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Posted: 1/10/2015 11:48:18 PM EDT
[#1]
No matter what you decide upon, to start recording, be prepared for a steep learning curve.
I like Presonus preamps and software.. YMMV |
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Posted: 1/11/2015 7:52:01 AM EDT
[#2]
It's going to be rough to do drums justice with only 2 inputs. Even more so with a desktop mic that's meant for speaking. Of course, doing anything justice on a budget that small will be very hard. I say small, not because I'm rich (I'm not) but because it's very small for home recording.
Here's what will happen after you pick that package up. You'll find your bass recordings to lack bass or not capture the sound properly, you'll find that your drums lack any and all clarity and that you can't really hear anything, that you'll want to get more inputs and that you'll want to get a set of drum mics. For a very basic setup, you'll probably want 4 recording inputs for drums. One for the snare, one for the kick, and two overheads. Believe me when I say that's not enough and you'll quickly want more. As for DAW, get REAPER. It's easy to use, has all of the same tools that everything else has, and it's 'free'. I say 'free' because, after 30 days, it has an expiration timer that pops up and goes away after 6 seconds that allows you to continue to use the software without issue every time you launch it up.
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Posted: 1/11/2015 4:21:03 PM EDT
[#3]
Reaper, a cheap and very, very good DAW. And a decent USB interface, you can find 'em used on CL and Fleabay cheap. Pre Sonus, Focusrite, M-Audio, Akai and a few others make good units. Just make sure it has the combo plugs that will take either XLR or 1/4" cable ends. As far as mics go, I've gotten good room recordings out of my Sennheiser e609 Silver mics. They were designed for recording guitars with a flat even response, but they make great room mics too. Edit, made the assumption that guitars were involved, apologies. |
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Posted: 1/11/2015 5:07:07 PM EDT
[#4]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
It's going to be rough to do drums justice with only 2 inputs. Even more so with a desktop mic that's meant for speaking. Of course, doing anything justice on a budget that small will be very hard. I say small, not because I'm rich (I'm not) but because it's very small for home recording. Here's what will happen after you pick that package up. You'll find your bass recordings to lack bass or not capture the sound properly, you'll find that your drums lack any and all clarity and that you can't really hear anything, that you'll want to get more inputs and that you'll want to get a set of drum mics. For a very basic setup, you'll probably want 4 recording inputs for drums. One for the snare, one for the kick, and two overheads. Believe me when I say that's not enough and you'll quickly want more. As for DAW, get REAPER. It's easy to use, has all of the same tools that everything else has, and it's 'free'. I say 'free' because, after 30 days, it has an expiration timer that pops up and goes away after 6 seconds that allows you to continue to use the software without issue every time you launch it up. I disagree. Two decent mics should be enough to get started and track all instruments. 2 mics is plenty to get a good drum sound. Even in professional recording studios they frequently use only two or three mics; Kick and OH, or L/R or K&L/R. You get a lot of play by moving the mics around in a good sounding room. A bad sounding square room with lots of reverberant windows/surfaces will sound bad regardless of the quality or quantity of mics. My suggestion is for the best quality interface you can afford, 2 best mics you can afford and hang some packing blankets over reflective or parallel surfaces in your recording room. You will need a decent computer, with a large HD, that has most of the usual trash cleaned off like anti-virus, auto-updates, notifications, etc to get jitter free performance. |
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Posted: 1/11/2015 8:15:32 PM EDT
[#5]
Tascam 1800 is about $200. 8 inputs
Then grab Reaper. |
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Posted: 1/12/2015 10:49:36 AM EDT
[#6]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I disagree. Two decent mics should be enough to get started and track all instruments. 2 mics is plenty to get a good drum sound. Even in professional recording studios they frequently use only two or three mics; Kick and OH, or L/R or K&L/R. You get a lot of play by moving the mics around in a good sounding room. A bad sounding square room with lots of reverberant windows/surfaces will sound bad regardless of the quality or quantity of mics. My suggestion is for the best quality interface you can afford, 2 best mics you can afford and hang some packing blankets over reflective or parallel surfaces in your recording room. You will need a decent computer, with a large HD, that has most of the usual trash cleaned off like anti-virus, auto-updates, notifications, etc to get jitter free performance. Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: It's going to be rough to do drums justice with only 2 inputs. Even more so with a desktop mic that's meant for speaking. Of course, doing anything justice on a budget that small will be very hard. I say small, not because I'm rich (I'm not) but because it's very small for home recording. Here's what will happen after you pick that package up. You'll find your bass recordings to lack bass or not capture the sound properly, you'll find that your drums lack any and all clarity and that you can't really hear anything, that you'll want to get more inputs and that you'll want to get a set of drum mics. For a very basic setup, you'll probably want 4 recording inputs for drums. One for the snare, one for the kick, and two overheads. Believe me when I say that's not enough and you'll quickly want more. As for DAW, get REAPER. It's easy to use, has all of the same tools that everything else has, and it's 'free'. I say 'free' because, after 30 days, it has an expiration timer that pops up and goes away after 6 seconds that allows you to continue to use the software without issue every time you launch it up. I disagree. Two decent mics should be enough to get started and track all instruments. 2 mics is plenty to get a good drum sound. Even in professional recording studios they frequently use only two or three mics; Kick and OH, or L/R or K&L/R. You get a lot of play by moving the mics around in a good sounding room. A bad sounding square room with lots of reverberant windows/surfaces will sound bad regardless of the quality or quantity of mics. My suggestion is for the best quality interface you can afford, 2 best mics you can afford and hang some packing blankets over reflective or parallel surfaces in your recording room. You will need a decent computer, with a large HD, that has most of the usual trash cleaned off like anti-virus, auto-updates, notifications, etc to get jitter free performance. Yeah, I'll have to disagree with this pretty much entirely. The only professional studios that use two or even three mics for drums are not professional. Even for scratch tracks a studio will mic everything. Even when track space was an issue, they still used at least eight tracks for drums using multiple multi track recorders and then mixing them down to a single master track. I'm saying, from my own experience of trying to record drums with two tracks when starting out on my home recording crap ten years ago, that two tracks is not enough. Either you're not getting enough snare for subtle rolls, or your tons don't stick out over your cymbals, or your kick just doesn't fit right in the mix, or all you have is a bunch of high end cymbal noise. And, it may be acceptable of everybody else in the room is being recorded, but even when we did a few live tracks on the album, our tech got out an extra twelve inputs so we could do it. And, my drummer uses two toms, two cymbals, a high hat, and a snare. For a professional sound, you need two on kick, two on snare, two per tom, to actually capture how a tom is supposed to sound, one left, one right, and an ambient room mic that is routed to two tracks. For a home studio, you want one kick, two snare, one per tom (track duplication and eq can get close to a real tom sound), and two room. If you have a bunch of toms you can get away with micing two toms with one mic. If all you're wanting to do is get extremely rough mixes out of your drum and bass get one of the handheld recorders and place it in the room you are recording in.
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Posted: 1/12/2015 3:03:00 PM EDT
[#7]
Thanks for the advice, guys. Going to get Reaper and probably the Presonus interface.
I didn't think of the limitations of trying to do drums with only two mics/inputs, and that may become an issue at some point down the road, but for now I just want something to do some very basic recordings to work out some ideas - not really to make a work for other people to hear. |
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Posted: 1/12/2015 3:32:39 PM EDT
[#8]
Are you trying to work out guitar ideas? Because if you are, there are some damn good affordable VST plugins that would negate having to mic up drums and guitar amps.
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Posted: 1/12/2015 3:45:36 PM EDT
[#9]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Are you trying to work out guitar ideas? Because if you are, there are some damn good affordable VST plugins that would negate having to mic up drums and guitar amps. Bass actually. I'm mostly a drummer - I want to drop the drums first, since I want to do some stuff with odd or alternating time signatures, and then try to build the bass around that. |
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Posted: 1/12/2015 3:52:01 PM EDT
[#10]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Bass actually. I'm mostly a drummer - I want to drop the drums first, since I want to do some stuff with odd or alternating time signatures, and then try to build the bass around that. Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: Are you trying to work out guitar ideas? Because if you are, there are some damn good affordable VST plugins that would negate having to mic up drums and guitar amps. Bass actually. I'm mostly a drummer - I want to drop the drums first, since I want to do some stuff with odd or alternating time signatures, and then try to build the bass around that. |
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