Any Advice for home studio? Options

[MoxieMike]

Hey. I have been lofting about it your forums and you guys all rock.

I am thinking about doing a home studio for my band and was wondering what you suggest. There would be guitar and vocals, some (limited) live percussion, keyboards and drum machine (midi) and some oddball instruments like cello, flute, etc etc.

I am thinking of going iMac G4 and getting some sort of USB interface (the $179 edirol looks good) and a behringer 16 channel board. (like, $250)

I would be using cubase 5.1, reason, b3 and absynth. And a slew of guitars.

Am i on the right track?

Thanks for your help.
m

[Synthetic]

well.... imac will work ok but I might suggest looking at another audio interface for it though. If you don't want to spend a lot but still want good quality and flexibilty... I would look into something like Digidesign Mbox or M-Audio interface rather than anything from Edirol. I am not real keen on Edirol stuff... I had looked into getting a USB audio interface from them a few years ago. First... they are a 'PC first and Mac later' company that has dismal mac support. Second... I compare their products to Radio Shack which makes some ok stuff but sometimes not near as good compared to other products with more features for about the same price.

Sounds like you are on the right track though. Check out www.musiciansfriend.com or www.sweetwater.com and look up their audio interfaces and then compare the prices and features to the Edirol unit you are looking at.... also... you might want to make sure you get one that has midi inputs and outputs as well to use with drum machine and keyboards.

[macmax]

Nearly, but you guys missed by a little.
USB isnt really much cop as an audio interface protocol.
It lacks the bandwidth to carry serious quality and multiple channels.
Its fine for a midi interface, but i'd steer clear of it for Audio.
If you plan on recording the band live (or at least all at the same time.) or having multiple tracks for drums, Then you need a firewire audio interface such as MOTU's 828. or 896.
These devices can transfer 8 channels in and out at the same time, allowing serious recording, as opposed to fannying about with only 2 channels of concurrent audio.
Ok so they cost alittle more, but they will do whats required of them, under any sequencer.
Be AWARE the Mbox is ONLY designed to work with ProTools! It wont work with most other packages.(currently at any rate.)
You will still need a midi interface, I'd recommend either a product from MOTU, or Emagic. I have used both the AMT8(emagic) and Midi express Xt (motu) on USB connections and they behaved acceptably.
Some of the additional cost would be saved by the fact that the MOTU has Mic inputs and so the Desk is not really required.
I'd connect a decnt set of powered monitors ( Spirit, Alesis, Mackie etc) to a pair of the motus outs.
Thus all you need is
iMac
Motu 828
Motu Midi express xt/ Emagic AMT8
Software of your choice
Active monitors.

In all cases , sadly, in this world, you get what you pay for.
The Motu enables you to record upto 8 tracks at once.
This would enable you to record the drums individually as, for example
Track 1 Kick
Track 2 Snare
Track 3 Right tom
Track 4 left tom
Track 5 Floor tom
Track 6 Room/overhead 1
Track 7 Room/overhead 2
Track 8 Bass guitar (groove led tracks.)
and then once its recorded in Cubase
you can lay down the guitar and cello etc parts.
If you have external synths you'd like to use in an arrangement, then you can patch their audio in thru the Motu 828 and record their outputs in to enable mix down within the iMac .
The quality of the audio thru an 828 is far superior to that of any USb device i've yet to hear.
Having all these Inputs and outputs might seem overkill, but i promise you, you'll never regret having them, and pretty soon you'll wonder how you could live without them!
While the internal disk is reasonably fast, if you want seriuos track counts then i suggest getting an external firewire hard disk as well.
Glyph make one that matches the 828s blue/black rack casing, as well as coming with a 4 way firewire hub to enable system expansion, such as multiple 828s etc in the future.
Again its not cheap, but has shown consistently better performance in Audio specific tests (check out Sound On Sound April 2002 issue)
The thing to remember is that its better to be somewhat over specced in ones system design than under specced.
The point being that running out of processing power or audio channels is pretty distressing, and ultimately can be restrictive creatively, but having more channels and power than you need at first allows your productions to grow with you.
The other point concerning the motu/glyph set up is that its transportable and System independant. By which i mean you can take a neat little 2/3 unit skb rack case with these in it, and plug it in to any firewire equipped mac or pc to record with, thus if you change your Computer , you dont have to change the system you use to record, which can be an issue with PCi card based systems and USB systems,
Given that all modern machines are coming with firewire and usb these days, i'd say it was a safe bet.
(also for future reference and proofing Yamahas mLAN audio networking protocol is firewire based)
.
I'd keep reading the forums for a bit before deciding.
best regards.
max

[Presto]

I'm setting up a home studio for recording only mic and line (no MIDI).
I got my material and realised that if you don't want 'shit in, shit out' you have to count on good mics - SM58 great for gigs but not good enough for recording, and you need quite a few mics for a group.
Now I've got a good mic for starters, I realised that I can record agricultural machinery a couple of miles away. So, I read up about sound insulation for studios. Seems its going to involve as much if not more cost and time than all the rest put together.
http://fr.audiofanzine.net/apprendre/dossi...ge=1&idossier=6
is a good link with plenty of advice by on setting up a studio (set up for the same needs as you but I'm afraid its in French.
Hey, if you dont mind recording only two tracks at a time, the Mbox/protools LE is great. Its nice to have it using USB as that leaves the firewire port on my G3 ibook free for a big and fast external hard drive for the music.

[kaboombahchuck]

Personally I would just run the behringer mixer strate into the sound in of the iMac (just like i have).  And then some type of firewire midi interface. I use the midiman 2x2 USB interface with no problems.

[macmax]

Quote
kaboombahchuckPosted on April 19, 2002 - 7:03
Personally I would just run the behringer mixer strate into the sound in of the iMac (just like i have).  And then some type of firewire midi interface. I use the midiman 2x2 USB interface with no problems.
UnQuote
Although i dont have one, analysis of the flat panel iMac spec on Apple.com reveals that it has no stereo line audio input!
Althougfh th onlder ones did.
Further more All apples input ports only ever supported upto 16 bit/44.1 Khz , which is really not good eneough for any serious recording.
There are 2 firewire ports, so it is not neccesary to 'save ' it for the audio hard drive.
1 for the Motu, 1 for a decently fast hard drive.
like i said before, Glyph make a stunning partner for the 828.
but any FAST firewire drive (LaCie studio drive for example) will do
Even iPod can do a little multi tracking. But read the articles in April & march 2002 Sound on Sound for precise comparative results.
I am not aware of Firewire Midi interfaces as yet, it would be a bit of a waste of all that bandwidth.
Be aware again that Mbox will only work properly , if at all, with Protools LE .
This effectively prevents freedom of choice with regard to which sequencer package you end up using.
The 828 and 896 Motus will work with ALL the major Sequencer APPS.
I believe the Midiman Usb Interface is also multi platform (seqencer wise~)
But it still has the limitation of being usb.
I Must point out also that USB bandwidth must be shared with any other devices on the buss, such as mouse , keyboard, midi interface etc.
( printer, scanner, camera blah blah)
Given firewires much greater transmission bandwidth i suggest you ignore USB for Audio.
max

max