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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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I'm trying to decide on a mic to use to make recordings of instruments and voice at home. The instruments will be trumpet, flute, and ukes. No, not all at once  . The ukes will not have any wind instruments with them. Here's my current setup: Micro Express destop 23b, 8gb ram, quadcore pentium sandy bridge. Win 7 home premium Ua-4fx sound module mainly used for SD2 Other midi devices via usb: Akai EWI, Akai mpd18, alesis Q25 No fancy speakers. Just a powered 3 speaker logitech system. I have a Soundblaster xfi 7pci soundcard, but, I think the sound is all going in and out of the ua-4fx. I don't have anything plugged into the sound card jacks on the desktop. I do have a creative external soundcard that I use with the netbook with some success so that's also available. We have an AKG 1000c condenser mic (needs 9v battery for ext. power) that's rarely used. We were using it to for my wife's flute, but went to a clip on mic instead. The ua-4fx is supposed to have xlr phantom power. I read some posts that said the ua-4fx would not power their AKG 3000 condenser mic. I'm finally ready to try some recording, but not sure where to go from here. I guess I could use my Nexus Tablet, but I'm thinking that the quality might be skimpy to say the least. Some have touted the H2's and H4's. I'm hoping to keep the cost around $100-$150--or less. Thanks for any suggestions. Stan
Cornet Curmudgeon
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Stan, looking at the manual for the UA, on page 11, it describes the mic input jack, and that there is a switch for phantom power on the underside of the unit. This should be able to power the AKG mic. Don't believe posts - look up the details in the manual then experiment. Here's a link to the manual: http://www.roland.com/support/article/?q=manuals&p=UA-4FX&id=10349680I would stick to using the UA-FX. You can probably put the soundblaster aside. You have PG's RealBand or PowerTracks Pro Audio - correct? If so, you have all of the pieces of the puzzle for doing some home recording. -Scott
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Thanks, Scott. I will experiment. I also have Sonar X1 studio and X2, but I haven't tried X2 yet. Mario has recommended a Tascam DR-05 which he has used with success. I'm seriously considering it since it is mobile and I can record our uke club also.
Stan
Cornet Curmudgeon
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No harm in buying something portable. I bought a BLUE microphones Digital Mikey, which gives me stereo microphone recording capability with my iPhone, but at home, I'm using a TASCAM US-800.
The only thing I caution you against is that in my opinion, TASCAM has one of the worst customer service attitudes in the industry. If you have a product without technical issues, no problem, but if you have one which has quirky drivers and so forth, you are left to fend for yourself.
The US-800 story shows how they handle poorly designed hardware/software. This product has known issues with the drivers. Rather than work on a driver set that actually works, they simply put the product on fire-sale and quit building it. The US-series of products used to go US-144, US-200, US-400, US-600, US-800, US-1200, etc.
Once the US-800 came out and they couldn't fix it's memory leak issue with the first update to the drivers, they simply quit trying. At least that's how it appears to this customer.
I will never recommend their products to anyone with how they behaved with this particular product.
For a whole bunch of threads on all kinds of different forums about how US-800 actually functions, simply type in "US-800 memory leak" into Google and see what pops out.
I believe that KeithS on our forums here is one of the TASCAM support forum moderators. He might be able to vouch for whether the TASCAM unit you are considering for mobile use is reliable or not.
-Scott
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It was recommended to me by someone who is and has been using one with no problems. I don't think there are drivers for it as an issue. None come with it anyway. It's the DR-05.
Cornet Curmudgeon
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Stan, for your home recording use - the UA and the AKG are going to be better for recording your instruments. Mono simplicity.
Give the pair a try.
For field use to record gigs, something like the DR-05 is going to be way easier to use.
-Scott
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Thanks, Scott. The dr-05 works great. I discovered that I can also use it as an mp3 player for out gig backups. The menu system takes some getting used to though.
Cornet Curmudgeon
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It's a bit out of your price range ~ but I give rave reviews to a used Equation Audio F20 mic a bought a few months ago. It sounds incredible on strummed instruments (the reason I bought it in the first place) and brass. It wouldn't be my first choice for flute, but I have some excellent mics to choose from, and I daresay it would perform quite well if you're looking for a one size fits all mic. You would probably need to tweak a bit of the high end out of the sound if you used it for flute. I paid $240 used. They seem to be hard to find - not many of them around.
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