Any advice welcome.
I'm looking to upgrade from a mickey mouse soundcard to either an Maudio 2496, Tascam US-122, Line 6 Toneport UX2 or similar.
Rig will be - RODE NT3 and a few SM58s, thru Behringer Eurorack UB802 mixer (if required), into one of the audio interfaces described above, and finally into Cubase or similar. Monitoring via low quality comp speakers and good AKG K141 Studio Cans.
Recording acoustic, electric and bass guitars and vox. Both miked amps/cabinets and DI.
My question is - Does this sound like a good setup given the small potatoes budget I obviously have. Can anyone recommend a better (or alternate) audio interface out of the 3 mentioned above?
Most recording will be one at a time / layered, putting down 2 tracks at once only rarely. However, in future I'd wanna be able to modestly record a rock drum kit (albeit with more mics than stated above).
Could I do this with the Behringer mixer in conjunction with either the Maudio 2496, Tascam US-122, Line 6 Toneport UX2 or similar?
Should I find a few more hundred bucks and go for a "4 in" or better interface is my question I guess...The almighty back pocket really is against it at this stage though.
Cheers.
Comments
If you get either the US-122 or the Toneport, you can scrap the
If you get either the US-122 or the Toneport, you can scrap the Behringer. Both the toneport and the 122 have built in instrument inputs and preamps. The Behringer mixer will just add noise and clutter. If you decide to go with the 2496, invest in a decent tube pre and again, forget about the Behringer mixer.
If you listen to the Toneport soundclips, read the gear notes. They use a Rode NTK which is a real valve condenser that has it's own power supply. That's how they got those sweet vox. The amp tones were also partly the result of the variax. Not to mention, they had those clips mastered for streaming by a qualified ME. The only reason I'm saying this is, don't expect to get the same results at home necessarily. They did some serious prep and tweak to get those results.