Home recording studio queries

Can you run 2 of the same cards? And my motherboard will be an AN7 (my old NF7 died), which is meant to be effectively NF7-S revision 3, and as it has 5 pci slots, if I ever needed too, I could run quite a few sound cards... (likes the sound of 40x sound input/output!) lol
 
Codmate said:
Lol - well you're half-way to monoblocks, which is *very* audiophile - lol ;)
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You know you want to tell me what monoblocks are, so i can learn :D , and yes, they sound nice, despite the lack of stereo, as both sides are coming out the one speaker, but the small practive bass amp is very nice for treble and mid, and my Trace Elliot with the midshift does the Bass and Middle elements very nicely, sounds crap on its own for singing though
 
Alexrose1uk said:
Can you run 2 of the same cards? And my motherboard will be an AN7 (my old NF7 died), which is meant to be effectively NF7-S revision 3, and as it has 5 pci slots, if I ever needed too, I could run quite a few sound cards... (likes the sound of 40x sound input/output!) lol
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Yeah - there's room in the driver control panel for four all together:
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~thepark/andy/guitar pics/maudiocontrol.jpg
 
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Alexrose1uk said:
You know you want to tell me what monoblocks are, so i can learn :D , and yes, they sound nice, despite the lack of stereo, as both sides are coming out the one speaker, but the small practive bass amp is very nice for treble and mid, and my Trace Elliot with the midshift does the Bass and Middle elements very nicely, sounds crap on its own for singing though
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Lol - have a look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fidelity#Modularity

When you have quality monoblocks and Quad ESL 989 speakers, give me a call 'cos I'll want to have a listen. I may drool on your carpet though :p
 
DO NOT BUY CREATIVE FOR MUSIC PRODUCTION.

You could try the M-Audio 192... but that also depends on how much you want to spend. The best cheapest option is the 192 and this should get you through. You will want between 2 and 4 HDs in that computer and since you are using Cubase SX3 you will need OODLES of CPU, in fact dual core would be good. Dual core and RAID 0 of 2 sets of 2 HDs (one set for boot, the other for audio)

Go for an Audio-Technicha condenser mic - maybe get 2 AT4040s or AT4050s depending on budget (they're not cheap)



One question you might want to ask yourself is WHAT WILL I GET FROM MY STUDIO?

This sounds stupid but if you only need to turn out material that will be demo-quality you might be doing yourself an injustice making things so complex becasue there is a lot that can be said for having a very, very simple setup... if you want to learn to be your own engineer then you might want a more complex setup.

You would definately want a control surface, but this is where big money comes in. If you can afford it, it might be an idea to go straight to Digidesign Digi 002 which is a great control surface but it would mean switching to Pro Tools. Mackie and M-Audio produce similar but cheaper units. Even Behringer make a workable control surface that can be fun (I have one, but never use it) although it doersn't have touch sensitive faders but its really cheap and reliable (a little noisy though).

http://www.dv247.com/invt/23484/
Get a little midi device, i've got this and its lots of fun and very convenient...
 
Codmate said:
Yeah - there's room in the driver control panel for four all together:
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~thepark/andy/guitar pics/maudiocontrol.jpg
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Just had a brief search and there sem to be some problems with multiple 1010s:
http://www.sound-on-sound2.infopop.net/2/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=215094572&f=351097254&m=3713088876

There are some pretty ****** off people there - lol.

Anyway - it seems as though the problem may have been resolved with the latest drivers - and some people seem to not have the problem to begin with.

Might be worth making a post on the Sound On Sound forums about it if this is a deal breaker!
 
Goddamnit, this persuit of audio playtime is going to sap my life almost as much as pcs, and having girlfriends do at this rate...dear god....my entire young life focused....god...focus....sounds abnormal...and 4 cards would be very nice. If you can use about say 6 input per card, and had 2 cards, thats still a nice 12 inputs, although I think from a small badn, and starting off, 1 would be fine, as you could record vox, 2 guitars, bass, and 2 sides off drums from the mixing desk to the card, although it'd likely be about 10 input into the mixer lol (3 singing inputs - 1 main, 2 backup, 1 each for both guitarists amps, and 1 for the bassists amps, along with 3/4 for the drum kit).

Are there any sites with a good diagram or instructions of how to mix a drum kit, and how does one inside bass drum, one inbetween smaller drums and cymbals (one on left side, and one on right), and one slightly above them drums/cymbals in the midde. Sorry about the lack of naming preciseness, my enthusiasm for music overshadows my patience or technical knowledge lol
 
cleanbluesky said:
You will want between 2 and 4 HDs in that computer and since you are using Cubase SX3 you will need OODLES of CPU, in fact dual core would be good. Dual core and RAID 0 of 2 sets of 2 HDs (one set for boot, the other for audio)
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A little above my budget I'm afraid...might be able to afford some new 17" monitors for it, and perhaps another harddrive, but as it was running the cracked version of cubase I ahve fine processing 8 midi channels I was hoping it would be fine...the write speed of my HD is about 30MB sec, and read speed of 50mb/sec so I was hoping that would have been fine, I dont really have room in the budget to get an uber spec pc for it, just a better sound card.
 
Alexrose1uk said:
Goddamnit, this persuit of audio playtime is going to sap my life almost as much as pcs, and having girlfriends do at this rate...dear god....my entire young life focused....god...focus....sounds abnormal...and 4 cards would be very nice. If you can use about say 6 input per card, and had 2 cards, thats still a nice 12 inputs, although I think from a small badn, and starting off, 1 would be fine, as you could record vox, 2 guitars, bass, and 2 sides off drums from the mixing desk to the card, although it'd likely be about 10 input into the mixer lol (3 singing inputs - 1 main, 2 backup, 1 each for both guitarists amps, and 1 for the bassists amps, along with 3/4 for the drum kit).

Are there any sites with a good diagram or instructions of how to mix a drum kit, and how does one inside bass drum, one inbetween smaller drums and cymbals (one on left side, and one on right), and one slightly above them drums/cymbals in the midde. Sorry about the lack of naming preciseness, my enthusiasm for music overshadows my patience or technical knowledge lol
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Personally I would track the drums first on their own with a small set-up like this. You could record the bass at the same time (run it straight into the desk - you can always re-amp (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun04/articles/qa0604-3.htm) or re-record the track later) so the drummer has something to work with.

Then overdub the rest of the band.

It's not as nice as recording live - but you will get seperation as a bonus.

Here's a random article about micing drums from the interweb:
http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/pages/placement.htm
 
Thanks, and yeah, sounds like an idea, bass to mixing desk...would give a cleaner sound possibly, and if I used a pedal, I could use it to boost gain slightly :), and then gain it up on the mixer.


Anyone know if these monitors are any good?

Alesis M1 Active MK2 (pair) , not sure if active is good for monitors, as it might distort the true sound, or augment it, which you dont want.
 
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Alexrose1uk said:
Thanks, and yeah, sounds like an idea, bass to mixing desk...would give a cleaner sound possibly, and if I used a pedal, I could use it to boost gain slightly :), and then gain it up on the mixer.


Anyone know if these monitors are any good?

Alesis M1 Active MK2 (pair) , not sure if active is good for monitors, as it might distort the true sound, or augment it, which you dont want.
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Active monitors are actually pretty much the norm in home-recording these days.

All 'active' means is that they come with their own amp.

It saves finding an amp that matches well with your chosen speakers :)

They make a very uninteresting sound - but one that is perfectly usable for mixing with.

It's also worth looking at KRK, Tannoy and many others to be honest. I just happen to think the Alesis are a great starter monitor. Everybody has their own favorites though :)

BTW - the gain on your mixer's pre's will be more than enough for the bass :)

Many people prefer to run the bass right into the desk for recordings. It all depends on the quality of the desk and the sound you want.

I like to mic up the bass acoustically and run a line-in to the desk if the mucician is using a pick for instance. That way you get some good attacking string noise.

As you experiment you'll find your own ways of doing all this stuff.

Just buy the bare minimum to start off with and after a few months of mucking about and asking questions you'll know exactly where you want to go with your gear and methods.
 
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As for your desk to put everything, I'm going to say build your own, it will be a great project. You can buy racking strip pretty cheaply, just build yourself a wooden box wide enough for the gear and screw some rack strip onto the side of it.
 
OK - bear in mind I know next to nothing about desks - and I could be wrong, but the PA12 looks as though it's designed for live use and, apart from the four effects sends, doesn't have an out for each channel.

If I'm right, this means that you're going to be very limited with this desk.
Also the pre's are not going to be suitable for recording - they will sound very brash and in your face as they are designed to go into a PA.

I would seriously look at getting some outboard pre's instead, or at least a different sort of desk.

If you were to get the 1010LT you could record four things at any one time on to seperate track, with just two external pre's as there are two (probably fairly poor - but usable) pre's on the card itself.

If you really feel the need to push faders, instead of a desk, you could get a control surface that hooks into the Cubase's mixer.

In the age of PC recording these control surfaces seem much more useful to me than traditional desks, which were really designed to be used in the world of tape, where mixing was done on the desk and not in software.

If you get a traditional desk that is suitable for your recordings (ie - one that has an out for each channel), you're turning your expensive and highly functional software into an expensive tape machine, and unless you have a really lovely desk with great pres and nice EQ, the software is going to be preferable IMO.
 
Ok, there are some beautiful speaker monitors made by M-audio you can get. They are about £50 a speaker and i recommend getting 2 (to make 2.0). They have great frequency response and many studios i have been in use them:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/DX4-main.html

For microphones, use one SM57 for snare and high-hat (angle it so it picks up the snare and high-hat at the same time. Use an AKG 112 for the bass drum (use a resonant head with a hole in preferably). Overhead condensers would be ideal, 2 maybe 3 will be good. I have used two drum overheads which worked perfectly and they are the Behringer Two-mic pack of condensors retail about £35. SM58 for the vocals (if recording live) or if you're multi-tracking just use the SM57 you have for the snare and high-hat to record vocals (no circuitry difference between the two microphones just the 57 is directional).

The M-audio Delta 1010 it a 10 in and 10 out PCI card (unless you get the rack version). It's cheap - about £135 on ebay. Sounds great? Wrong. It has unbalanced inputs, meaning they are not balanced and have terrible interference. I recommend the Terratec Phase 88. It has a breakout box with 8 ins, 8 outs, 1 midi in and 1 midi out. They are balanced jacks (or so i recall) and it's not much more expensive than the m-audio delta 1010:
http://audioen.terratec.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=8

With a sound card like this you will only need a mixer for stereo recordings (mainly drums, sometimes guitars if you want left and right channels). With the drums you can either use a mixer to mix down the 5 or so microphones you have on the kit into left and right channels (stereo) for the sound card input. If you do get a mixer i have a Behringer Eurorack mixer which works nicely (although the EQs arent very responsive but thats much better done in the software).
Bass guitars usually go direct in and sound very nice (through a tube pre-amp mind). A tube pre-amp will give you a lot of universal performance through many different instruments (Behringer Tube Pre-amp with presets is about £45).
That's all i can think of right now. I'm thinking of getting a nice audio interface for recording soon and for me its between the Delta 1010 and Terratec Phase88 - will probably go with the 88 because of it's balanced jacks.
 
Baker said:
Ok, there are some beautiful speaker monitors made by M-audio you can get. They are about £50 a speaker and i recommend getting 2 (to make 2.0). They have great frequency response and many studios i have been in use them:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/DX4-main.html

For microphones, use one SM57 for snare and high-hat (angle it so it picks up the snare and high-hat at the same time. Use an AKG 112 for the bass drum (use a resonant head with a hole in preferably). Overhead condensers would be ideal, 2 maybe 3 will be good. I have used two drum overheads which worked perfectly and they are the Behringer Two-mic pack of condensors retail about £35. SM58 for the vocals (if recording live) or if you're multi-tracking just use the SM57 you have for the snare and high-hat to record vocals (no circuitry difference between the two microphones just the 57 is directional).

The M-audio Delta 1010 it a 10 in and 10 out PCI card (unless you get the rack version). It's cheap - about £135 on ebay. Sounds great? Wrong. It has unbalanced inputs, meaning they are not balanced and have terrible interference. I recommend the Terratec Phase 88. It has a breakout box with 8 ins, 8 outs, 1 midi in and 1 midi out. They are balanced jacks (or so i recall) and it's not much more expensive than the m-audio delta 1010:
http://audioen.terratec.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=8

With a sound card like this you will only need a mixer for stereo recordings (mainly drums, sometimes guitars if you want left and right channels). With the drums you can either use a mixer to mix down the 5 or so microphones you have on the kit into left and right channels (stereo) for the sound card input. If you do get a mixer i have a Behringer Eurorack mixer which works nicely (although the EQs arent very responsive but thats much better done in the software).
Bass guitars usually go direct in and sound very nice (through a tube pre-amp mind). A tube pre-amp will give you a lot of universal performance through many different instruments (Behringer Tube Pre-amp with presets is about £45).
That's all i can think of right now. I'm thinking of getting a nice audio interface for recording soon and for me its between the Delta 1010 and Terratec Phase88 - will probably go with the 88 because of it's balanced jacks.
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You're right to be concerned about unbalanced inputs - but for a home project studio it won't make as big a difference as you might think.

Balanced inputs come into their own when you're running long cables around a large and electrically noisy studio.
Check this article:
http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ampins/balanced/balanced.htm

After looking around, I think the best option for Alexrose1uk is the M-Audio - ProjectMix control surface. He seems to want faders - and this option gives him pres, faders that interact with Cubase's mixer and negates the need for a soundcard at all.

With monitors and mics it might take him about £200 over budget, but it would be worth it IMO for the functionality. A website like Digital Villiage might even do him a discount if he bought all the gear from one place and help keep it in budget :)

The ProjectMix seems to be an uncomplicated all-in-one solution that is expandable. Nicer pre's for specific instruments can be added at a later date.

If I had no gear at all I think I might invest in something like the projectmix.
Although I'm suspicious of FireWire interfaces, the ProjectMix has had some nice reviews - so I assume it's OK.

It might be worth back-ordering the Jan2006 Sound On Sound magazine to check out the review.
 
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Codmate said:
You're right to be concerned about unbalanced inputs - but for a home project studio it won't make as big a difference as you might think.

Balanced inputs come into their own when you're running long cables around a large and electrically noisy studio.
Check this article:
http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ampins/balanced/balanced.htm

After looking around, I think the best option for Alexrose1uk is the M-Audio - ProjectMix control surface. He seems to want faders - and this option gives him pres, faders that interact with Cubase's mixer and negates the need for a soundcard at all.

With monitors and mics it might take him about £200 over budget, but it would be worth it IMO for the functionality. A website like Digital Villiage might even do him a discount if he bought all the gear from one place and help keep it in budget :)

The ProjectMix seems to be an uncomplicated all-in-one solution that is expandable. Nicer pre's for specific instruments can be added at a later date.

If I had no gear at all I think I might invest in something like the projectmix.
Although I'm suspicious of FireWire interfaces, the ProjectMix has had some nice reviews - so I assume it's OK.

It might be worth back-ordering the Jan2006 Sound On Sound magazine to check out the review.
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I had trouble just recording a guitar amp in stereo at basic volume. The sound card i was using was unbalanced and hissed like hell, i'm not sure if it picked it up in the recording as i didn't bother to listen to it i decided to use another card. That control surface looks very expensive although it's completely compatible which is nice. It's a professional looking surface but you can't really upgrade a beast like that (assuming he would want to in the future) as you'd have to buy another one completely. The only other problem is if it hits over his budget. If the threadstarter has the money ill agree and say go with the M-audio ProjectMix but if he'd like to save money i'd say take a few suggestions from this thread and get seperate cheaper parts.
 
Baker said:
I had trouble just recording a guitar amp in stereo at basic volume. The sound card i was using was unbalanced and hissed like hell, i'm not sure if it picked it up in the recording as i didn't bother to listen to it i decided to use another card. That control surface looks very expensive although it's completely compatible which is nice. It's a professional looking surface but you can't really upgrade a beast like that (assuming he would want to in the future) as you'd have to buy another one completely. The only other problem is if it hits over his budget. If the threadstarter has the money ill agree and say go with the M-audio ProjectMix but if he'd like to save money i'd say take a few suggestions from this thread and get seperate cheaper parts.
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Sounds like a dodgy card - or noise being introduced somewhere else down the chain.

Balanced vs unbalanced shouldn't make that much difference in a small studio.
The pre or desk should have balanced connectors, so it's just the connection from the pre (or desk) to card that would be unbalanced. As long as the cable isn't overly long or badly shielded no extranious noise should be introduced.

The 1010LT does have a good rep amongst home-recorders - although I'm sure the Terretec you suggested would do the job.
 
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