PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic New guy starting out? Equipment....?

Hi, another new guy with new guy questions.I hope I have the right forum category. I used to play in a band so i"m no stranger to equipment, but I'm a little behind on the computer and software end of it. I plan on getting baib and real band and would like to record my voice and guitar on to some songs in baib or rb. Now I've been reading some posts on this forum and others and from what I gathered, I don"t think I want to use my sound card on my computer. Like some, i"m on a budget, so I want to make sure I pick out the right stuff. I do have a firewire port on my computer, so here are a few of my questions.The way I understand it is if you record through your soundcard it compresses the two together [voice and guitar} and you cannot control the mix of the two when you put it with baib or rt. So I think some better choices would be picking out something to use in my firewire or usb port. I would like some advice and guidence on picking out some hardware. I know there are lots out there but here are two just to see if i"m on the right track. PreSonas firebox audio interface { 2 mic channels w/phantom pwr} about $250.00 { my max $ for something like this} or a tascam us144 usb 2.0 audio/midi interface about $149.00. Now with either of these units, will I be able to record voice and guitar through my computer and mix them into baib and or rb and be able to adjust the volumes of both? Sorry for the long winded post, just trying to get a handle on all this, so be kind,I"m over 50 and sometimes have senior moments! thanks

Welcome to the forum, Kevin.

Yes, you will want to get a firewire or USB external interface, which will be much better quality than the onboard sound card. I happen to like Firewire, but it has to be a Firewire port with Texas Instrument chips or it has been finicky for me. Others will tell you to just get a USB interface, and you will likely have no problems.

I prefer Tascam products to Presonus, but I also know of many poor experiences with Tascam's customer service.

You will like BIAB to compose your songs, but to record more than one audio track, you will move the song into RealBand and use that. RealBand is a sequencer, which is designed to give you mixing capability of each track (and effects on tracks, like reverb).

That's a very fast answer. More detail is available from many of us. Ask your questions, and we'll be there to help, even those of us well over 50!

So you want to record playing the guitar and singing, but not multitrack? Real band is a great multitracker, among other features. You could record your guitar in stereo on one track, and then sing your vocal on another track, and then mix to your liking. Don't know what all the equipment you have? Do you have a mixer? I have put my guitar into ch. 1, panned hard left, and my mic in ch2, panned hard right, and recorded right into my soundcard to real band. I was then able to mix it down. You probably want to post a big list of all equipment you are using, as that will probably be the next question from someone. Computer type, any outboard hardware you have, etc. It makes dialing in a good studio for you much easier.

Thanks for the response, from my playing in a band days, i still have my guitar and amp, and also a peavey duel powered mixing board, I think it"s 10 or 12 channels. I used that to power our mains and our monitors, it"s got some big amps in it, didn"t think it would work in this situation. my computers good size, its a hp, 8gb memory, 750gb hard drive, tv tuner firewire port . Yes i want to multitrack, thats why i was worried about the soundcard, I thought it would go in as one signal to baib so then you could mix em in with the baib

Thanks Matt, Whats this texas instrument chip stuff?

kevin p

Ok;
BIAB only has 2 tracks for incoming audio, the soloist and the melodist tracks. Real band has many tracks available. What you can do is create a song in BB with drums, bass, whatever, by plugging in chords of your own, or it will create them for you. Once you get the music how you want it, you can bring it over to RB, and the tracks will be separated, so you can do editing still. Then you just record your guitar on an available track, and put your vocals on another one. You can just record into BB also, but the multitracking, and editing powers of RB far surpass that of BB. There you have total creative control over eq, effects, panning, the works. I hope I understood what you wanted to do, and didn't go off on a redundant tangent.

Gene

The Presonus you indicated is a really nice soundcard. You will need a Texas Instruments Firewire chipset to avoid problems with firewire. This is not to say that other chips haven't worked but most have problems. The easiest way to tell is to open the computer and locate the firewire chip on the motherboard and look at the mfg.

But one of the best bang for the buck cards is a Delta 1010LT for multitracking. Good solid drivers and since it's a pci card, low latency. Under $200.

Hi Kevin. I don't know what a TV tuner firewire port is, but it doesn't sound like audio.

Therefore, about the chips, don't worry about it. That applies to external soundcards and the PCI firewire card to which to connect them.

Before you start whacking out large amounts of cash on bits and pieces, I suggest you get as big a picture as possible. It will help you to intelligently build a PC-based studio, rather than haphazardly collecting modules based solely on individual recommendations or specs.

I almost embarrassedly endorse "PC Recording for Dummies". Yup, finally had to admit I wuz one. I know recording, I know computers, but trying to do one with the other was topping me. Unless the book has been updated recently, it will be a little dated in terms of hardware model numbers and software versions, but most of the brand names still exist and all of the principles still apply. It was instrumental (hey, if there's a pun, I meant it) in leading me toward the stable, capable DAW I have today.

Author Jeff Strong writes in an annoyingly cutesy style, but he knows his stuff. The book is well organized and systematically takes you through the steps of assessing your needs, acquiring gear and software, and putting it together and making it work. Even the dated price points of competitive software will make you appreciate the bargain that PG products represent.

HTH,
R.

P.S.: I took a look at this and thought it time I shared this gem with the world, so I wrote a review based on this post at amazon.com. When it's approved I'll either post a link or copy it here. In it, I endorse PG products as well as the book.

P.P.S.: The review was approved within hours. You can see the five other reviews as well, here.

Like Matt I also like firewire. I got a Tascam Fireone and Digidesign console as well, but that last one is more expensive.

The Fireone is, if still available, a nice interface. It has 2 combined mic/line ins (XLR/jack) with phantom power on each input as well as a PAD on both, 2 independent headphones outs, and a guitar input, which a switchable input, it switches from the rear line/mic input (B) to the front guitar in. Besides this it has a big jog/shuttle wheel and 14 buttons all assignable to be used for controlling the sequencer functions. The price is also within your budget.

abaudio, very good; a missing comma makes sense. I also agree if he wants to use firewire, you can see if it's Texas Instruments in the Device Manager. I also know some who have used some form of SONY firewire chips with success. But USB equipment would be better at the desired price point, and would avoid the firewire concern.

Yup forgot the comma. abaudio I went in and found my host controller, under systems, it says I have a Agere OHCI compliant lEEE 1394 host controller

I would not recommend using that firewire port for audio.

What kind of problems would I have?

Kevin,
Personally, I don't like firewire at all for recording, but that's my opinion.

One of the big issues with singer/vocalists is how to record the audio. As someone said earlier, Band In A box itself will only record two channels of audio, and a stereo audio track at that. It is conceivable that you could pan the guitar hard one way and the vocals hard the other way, but it's still a stereo track.

This brings us to Real Band. Again, as stated earlier, RB is a multitrack sequencer, which means two things
1. You can record multiple takes onto different tracks.
2. You can record from multiple input devices at the same time.

So, let's look at a common setup. You've created the backing track you want in Band In A Box using the Real Drums and Real Instruments. Your drums, bass, and piano are all laid out the way you want it, and now you're going to move it to Real Band. So, you open it in Real Band, and you've used three of the 48 or so available Audio tracks.

Now, let's look at both methods I've described above.
First, you want to add guitar tracks, but maybe you play two or three different guitars, and you want to include all of them. So, you set up your input device, whatever it turns out to be, and record one of your guitars as a backing track, say just straight rhythm strumming. Now, you have four audio tracks. You select the next available track, and take up your next guitar, and lay down an appreggio guitar track (I'm making this up as I go along, I'm not a guitarist). So, you're up to five tracks.

Now, DEPENDING on the device you get, you can either lay down your guitar lead track, and then go back and record a vocal track, just like you did with the two backing guitar tracks, one at a time. Most input devices are only two channel, or stereo. However, the aforementioned M-Audio Delta 1010lt gives you four stereo pair, in and out, and you can select to record multiple tracks at a time. You can assign the first track to the first set of inputs on the card, and the second track to the second set of inputs on the card. With the Delta 1010lt, infact, if you have a four buss mixer, you can assign the individual busses to the individual stereo pairs. By the way, four stereo pairs, of course, is eight channels. The 1010lt also has a S/PDIF in and out, to make ten ins and ten outs, but most individuals don't have an S/PDIF in. However, if you're using an effects box, some of the newer ones *do* offer S/PDIF out, and you could use the 1010lt with that.

The Delta 66 offers 6 ins and 6 outs, or two stereo pair in and two out (or four mono in and out) and a S/PDIF in and out for the 5th and 6th channels. Again, with this device, you can record on individual stereo tracks at the same time.

Remember, most cards, like the Tascam, are ONLY going to record two channels at a time.

In Real Band, as in Power Tracks Pro Audio, you can take an incoming signal, with two sources panned hard left and right, and split it into two mono tracks, if you desire, so even if you end up going with a less expensive, two channel only input, it is still possible to get two tracks out of it, but they will both be mono. If you are looking for stereo, you'll be limited to only one track.

One final thought. Even though your computer has a 750GB hard drive, I would still invest in another hard drive for use for the audio only. This allows you to stream the audio to a single drive, seperate from the system and program files. That way, the hard drive will be dedicated to audio, and if the system needs to do some kind of housekeeping while you are recording or playing back, the drive, and your audio, won't be affected by the hard drive trying to read and write system information while you're trying to put data on the drive.

The Delta 66: http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/MAudio-Delta-66-Digital-Recording-System?sku=701345
Extra Hard drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136320

Total price, less than $250.

Oh, I'm sorry Kevin, I neglected to add something important...the Mic Pre Amp. You'll need one of those. Again, depending on the sound you want, you might want to try this inexpensive way to go: http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/ART-Tube-MP-Studio-Mic-Preamp?sku=180581

I'm not sure what you can do with the Guitar input, though. You may also need to get a DI box.

FINALLY, something I forgot about. IF YOU USE VISTA, or plan to upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 in the near future, DO NOT GET AN USB INTERFACE. Right now, Vista and Win 7 both are NOT application controllable for the output to a USB device. What that means is if you recorded a 16 bit, 44.1kHz wave file, and you have the settings at 24bit, 96kHz, Vista or Win 7 will, without your permission, and sometimes even your knowledge, resample the outgoing signal to whatever is set in the USB properties settings for playback. Furthermore, there is NO 16 bit, which is the CD standard, it is only 24 bit, which means they are, again, without your permission or even knowledge, adding noise and data you do not need to the wave file.

I've complained to Microsoft about this in the Win 7 Beta testing, but I do not know if they have plans to correct it or not. Sticking with a PCI device, such as the M-Audio above, will bypass this issue completely.

Gary

Users of firewire ports that are not made with chips by Texas Instruments and maybe SONY often report intermittent or dropped firewire connections, static, clicks, audio dropouts, etc.

I base this statement on many observations of other posts over many years at the Tascam and SONAR forums. Those with problems found that using an add-on PCI firewire card built with Texas Instruments chips corrected the problems. I was one of them, replacing a Creative card that had a firewire port, with a Belkin dedicated one.

The Agere port is built into your motherboard. Who knows, it might work, but I cannot recommend it.