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aberdeen-music

PC or Portable studio????


Hog

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Hi guys and girls, Im recording an E.P of my music very soon and I am wondering what you would reccomend. I want it to sound very OTT so Im thinking of at least 8 tracks, minimum.

So, basically Im looking too do one of the following

1) Buy an 8 or 16 track portastudio

2) Buy Software for my comp (although never used any before)

3) See if I can pay someone to do a PC recording who has a decent set-up.

I dont want to use a studio.

Thanx

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Bench just finished recording our album using a basic recording programme (Audio Studio I think its called) on my computer. We used my multi tracker as a mixing desk so we could record things that need more than one mic, like drums. The sound quality is pretty good.

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Yeh man, i would go wiv Cubase 5.1 or cubase SX if your willing to learn how to use SX. I use a zoom-02 as a preamp it also has built in mic and fits in ur pocket. But u could jus record straight through ur line in or mic from ur line out in ur amp, but u hav to be careful.

Using Cubase is pretty simple. I would go with a gd PC for recording your stuff jus get some decent software...and DONT pay for it someone always has a copy.

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Guest Neubeatz

Have to agree with most of the posters hog, software on the pc is the way to go, but some form of external mixer will be needed for drums, unless you have a soundcard with multiple inputs,

A hard drive portastudio is probably expensive, but you might be able to get a hire/loan from a community centre/library..

I just d/loaded Cool Edit 2.1 from that list, and it installed ok, but I havent had a chance to try it out yet, but I used the old 1.2 version to record a couple of multitrack projects and save as mp3,

Yeh software and a mixer, way to go (for me anyway)

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ok well if ur looking for a gd sequencing program for making drums...get Fruity Loops v3.2 i hav it, bloody wicked and you can create piano parts, strings, anything really but the drums are wicked an easy to export into cubase as a WAV file. It's also a relatively easy program to use an u'll be a wizard within 30mins.

Danny.

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*Tries not to sound like a tit*

PC --> ????? --> Mic --> Instrument

What's the ???? bit,where can you get one?? and how much do they cost???

I'm assuming that ther'd be some sort of jack input or something that can connect the mic with the pc and record straight onto the hard drive via a software, then you can mix all the tracks together to your hearts content.... I want to give home recording a bash before i consider shelling out and probably rushing it in a studio to save money - it'd also be nice to save riffs as you come up with them. I've been searching the net for a while but all i can find is software.

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cool edit pro all the way (now adobe audition). easy as pie to use and has a pile of great FX (white noise generators - you'll love that! :D )

for paul - you've got that diagram the wrong way around! :)

it should be:

instrument -> mic -> mixer -> soundcard -> PC -> software

if you don't have a mixer, get a 6.44mm to 3.5mm converter (basically, jack lead to walkman headphone socket adapter) and plug your mic/instrument straight into your soundcard.

anyone want any specific help, send me a PM.

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As a general bit of info on PC recording, I've been recording on the PC since about 1998 and I've gone through my fair share of both crap and great software.

My advice would be to skip the basic software and go straight to Cubase SX 2.x - the learning curve is a bit steep if your hardware doesn't work first time but it's a program that is very likely to always be among the industry standards and it can literally do anything (especially with the help of all those plugins you can get for it). You'll start out using it as basically as possible while you learn the ropes, then before you know it you'll be fiddling with all those software noise gates, grouping your sends and quantizing your midi, you can get pills for that though.

I can happily get at least 38 simultaneous CD-quality tracks running while I record and my PC is nearly a couple of years old (Athlon XP 1900, 512MB Ram, 90GB HD standard IDE not fancy SCSI, Creative Audigy Soundcard)

Something a lot of the basic programs lack is good midi - you can use it for controlling drum machines, fx units etc or just for connecting a keyboard to your pc so you can do your own drums/synth effects. If you have a drum machine which has a midi output you can program the drums live and then fix them/tidy up in cubase - then when you play back the drum machine will play back the fixed drum parts, and you can copy and paste the drum section in cubase to build up your song structure.

For recording guitars a lot of people try to plug their effects unit straight into the PC and then try and eq a decent sound out of it (it'll normally sound too harsh) but if your not mic'ing up your amp then you'll need a decent amp simulator like a Line 6 Pod or V-Amp.

All my instrumental stuff was recording and mixed in Cubase, check it out if you haven't already. (Note: quality or lack thereof of recordings is not a reflection on cubase)

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Hmm, its the hardware problems with Cubase/Cakewalk and the like that puts me off moving up to a midi-compatible software package. With Cool Edit, you just start the app and it sets everything up for you (as you'd expect). With Cubase you pick the soundcard, load the sample tune and... you hear nothing! I'd expect that with a obscure card but not a SB Live... any tips on how to get set up in Cubase Chris?

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Cubase Hardware Setup

Yeah it's worth troubleshooting that until you get it working. Different versions of cubase vary in their well-behavedness but in general the first problem you'll have will be that cubase stores the settings for the soundcard driver selection and midi device setup in the project file - so you'll have to go into the device settings of the cubase project and try out different combinations until you find one that works

Generally the safest way is to start with a basic driver selected, so in Cubase SX go to the 'Devices' menu, then VST Multitrack and choose a driver for your audio - the safest one for me is usually DirectX Full Duplex (especially with the SB Live soundarcard). Then try playing the demo again. if your problem is with playing back midi files then look in the same dialog for 'Default Midi Ports', try selecting different outputs from the options provided and playing back the demo song.

Once you get a combination that works for you, save the project. You will also need to eventually set up your default song project so that the settings that work for you are set by default, which saves you setting them every time you start a new project. Older versions of Cubase are similar but have different options which do roughly the same thing.

Hope that helps.

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dont know if this is any use or not, but in maplin (i think its called that) electronics they sell mini mixer things with either 4 or 8 inputs. if you used one of those and pluged it into the back of your computer in then you could record more than 1 instrument at once and things, or if you wanted to use more than 1 mic on things like drums. the mixers are about 20 for 4 inputs and 30 for 8 i think.

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