First recording gear

[ll Mr Blonde ll]

So, I am saving up to buy my first recording gear....but would should i get? I am sortof on a budget so I was thinking about a boss recorder or something along that line. I just don't really know anything about the gear so I don't what to get.

[JESTER700]

LOTS of options. Some questions:
Do you have a hard limit on budget, or is it flexible? How much?
Do you have any existing gear - mixer, mics, cables, PC, speakers for use as monitors?
Does it need to be portable?
Does it need to have a built in drum machine and/or guitar FX?
Is it just for a sketchpad, or would you want to maybe do a CD with tracks you record on it?

[ll Mr Blonde ll]

I do have sortof a hard budget, probably the most i can spend is 600.
I dont have any gear right now, besides a computer and a mac labtop.
It doesnt necessarily have to be portable.
I do need atleast the drum machine, and the affects would be GREAT thing to have.
I would eventually like to make the tracks on to cd.
Hope that helps

[kennydoe]

tghere are SO many threads on Jemsite you could get info from...do a search and you'll find lots of answers.

~K

[JESTER700]

Well, for $600 you can leave out the $800 ones with the CD burners built in, because even if you stretch you still need mics, cables, headphones, etc.

Definitely search for more info, but one unit I'd look at is Zoom's MRS-8 for $300. It has a basic drum machine & effects, and uses SD cards so you can bring the tracks into your PC for mixing & burning (if it's fast enough & has a CD burner). There's free software available for this. This leaves $300 for a card reader, a 1GB SD card, some headphones for tracking, and an SM57 or similar. If you find good deals, you could probably fit in a cheap Chinese condensor mic & small phantom powered mixer as well.

The big issue is, you still don't have monitors, and you shouldn't mix on headphones. See if you can beg, borrow, or steal a small stereo system or just receiver & bookshelf speakers until you can get proper monitors.

This is just one way to go about it. There are others.

[Drew]

How up-to-date are your computers? You might be better served grabbing a good audio interface, a mic, and a nice set of headphones, particularly if that Mac is fairly up-to-date.

Also, a software sequencer might be a better answer than a drum machine - I've gotten rather respectable reslts with Fruity Loops, and the demo version, while it doesn't let you save, let's you export audio, both full tracks and loops, and is more than enough for most rudimenrary drum work...

(I'm a computer-based recording fan in general though, so I'm biased).

[JESTER700]

Drew's got a good point, and there is freeware available for pretty much any aspect (plus some hardware will include software).

I sometimes track on a standalone (a VF16 or the MRS8 I mentioned), but always port it to the PC.

[Ibanut]

Id go for the Digi Mbox to start out on. If you have a decent computer and a firewire HD for the audio files Id go that way. You can get drum loop software reasonably cheap. Pro tools LE is Pro quality software and you can get plugins as the money comes in.

[JESTER700]

If you need to port to studios, PT makes sense. Otherwise, there are lots of options.