Getting started: I have some ideas, I need your advice

Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 9:46 pm

I going to start recording on my notebook and I have some ideas on how and what I need to do this. I have a few questions and ideas I'd like to run by everyone to see if I'm on the right track. I wasn't sure whether or not I should post this here or in the DAW forum but I'm going to cover both so I figured I'd post here where its more populated.

Here is what I've got and what I've planned for so far. The Notebook is a Gateway MX7525 with and Athlon Mobile 64 4000+, 2.59 ghz CPU, 1 gig of DDR RAM, and 100 GB hard drive at 4200 RPM. These specs should be ideal for audio recording allthough I might add on another 512 mb of RAM. I intend to purchase the Mbox 2 Factory Bundle for my audio interface. I've heard very good things about this product and it fits in my budget. So. with this in mind, here are my questions...

1.) Microphones. I plan to start out with one mic for both vocals and acoustic guitar. I know the condensor mic is prefered for acoustic guitar, how are they for vocals? Any other mics I should be looking at? I'm looking in the 300-400$ range.

2.) Hard Drives. I read somewhere in these forums that you should install Pro Tools on the internal hard drive then purchase an external drive to record music on to. Is this a good idea?

3.) Compression. The Mbox comes with JOEMEEK compression. I can't find any info on this product. Can anyone who used it give me a yeah or ney?

4.) Literature. Someone once told me at best you'll only be using about 10% of Pro Tools features. Well, I'd like to learn about this 10%. Can anyone name me some good Pro Tools literature or instructionals DVD's?

I think that is it for now, I'm sure I'll think of more as I move along.

Thank you in advance,

Nick Baltuch

Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 11:11 pm

Microphones:
I would recommend that you get two mics that have different character/sound. That way you'll have more options available.
Here's a short list of ones you might want to check out:

Audio Technica 4040 or 3035
Studio Projects C1
AKG C 3000
or on the cheap end, MXL V57...i use mine quite a bit.

Hard Drives:
You will most definitely need an external hard drive. Once you start recording you won't want to run your program, plugins and audio all from that slow internal hard drive. I use a simple off the shelf USB 2.0 external hard drive...seagate actually. Had it for a couple years now with no problems at all. I picked USB because my audio interface was Firewire and I didn't want to cram too much data over the one port.

Compression:
Your system comes with compressors and if you find those aren't doing the job you need you can always buy some new compressor plug-ins. Start with what you got and if it's not cutting it, upgrade.

Literature:
I only have a little experience with Pro-Tools and I think I've figured out 10% of it just by fiddling around. I can't really recommend anything for this because I've never really looked into it.

Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:30 pm

As the other poster stated, you need to get an external hard disk drive for your music track storage and not be using the internal system drive to record to.

There are numerous FireWire interface boxes that have multiple microphone and line input capability. Some of those have up to 10 balanced microphone inputs! And you almost don't need a mixer. Need line input's into a unit like that?? By a few DI boxes to feed the microphone inputs.

Only have a line input device? All you Need are a few extra microphone inputs? Run a DI transformer box and get a sex changer female to female XLR (as long as the DI box is a transformer unit, they are bidirectional but the active ones are not).

Or go buy a mixer like the Mackie Onyx that already has FireWire connectivity and all of the internal analog-to-digital and Digital to analog circuitry within. It will also doubled nicely as a standalone analog mixer!

I can't make up my mind
Ms. Remy Ann David

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