pres, adats, sound cards, di boxes... #$#@$???

[Atheist]

Ok, I'm confused.

Lets say we have a scenario of recording drums (big kit + triggers ~ 12 or 16 channels) and I have all the mics needed (yeah right ) and a computer with, lets say Cubase + optionaly EMU 0404 in it (cause I have one but I don't know if it will be of any help).

So, what do I need to get the signal from mics to cubase? Are there good all-in-one (12/16 pres + converters) sound cards? I found a Mackie Onyx 1640 + firewire card solution. What do you think about that? Maybe I can find found a pre with optical out (?) to connect to my EMU.

What's your drum recording setup?

And about recording guitar: What does a DI box really do? Only changes impendance or amplifies signal too?

Any help is appreciated. I guess that for most of you guys this every-day stuff, but I am lost somewhere in the signal path...

EDIT: I meant DA converters, not adats (just found out what adat is )

 

[gumplunger]

So, what do I need to get the signal from mics to cubase? Are there good all-in-one (12/16 pres + converters) sound cards? I found a Mackie Onyx 1640 + firewire card solution. What do you think about that? Maybe I can find found a pre with optical out (?) to connect to my EMU.

Depends what you mean by "good". Recording drums with crappy to midrange preamps won't get you anywhere in terms of getting a studio quality sound, and if you're going to invest in recording drums, which costs a hell of a lot, might as well go all or nothing. At least that's my philosophy. The preamps on the Onyx are going to be comparable to just about any other firewire recording solution on the market in that general price range, so don't expect wonders from it.

If you really want some experience recording drums on a smaller budget and you're a fan of the Andy Sneap sound, here's what I would do: Get a firewire interface with enough preamps to cover your triggers, and make sure it has some line level inputs that you can run a pair of nice preamps into and use those for the overheads. That way the sound quality of your drums is mostly dependant on the quality of your samples, your skill at editing drums, and your drummer since chances are your recording space is going to have shitty acoustics and recording drums acoustically takes a lot of practice, patience, and money.

And about recording guitar: What does a DI box really do? Only changes impendance or amplifies signal too?

It does both.

And since you mentioned AD/DA converters, here's a brief rundown: every time audio enters or leaves your system, it must be converted from an analog signal into a digital one or vice versa. What happens in this process is the converters analyze the incoming wave form and your soundfile becomes a string of numbers, or samples, ranging from -1.0 to 1.0. If you're recording at 44100 samples per second, that means every second, the converters split your sound up into 44100 little chunks and assign a number to each chunk. Think about a sine wave. It goes up and down. At the top, it would be 1.0 and at the bottom, -1.0 and so on in between. That is how sound is represented in the digital sense.

Basically, the better your converters, the more accurate the reproduction of your analog sound as a digital waveform and vice versa. Likewise, the more samples per second, the more accurate it will be. Again, likewise, the higher your bitrate (16 bit vs 24 bit vs 32 bit), the more accurate your digital waveform will be (for example, a sample might be represented as 0.6948676 in 16 bit, but in 24 bit it might be 0.69486760486765484, see?)

 

[Soundlurker]

Hope I'm not changing the topic a lot but how about the following scenario:
cheap drums -> cheap mics -> adat -> emu1212 -> drumagog + mixdown of the tracks with the BFD El Dorado impulse [/lame questions]