Hey everyone. I'm not recording until May, but I'm trying to plan everything ahead. I've been doing ridiculous amounts of reading, and I am starting to understand a lot of the concepts, but one is really killing me:
The interface.
Since I'll be modeling guitar tones, I will always be able to go back and fix up the tone as I go if it's imperfect. But I know theres one thing that can't be "fixed", and that's the source. No matter how tight your playing is, or how good your modeled tone is, it wont make up for a fundamentally flawed source.
Currently, I have an Alesis iO2 Express (it was $80
) and used a Tube MP Studio preamp before it (that's where the guitar/mic was plugged in)... though I really didn't know "how" to use it. I feel as though that will not be good enough for the album quality I'm trying to achieve. If anyone has some spare time, I have some raw tracks of the guitars in here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?qh4v5599ecbqek6 Keep in mind it was sorta rushed and is not the tightest playing.
Unfortunately, I'm kind of on a budget. In an interface, I don't need a lot of inputs - we will record everything one track at a time. I just need to make sure it's QUALITY above all. I heard some good things about Focusrite Saffire's preamps ...
http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/Focusrite-Saffire-6-USB-Audio-Interface?sku=583658 This seems like a good option within my budget. Could something like this provide the album-ready guitar (especially guitar!) [Edit: and Bass, duh!] and vocal tracks I'm looking for? Is there something that may only be around $100 more expensive but definitely a lot better? OR, is expecting a professional quality source within a few hundred dollars an unrealistic goal?
[Edit 2: I also hear the E-MU 0404 is good too...... this is all too confusing
]
[Edit 3: The Saffire 24 seems affordable (you can pick em up refurb for under $200) but I hear people having a lot of troubles with them and the FireWire. The 6 USB would seem so nice if it wasn't for USB 1.1! All I know is that that sucks haha... I can't afford to have low quality/crackling]
Thanks so much for the help. It's been on my mind a lot recently!
[Edit .....4: Okay, Saffire interfaces seem like too much trouble. God damn. My friend (the guitarist) has a DI box, I don't think it's super fancy, but he has one. So I don't need a really fancy interface I guess? I don't know. Maybe that up to the io2 would work?]
