Is this good for recording?

[Hog]

What you think of these. Im thinking of getting one. Opinions?

[Hog]

bump.....

[Chris]

don't see why not. it'd be better for recording than say a bit of string and a cup.

[spellchecker]

Are you decided against using a PC/Mac for recording? If i were you i'd buy a decent soundcard and a small desk with some mic preamps on it. i'm assuming that the item in the picture is a hardware based mixing/recording/editing solution.

[General Ermintrude]

Get this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=15199&item=3778706866&rd=1

and this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=23785&item=3779496688&rd=1

instead.

That thing's just a toy.

[Hog]

True, Mr Ermintrude. I must admit, I loved the sound of the stuff you did for me.

[General Ermintrude]

Shucks!

Get a real desk and a standalone recorder. You'll never top it for quality and flexibilty. And they're so damned cheap on ebay! Those intergrated units are a con, they're designed so you outgrow them and buy more tascam( or fostex or whatever) stuff. And as for installing ASIO drivers......

[Doc]

Get this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=15199&item=3778706866&rd=1

and this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=23785&item=3779496688&rd=1

instead.

That thing's just a toy.

Just a toy that will do 24 bit recording unlike the units in your links.

[General Ermintrude]

Aye with a whole TWO xlr inputs!!!!!!!

Let's mike up a whole fucking orchestra!!!

Bits mean fuck-all. A unit's only as good as the quality of its A/D converters. Cheap TASCAM ones will be shitty.

Oh yeah, and the desk's analogue. It'll do any amount of bits, depending on what recorder you wire it up to.

[Doc]

Aye with a whole TWO xlr inputs!!!!!!!

Let's mike up a whole fucking orchestra!!!

Bits mean fuck-all. A unit's only as good as the quality of its A/D converters. Cheap TASCAM ones will be shitty.

Oh yeah' date=' and the desk's analogue. It'll do any amount of bits, depending on what recorder you wire it up to.[/quote']

Don't know much about this at all, do you?

[General Ermintrude]

Howz that, min?

[spellchecker]

i'm with the general, here...

what use is 24 bit when your destination medium is CD or 64kbit download?

the important thing for people i know, is to be able to plug in an XLR mic into= cheap affordable desk - i.e. pre-amps for vocals. anyone who has visions of recording drums and making it sound good will realise the necessity pretty quickly of a good set of drum mics ("wow! i didn't realise kef's kick mic was so good!"). if you are not in a decent studio, you will realise pretty quickly that your drums sound like shit (it depends on what sound you are going for, but when you A/B your track with a song you respect, you must notice the difference between well recorded drums and those not.... do you still hear your kick over the bass guitar... do you still hear your snare drum above the guitar?).

if you want a home recording setup, then get a good amp simulator and a drum machine that works for you (software or hardware), and a bass guitar.

only personal experience, but as far as i'm concerned, hardware solutions simply provide a physical bounds for the creativity that most people can express. software lets people express music in the manner they intended, which is why i embrace digital technology. anyone can cut and paste, and make music by proxy, but people will always be the judge of the music you make - creativity comes from personal experience, and as long as one man's shit is another man's poison, the objectivity of personal preference to music will be safeguard the originality of future music to come.

[Stripey]

Bits mean fuck-all. A unit's only as good as the quality of its A/D converters. Cheap TASCAM ones will be shitty.

Oh yeah' date=' and the desk's analogue.[/quote']

Yeah people forget that not all A/D converters are created equal. It's worth pointing out that a half decent analogue desk has loads of extra features a cheap 4-track won't, like better quality EQ, bus routing, inserts etc...

[threeornothing]

Check these links...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=15199&item=3779501705&rd=1

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=23785&item=3779514158&rd=1

A killer rig for just about 400 ;(

I really wish I wasn't skint, owning that shit would be like my dream come true...so cheap!!!

The US are clearing a load of old gear really cheap too...check what this auction is at for a pair of sync'd 8 track ADATS!!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=41477&item=3779483787&rd=1

Death to daw

[Hog]

Interesting to hear everyones views. I only need 1 XLR thingy for my mike. The drums are from a drum machine and the guitar is directly from my effects pedal which has a semi decent amp simulation. The tascam pictured doesnt require a soundcard because its all internal. I plug it into the USB socket, download my software and away I go. Just for some home recording where I will be putting a stupid amount of keyboard and vocal layers on top.

The analogue version is also ace though. The generals recording was crystal clear.

[Doc]

CDs are 16 bit, true. But if you start digital processing afrom a 16 bit standpoint, every single process eats into the bitrate so that when you then dither to a 16 bit CD you get clicks and errors ie it sounds shit. Far better to start from 24 bit so you have some decent headroom.

[Hog]

Thanks for that Doc. I didnt know that

[Dayeth]

Aye with a whole TWO xlr inputs!!!!!!!

Let's mike up a whole fucking orchestra!!!

[General Ermintrude]

CDs are 16 bit' date=' true. But if you start digital processing afrom a 16 bit standpoint, every single process eats into the bitrate so that when you then dither to a 16 bit CD you get clicks and errors ie it sounds shit. Far better to start from 24 bit so you have some decent headroom.[/quote']

Which is why you're better off with a standalone recorder and desk. All the processing done during the mixing process happens via an analogue desk. You can route the signals through the auxiliaries to external effects without worrying about about bitrate and suchlike. The mixing process is complicated enough without worrying about whether or not you're reducing the signal quality to a digital fuzz. Computers are not ideal for recording music. Software plugins seem like awesome value, but they're not. They're fiddly to use, and it's difficult to predict how they will interact when used together,in terms of level. With external compressors/effects/whatever you always have tactile,'at-a-glance' control over what you're doing. Things can be easily adjusted, without having to fuck around with windows, drop-down menus and suchlike. They also have the added benefit of not sounding like a bucket of shit, which cannot be said about cheap pc solutions.

Real desks also do a better job of summing multiple signals to mono. I've heard the same material mixed through an I-mac and through a real-live desk; to my ears, the desk mixes sound more natural, the computer ones sound fizzy and unnatural.

There's no point in recording unless the sound of what you're doing is important.Pc based solutions are cheap,and sound....well...................cheap

You can jerk-off all you like about bits and bit-rate (though you sound just like a petrolhead banging on about horsepower), but at the end of the day, its all about what it sounds like. A mixing desk is a better environment for mixing audio signals than a computer is. A mixing desk mas better mic pre's than a usb computer box does.

TOY.

[Stripey]

Which is why you're better off with a standalone recorder and desk. All the processing done during the mixing process happens via an analogue desk. You can route the signals through the auxiliaries to external effects without worrying about about bitrate and suchlike. The mixing process is complicated enough without worrying about whether or not you're reducing the signal quality to a digital fuzz. Computers are not ideal for recording music. Software plugins seem like awesome value' date=' but they're not. They're fiddly to use, and it's difficult to predict how they will interact when used together,in terms of level. With external compressors/effects/whatever you always have tactile,'at-a-glance' control over what you're doing. Things can be easily adjusted, without having to fuck around with windows, drop-down menus and suchlike. They also have the added benefit of not sounding like a bucket of shit, which cannot be said about cheap pc solutions.

Real desks also do a better job of summing multiple signals to mono. I've heard the same material mixed through an I-mac and through a real-live desk; to my ears, the desk mixes sound more natural, the computer ones sound fizzy and unnatural.

There's no point in recording unless the sound of what you're doing is important.Pc based solutions are cheap,and sound....well...................cheap

You can jerk-off all you like about bits and bit-rate (though you sound just like a petrolhead banging on about horsepower), but at the end of the day, its all about what it sounds like. A mixing desk is a better environment for mixing audio signals than a computer is. A mixing desk mas better mic pre's than a usb computer box does.

TOY.[/quote']

I disagree about mixing in the digital domain, I think you can still get good results with a computer. VST fx naturally vary in quality, but these days there is some pretty good shit kicking about, voxengo and waves for example. Either way, if u know what u are doing you can get better results from logic/sx and some good plugins than you could get from some wanky 4 track toy.

I defy any of you to be able to tell the difference between a 16bit 44.1/khz source and a 24-bit 96kh/z source, when they are both dumped to CD. If you have to get out a spectral analyzer to tell the difference then you are missing the point.

Anyway,another good thing about analogue desks,is that you can clip the signal and it sounds phat!

[Doc]

Which is why you're better off with a standalone recorder and desk. All the processing done during the mixing process happens via an analogue desk. You can route the signals through the auxiliaries to external effects without worrying about about bitrate and suchlike. The mixing process is complicated enough without worrying about whether or not you're reducing the signal quality to a digital fuzz. Computers are not ideal for recording music. Software plugins seem like awesome value' date=' but they're not. They're fiddly to use, and it's difficult to predict how they will interact when used together,in terms of level. With external compressors/effects/whatever you always have tactile,'at-a-glance' control over what you're doing. Things can be easily adjusted, without having to fuck around with windows, drop-down menus and suchlike. They also have the added benefit of not sounding like a bucket of shit, which cannot be said about cheap pc solutions.

Real desks also do a better job of summing multiple signals to mono. I've heard the same material mixed through an I-mac and through a real-live desk; to my ears, the desk mixes sound more natural, the computer ones sound fizzy and unnatural.

There's no point in recording unless the sound of what you're doing is important.Pc based solutions are cheap,and sound....well...................cheap

You can jerk-off all you like about bits and bit-rate (though you sound just like a petrolhead banging on about horsepower), but at the end of the day, its all about what it sounds like. A mixing desk is a better environment for mixing audio signals than a computer is. A mixing desk mas better mic pre's than a usb computer box does.

TOY.[/quote']

You're missing the point. The stand alones you showed are 16 bit machines. A desk is just an interface, the quality of the recording comes from the ad converters and 24 bit is better than 16 bit for the reasons I have mentioned. And what's to stop you using an analogue desk with the tascam hog mentioned. then you can mixdown any amount of channels and effects to a stereo mix and feed it to the tascam's two inputs which incidentally has very good converters.

Not every mixing desk has good pre amps either-they vary with price and quality-just like computers do. The pre amps on an m-audio delta 1010 for example are fantastic, the pre amps on behringer desks are shit.

As for bit rate, if you are an inexperienced sound engineer, you will want to fiddle around when mastering and you simply cannot do that when your original recording is 16 bit. At 24 bits you have plenty of depth to try different things to get your sound the way you want it. The when you dither down to 16 bit CD it will actually be 16 bit and not some clicky piece of arefact ridden amateurish tosh.

That's just the way the world works I'm afraid.

[Doc]

I disagree about mixing in the digital domain' date=' I think you can still get good results with a computer. VST fx naturally vary in quality, but these days there is some pretty good shit kicking about, voxengo and waves for example. Either way, if u know what u are doing you can get better results from logic/sx and some good plugins than you could get from some wanky 4 track toy.

I defy any of you to be able to tell the difference between a 16bit 44.1/khz source and a 24-bit 96kh/z source, when they are both dumped to CD. If you have to get out a spectral analyzer to tell the difference then you are missing the point.

Anyway,another good thing about analogue desks,is that you can clip the signal and it sounds phat![/quote']

You can't tell the difference because you can only make CDs at 16 bits. 24 bit gets dithered to 16 bit during burning. Listen in a computer and a deaf monkey can tell the difference.

Most studios nowdays operate entirely in the digital domain, with even their desks being digital and they are completely happy with their computers. Anyone who remembers the days of editing with tape and razor blades will appreciate it too.

I agree with the analogue desk clipping. Digital clipping sounds fucking awful.