Need Help With Recording Purchases, Need knowledge from expirienced people Options

[albino_axe]

Ok, this is my first post and first time looking into buying recording gear, so obviously I do not have any experience and need some guidance. I play guitar, harmonica, and sing(I also would like to do some djembe percussion in my songs as well). I want to be able to record songs with good quality, not like studio stuff, but acceptable to put on CD as a home recorded album. I have a G4 1GHz Tibook and I bought Amadeus II which is a simple two track recording program and have been using the onboard mic in my laptop, which, frankly, really stinks. Now, I have an incredibly tight budget, and I don't know if I can really even get into recording with so tight of finances. So far I have been looking at just being creative with Amadeus so I don't have to buy a more expensive recording program. I know about the whole iMic thing, but that is lower quality then I would like. I want to be able to input more than one mic at once along with guitar etc. Here is how much knowledge I have about recording...I believe that all I need to start recording on my Tibook is some mixing software, a mixer, and mics(with instruments of course), output to the line-in on the back of my laptop. Am I way off? I was looking at a Behringer Eurorack UB1204-PRO mixer and two AKG D 8000 S mics along with my dinky Amadeus II program. Would this work? Please let me know. This has been driving me up the walls for the past week since I could find no one to talk to about setting up a home studio with an Apple laptop. And as I said about my budget, the mixer and mics I was looking at amount to only $200. That should tell you my money situation. Thank you!

[kwilinski]

I am also new to this recording process but I have learned some lessons over the past year... I would recommend building up to the following--

Mbox with Pro Tools LE-- look for used on eBay (maybe $300 used)
Reason 2.5 Full Version-- the Reason Adapted version that came with my Mbox is way to limited to be useful ($350)

Other stuff is useful but these two are required in my opinion. I also have an Oxygen 8 Midi Controller Keyboard. ($120)

I would save up the $800 you need to do it right and not waste your money. I paid for mine by selling stuff I don't use on eBay. Good luck and have fun!

[Willis]

Albino,
Check out the downloads from Macmusic. Many of them offer free trials or shareware. Also consider Protools 5.0 which is free. I am exactly in the same boat. I sing, play guitar and harmonica and am looking for a simple multi-track recorder/mixer without all the frosting. I have been sampling all sorts of software and doing a lot of research. I finally purchased an M- Audio interphase to connect my microphones to my iMac. That's as far as I've gotten. Now my next step is to locate software that will meet my needs but won't bust my budget.

[albino_axe]

Thank you guys for your input. I've been looking at the Tascam US-122($200)and it seems like that's what I may end up with. Does anyone have any advice about whether it's good or not? Thanks again!

[bevlev]

I think you still need an audio interface - to get the external audio into the PBook at any quality - I use the Digidesign mBox (USB connected), but that is approx $450 new (also comes with ProTools 6 LE) - you can choose your sample rates up to pro quality (24bit, 48mHz) and there's where you get the quality, however, also the expense. There may be others out there that are cheaper - I have had a lot of problems with mAudio products on my Macs, FYI...

Good luck...

[earmuffs]

the us-122 has worked very well for me. im new at this computer recording thing too, but i think from that you can achieve the quality that you have described with the us-122

plus it also comes with a free version cubase, but the cubase is kind of confusing to get set up (for me anyway)

try out Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) for a free multi track sequencer app. i dig it , and it works well with my set up.