don't go mad - until you start spending silly money most of the mid level kit will use the same, or very similar, A to D circuits and the mic amps are likely to be pretty good. USB 2 is fast enough and USB 3 is as good as anything so I would stick with these formats as they are universal. So long as your interface has two mic inputs (with phantom power), two hiZ inputs and a stereo input you'll be fine. Four outputs are useful but not essential. Most interfaces have a limiter of some description and this is useful for catching mistakes but should not be relied upon. For the moment, at least, you will probably be doing your compression and other treatments in software so don't worry about bells and whistles on your hardware. Most interfaces these days will do 24 bit 96kHz and, if you've got the disk space you might as well use it, but 16 bit 44.1 is fine too. I use an Edirol (by Roland) and it's great but it's over ten years old and there are loads of good ones out there. Good mics are essential but needn't cost the earth, an SM58 and a Rhode condenser or similar will get you going nicely. If you're going to be monitoring exclusively on headphones you need good, open backed ones (closed backed give you better separation when recording vocals but, in practice, this isn't usually a problem and open gives you a much better feel for stereo image and are less tiring). If you can monitor on speakers then I suggest buying a simple, cheap mixer (like a Behringer) just for monitoring through - this will give you more versatility than your AD interface and allow you to play stuff through your monitors without having your computer on for instance. Software - again there is loads to choose from and it's nearly all good. Everyone has a favourite (I use Logic - but that's Mac only) but it really is whatever you get on with. Reaper, as suggested earlier is great, rock solid and basically free, but doesn't have all the effects and instruments you get with most others (but getting more all the time - open source is great!). ProTools is expensive and used by pros but isn't all that user friendly for home use (in my opinion - plenty of people get on great with it). I suggest you start out with whatever comes bundled with your interface and, when you've got a bit of experience, you'll know what to look for. Above all, don't let the kit run your life, keep it simple and spend your time playing and recording, not poring over catalogues and rewiring! For what it's worth I'm a BBC engineer and have been recording at home since the days of reel to reel.
 
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#28
Evildrwallace said:
There's lots of good advice going on here and I agree with most of it - but here's my two cents worth... You probably don't need a mixer yet, you will only need one when you start to want to record multiple sources at once and even then it will mostly be for monitoring, unless you get a board that doubles up as a digital interface. Buy a good interface but don't go mad - until you start spending silly money most of the mid level kit will use the same, or very similar, A to D circuits and the mic amps are likely to be pretty good. USB 2 is fast enough and USB 3 is as good as anything so I would stick with these formats as they are universal. So long as your interface has two mic inputs (with phantom power), two hiZ inputs and a stereo input you'll be fine. Four outputs are useful but not essential. Most interfaces have a limiter of some description and this is useful for catching mistakes but should not be relied upon. For the moment, at least, you will probably be doing your compression and other treatments in software so don't worry about bells and whistles on your hardware. Most interfaces these days will do 24 bit 96kHz and, if you've got the disk space you might as well use it, but 16 bit 44.1 is fine too. I use an Edirol (by Roland) and it's great but it's over ten years old and there are loads of good ones out there. Good mics are essential but needn't cost the earth, an SM58 and a Rhode condenser or similar will get you going nicely. If you're going to be monitoring exclusively on headphones you need good, open backed ones (closed backed give you better separation when recording vocals but, in practice, this isn't usually a problem and open gives you a much better feel for stereo image and are less tiring). If you can monitor on speakers then I suggest buying a simple, cheap mixer (like a Behringer) just for monitoring through - this will give you more versatility than your AD interface and allow you to play stuff through your monitors without having your computer on for instance. Software - again there is loads to choose from and it's nearly all good. Everyone has a favourite (I use Logic - but that's Mac only) but it really is whatever you get on with. Reaper, as suggested earlier is great, rock solid and basically free, but doesn't have all the effects and instruments you get with most others (but getting more all the time - open source is great!). ProTools is expensive and used by pros but isn't all that user friendly for home use (in my opinion - plenty of people get on great with it). I suggest you start out with whatever comes bundled with your interface and, when you've got a bit of experience, you'll know what to look for. Above all, don't let the kit run your life, keep it simple and spend your time playing and recording, not poring over catalogues and rewiring! For what it's worth I'm a BBC engineer and have been recording at home since the days of reel to reel.
Click to expand...
I remember reading an SOS magazine and it mentioned that one of the biggest dubstep albums was made on an edirol fa66 :)
 
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