Recording stuff, please help

[Feanor IV]

Hello,

I'm buying a new pc in a few days, so i'd like you to help me out with the following issue. I actually care much about recording electric and acoustic guitars and most important, vocals. I will buy an interface/soundcard, most probably Digidesign's mbox, and one or two relatively good mics (AKG c900 and Shure Beta 58a) for the vox. So, what I want to know is what I should spend my money on, in the pc, to get the best results. I will be getting 1Gb RAM and I'd like to know what I should put in the machine (CPU, or whatever) to achieve max results. For example, does anyone know if a certain CPU works better for such apps or anything like that? Any recommendations? I want recommendations on A N Y T H I N G regarding my new PC, which I would like to optimize for recordings.

Let me know please and thanks SO much in advance!

Menelaos

 

[INSPELL]

Well... AMD 2500+ will be excelent start i think.. check out is your featured Sound Card to support ASIO 2 drivers... everything else is in the software
Wish u luck !!

 

[Ravenous Enemy]

hey, sorry to be a drag, but I'm in a similar position and want to start home-recording.
However, I've already ordered my PC, a Pentium 4 3GHz HT processor, 1024MB RAM, and 400GB fast hardrive. I've got Cubase SX, and I want to find a way to record my (primarily) guitar.
I was originally thinking of mic'ing up my amp, with say a Sure 57 mic, but its only a rubbish 10watt solid state thing. What I wanted to know is if I should get an Audio interface thing, or if I should get something like the Line6 POD or something similar, like the Vox one that has a valve in it. I heard that th POD has a USB connection so I could use it as an interface...?? Any help would be gratefully recieved.

 

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

Ravenous, most definitely get some form of amp modeling like the POD or some other pedal etc and plug it straight in, you will get much better results out of this than if you mic up the sound of an amp you don't like. If you've heard of Vehemence, they recorded for sure God was Created like this (through pods) and I think HTWTS as well and it sounds fucking great.

Like the other dude said, don't get an AMD system, mine works ok right now, but before I got new mobo drivers it would always volume swell when I was recording it was annoying, that's why I rebuilt an old computer with an Intel in it, and actually it was a VAIO pc, almost made for making music on the computer, so it works fucking wonders for me. RAM and CPU's shouldn't matter too much, just make sure you have atleast 512 MB of ram and a fairly new CPU and you should be fine. Also, I would greatly heed the other dude's advice about getting the two hard drives, or atleast get a real big one and partition it so that you can always reformat windows without fucking over your work.

 

[Feanor IV]

Thanks for the help guys! My PC is going to have an intel cpu + intel motherboard, so I guess that's fine. As for the mic, so I'd rather buy the AKG? It costs almost half as much as shure's................

 

[Erik]

I'm just saying that Beta 58A is probably not the best choice for home studio stuff since it's more of a live mic. The AKG is a condenser mic and probably more suitable for your purposes (definitely for most vocals and acoustic guitar) but if you want, spend the money you would have spent on the 58 and the C900 on an even better condenser mic instead... One really good mic is probably better than two pretty good ones.

 

[Erik]

hey, sorry to be a drag, but I'm in a similar position and want to start home-recording.
However, I've already ordered my PC, a Pentium 4 3GHz HT processor, 1024MB RAM, and 400GB fast hardrive. I've got Cubase SX, and I want to find a way to record my (primarily) guitar.
I was originally thinking of mic'ing up my amp, with say a Sure 57 mic, but its only a rubbish 10watt solid state thing. What I wanted to know is if I should get an Audio interface thing, or if I should get something like the Line6 POD or something similar, like the Vox one that has a valve in it. I heard that th POD has a USB connection so I could use it as an interface...?? Any help would be gratefully recieved.

Your options are either get a POD (or a V-Amp2! They cost less and sound as good/better, at least compared to the regular POD2, dunno about XT) or get a real amp to mic with the 57. Depends on your purposes really. If you're just going to record demos and stuff at home then the V-Amp or POD will do fine, but it won't give you the same sound as a cranked Marshall valve head & 4*12 with a 57 in front, but then again you probably can't do that at home if you have neighbours within a few kilometers... The other poster was right, don't waste your money on a 57 if your amp is shit. If it sounds shit to your ears when you play it, it will sound shit when recording, no matter what post processing you do.

Oh, and the POD's USB interface, to my knowledge, is only for transferring patches to and fro a computer. It does not actually send any audio via USB, you use regular guitar cables for that... The V-Amp uses MIDI cables instead for sending patches.

 

[Feanor IV]

@Erik: yes, I see your point. BTW, can you please help me out with the differences between a dynamic and a condenser mic (besides the different way of capturing the sound, of course). Why do you say that condensers are better for home usage and dyn for live? Please help me out with this!

Second thing, you say I'd better get a GOOD condenser. Which ones would you recommend?

Thanks a lot in advance!

 

[Feanor IV]

Thanks man Well, I see your point. I was just thinking of buying a very good (for the price) condenser (c900) and a very good (for the price) dynamic mic to check out how they sound and their differences. I was however also thinking of the possibility of buying AKG c535 which is supposed to be a very good condenser and costs around $300. Of course I am not talking about large diaphragm stuff, which would take at least $1,000 to get a decent one. Anyway, I think I'll start off buying the c900, however, as AKG has jsut produced a brand new one (c900m) which is only different in that it can be turned into wireless, which doesn't matter to me. So, the price of the old one instantly dropped from around $150 to $70, and I think it's a good deal. And I think I can get a slightly used one for around $40-$50, so I guess it'll be worth the money..... And then I can think of future invenstments! Thanks a lot!

 

[Ravenous Enemy]

Ok, thanks a lot, I will heed your collective advice, however I still want to know more about the Vox modeler, the Tonelab I thinks it's called, ie. has anyone used it/is it worth the money etc.? Otherwise I'll prolly get the V-amp.
I do live in a remote enough place with enough space to mic' up a 4x12, but it's being able to afford a Marshall TSL or Peavey 5150 that's the problem! and also the considerations of the acoustics of the room and the panels etc that i'd need.
thanks.

 

[Erik]

Hm, I haven't used the ToneLab myself, but from reviews I would probably choose the V-Amp instead -- it's much cheaper, has more amp models and stuff, and the single valve in the ToneLab feels more like a gimmick than something that will actually improve the sound significantly -- if you REALLY want the valve sound, you're still going to have to use a good valve amp mic'ed. A modeler is a modeler, it can come very close to the real thing but probably never 100% -- so knowing that, it's probably better to choose a much cheaper variant with 95% of the sound than a more expensive one with 97%. Hope I'm making sense here.

 

[Feanor IV]

Hello again! Just a couple of questions here:

1) would you choose an AKG c900 for about 80€, or an AKG c535EB for about 220€? I wanted to buy the c900 about a year ago, and it used to cost almost double its current price. Its priced dropped that much because AKG stopped producing it, in favor of c900M which is exactly the same, but it can also turn wireless. I don't care about this, so the price drop is a heavenly gift to me However, the c535EB is much more expensive, so i just think I might go for the c900 now and think about c535 or probably a Shure Beta 87a later...... What's your opinion on that?

2) I am going to buy a pair of good headphones, as I'm actually trying to buy all I need for some good recordings (as much as possible). I have an ancient pair of AKG some-model but they're not in so good a shape. So, I was thinking about AKG's K240S or K240M. What do you think? Any other idea?

That's all! Thanks in advance!

 

[Ravenous Enemy]

Cheers Erik - yes you do make sense and I'll probably get the V-Amp. Cheers.