Ok, so for the past few months I have been going to my local majore chain music store, and have been eyeing the Korg D32XD 32 Track Digital Recorder. The unit is suppose to cost $2000, but their is a special sale monday, and after a discussion w/ the manager, the price is going to be brought down a few hundred. I just want to make sure that this would be a wise choice versus the DAW path, I'm dedicating a spare room to my studio. I figured, by the time I pay for a good program such as Cubase, and all the inputs and a good soundcard (also keeping in mind that I don't have a computer dedicated to just recording, making it much harder to keep free space). So is the Korg unit a good way to go, it's got a very expansive collection of on-board effects, and I've heard it's got a pretty good compressor for the unit's price. Please, put any input you may have, I want to make the right choice, price wise, and logic wise.
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Ok, so, is their anything you can suggest in that price range.
Ok, so, is their anything you can suggest in that price range. I mean, I'm willing to shed a few extra couple hundred, I'm a hard core enthusist in recording, but I've got a very limited budget and 2 and a half grand is almost the max of me, and I'm looking for the best setup, (I'm still in high school working a job with all my money going to recording gear and that is it, and I'm on the brink of a getting a recording studio internship). Keep in mind, I already have funds for all the sounds traps, etc, and condersor mics set aside.
You can build a very nice DAW rig and buy a PCI sound card / int
You can build a very nice DAW rig and buy a PCI sound card / interface for that.
A couple years ago I built an Anthlon dual 1800 processor (which are pretty antiquated now) on an ASUS mobo ... Frontier Dakota card and 2 AI3's with 2 / 80 gig WD ide drives (one swapable) and Cubase for under $2500. The system is very fast and stable ... and is still more than I need. I am sure you build something even more powerful for the same cost or even less now.
The KORGs are all right. The pres sound like ass and there's no way to bypass them .... and the dynamics processors are kind of strange and limited to only a few instances. One problem with the KORGs is they are very sensitive to how they are powered down. If there's an accidental power loss, the KORGs can completely fail, needing to be sent to LA to be re initialized and re booted. If you're lucky, you won't lose your data ... but it can happen.
The last problem I have with these kind of rigs is they are closed architecture .... What you get is what you get period. No upgrades possible. With DAWs you can wipe or swap out the drives and re install different or additional software (it is not uncommon for DAWs to be loaded with several different programs), upgrade interfaces, add hard drives and processor cards like the UAD and TC Powercore... The possibilities afforded by a computer based DAW rig, far outstrip the abilities of all the porta studio thingies.
I don't own the one you are looking at. However I did own a Rola
I don't own the one you are looking at. However I did own a Roland unit that was alot like the one you are looking at.
I used it for about a year. It was alot of fun. 1) It had the onboard effects (effects card A & B), 2) it was a harddrive, 3) it was a Roland. (I like the Roland stuff) BTW--Korg is nice also. I was really curious to see how good they (the mixer/recorders) were gonna be.
It's over all sound was small. But it was still a nice toy. I guess that's the best way for me to put it. It is a fun toy.
It's not gonna give you results that blow your fu*kin mind.
But it will get the job done and is a great way to learn. And you can always plan to upgrade in the future.