My friend is building a small home studio(in a large garage) and we're picking out gear right now, and I just had a few questions that I thought you guys could answer. First, I want to be able to record each drum mic to it's own track on the computer, but our budget is really limited(think about a grand for all recording gear, including mics but excluding the computer and the software, which will be Cubase SX 2). What card or interface should we get if we still have to take into account the money that we're gonna have to spend on mics for each drum and overheads, etc. This brings me to my next question. I know the best tom/snare mics are the SM57 and the 421, but we can't afford buying these for all of the drums(right now it's just a 3 tom single kick set with one snare and a bunch of cymbals). Are any of those cheaper drum mic packages good? Keep in mind that while we're looking for decent quality recordings, it doesn't have to be perfect. For the card, I was thinking about getting the Terratec Phase 88(8 inputs) and an 8 channel mic preamp or mixer. For the mics, I was thinking about getting one of the cheap Nady drum mic packs and an SM57 or two, for guitars and snare. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I am clueless when it comes to buying lower end gear.
Gear
- Thread starter Exsanguis
- Start date
Impy
Impale/Exhale
I have the Shure PG mic-kit (shure PGMK6 or something like that), as far as i can remember it was pretty cheap (around 350-400 bucks), you get a kick mic, three tom mics and two overheads, it sounds totally decent, better than a lot of other cheaper mic-kits i've tried, granted it's not as nice sounding as the 421's but if you get a 57 for the snare you'd have an ok mic-kit for not so much cash.
well for $1000 you wont get much, i've used the pg mic kit on an album and another e.p, and they are cheap and nasty. i won't use them ever again, but also.. what kind of audio interface are you going to use.. if you want to record a band at once or an entire drumkit you will need several inputs into your computer. you would quite easily spend that 1000 bucks you have just on the interface alone, like a motu 828mk2 or any event gear etc. i don't know where you are but a grand doesnt go far here in australia. cheers.
Impy
Impale/Exhale
As i stated the PG kit isn't very good, but it's decent for the cash, and there's lots of multichannel interfaces cheaper than the MOTU, i use the mkII myself but with a budget of 1000 you can't expect to get very good stuff (alltho you don't need focusrite preamps and such in your home studio unless you plan to make a living out of it, in which case you shouldn't be at home 
)
)The Terratec Phase 88 card and breakout box has 8 inputs and is around 300 bucks, and I would just get an 8 channel mic preamp to run the mics into the computer. If you guys know any other cards like this for a similar price, please let me know.
Impy
Impale/Exhale
I know M-Audio has some cheap multichannel cards, can't remember excact models but just check their website www.m-audio.com
