If you're going to be doing a lot of recording at home, you might as well upgrade to something with enough XLR inputs, like a Boss BR1600 (8 XLR ins.) It's just a suggestion- if you need to record 7-8 things at once, and you'll be doing it often, you might as well go for a real upgrade instead of a fairly lateral one.

As far as inexpensive monitors go, I've had good luck with my Event TR-5's. I think I got them for about $150 US each.

I'm not sure if you can use two US-122's at once.

Re: Home project studio- multitracking, interfaces, and moni

peterhunt wrote: Hi guys --

Our band is going to be recording a CD at home. I have a Tascam US-122 audio interface on a Windows system. We just bought a set of drum mics, and I have a few questions.

The US-122 only runs two XLR inputs, and we have to run 7 or 8 mics for the drums. I do have two powered PAs (Peavey XRD680 and Pignose PA75): will they be adequate for mixers in terms of sound quality, or do I need to buy something else? I was looking at the Yamaha MG/12 as a possible alternative, but I'm not sure if it'll be neccessary or not.

Also, I went to the store today and saw something called the Alesis MultiMix 8, that runs four XLR's instead of two. Is it worth trying to sell my US-122 and upgrade to the MultiMix? The only thing the Tascam does that the MultiMix doesn't is MIDI, and I don't use it.

In addition, our singer has another US-122 as well: would it be possible to use both of them at the same time?

Oh, and one last thing: we need a set of inexpensive powered monitors that will suffice for recording and mixing. Can anyone make a recommendation, or is anyone selling any used monitors?

Thanks in advance.

Hey Peter -

Welcome to RO (although it looks like you've been around for a little bit...)

My advice in this area is probably not what you want to hear.

I would suggest that you spend the money you were thinking about spending at a recording studio instead of guitar center. You may be able to drop $1000 to buy some inexpensive gear. Gear which, in and of itself is not great, but probably not horrible. However, do you have the knowledge to really USE the gear to its fullest potential? (The answer is - probably not. Not meaning to offend, but if you were really knowledgable of recording, you wouldn't be purchasing small interfaces, etc.)

Instead, you could take that $1000 to a studio and actually turn out a pretty darned nice recording.

Then, you could sell your CDs, make money and move on to a bigger, badder studio. Unfortunately, a bad CD can REALLY hurt a band - I would spend your money wisely...

J.

Hey, thanks a lot for your input.

We are getting about 20 hours in a professional studio in early March. We're seniors in high school, and our school does an internship program at the end of the year, and one of the options is home recording, which is why we're looking for some good home recording equipment on the cheap.

Thanks again.

I thouroughly agree with both other replies. If you do do disreguard Cucco's adivce (which I do not suggest), I would caution you in mixing externaly if you are using a soundcard. The tascam us-122 is ok for simple singular track recording or even double but when you record your drums Mixer>> interface>> Cpu then you will not be able to adjust the levels for each drum face, but rather for the whole kit... BAD idea. Its not a cheap or simple process to . Ultamately use that recording time and experiment at home beforehand to see some simple ideas you can use for that 20 hrs.
Good luck