I'm thinking about buying new recording gear. This is strictly for recording my band, a handful of other friends, and to run an affordable portable recording system for local bands. I have one big question... When everyone talks about their outboard mixers, are they mixing down the feeds live and recording down to a stereo track? See, right now I record 8 raw tracks of audio to my laptop, and do all the engineering afterwards. It sounds ok but it ALWAYS has that amature sound to it. Should I try a mixer, a preamp/phantom power, and a simple stereo interface? Or should I stick to my interface and engineer after? What will give me a more true to life, studio quality recording? I have a total of about 700 bucks to spend, besides my laptop and a handful of decent mics. Any input is appreciated...
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some followup... So if you are using a mixer, im sure it is cru
some followup...
So if you are using a mixer, im sure it is crucial to have an isolated room so you get a feed of what is truly coming out of the mixer...
however, in my current situation, i cant have that... i have to record in the same room as the musicians, so the problem im running into is that i cant mix without them playing, and that obviously will bleed into what i am hearing. the outcome is always going to be off... (too much guitar, not enough cymbals, etc)
any suggestions?
If you are doing a live mix to a small number of inputs at one t
If you are doing a live mix to a small number of inputs at one time then you are very limited in what you can do even if you have an isolated room. What you need is enough channels/inputs into your recording device (PC?) so that sub mixing is kept to a min. and then you either mix in the box or you need to have enough channels/outputs from your recording device to the mixer so that you can mix with the mixer AFTER the tracking/recording has been done.
It has as much to do with your working style as it does with wha
It has as much to do with your working style as it does with what your sonic goals are and what your gear plan is. Do you do have a well thought out gear plan don't you?
I prefer the sound and working style of a real mixing console. Since I have dozens of units of hardware outboard gear that I prefer over plugs, I am forced to use a mixer so I can easily interface my outboard gear. I like many others these days, do the hybrid thing where I combine in the box (DAW) and out of the box recording, editing and mixing to achive my sonic goals. And even though there may be several conversions of A2D2A2D, my end results still sound much better than most others that prefer or are stuck to doing it all in the box.