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

Last edited by Gary Curran; 04/19/09 09:43 PM.
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!