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Help: Best Setup

19 May, 2008 - 10:23 — carbono

Hi! I have two possible setups in my future Hip-Hop home studio:
I have one shure sm87 with a pop-filter and a Behringer Xenyx 802 Mixer. I can plug it into the line-in of my Sounblaster Audigy 2 NX (external USB Sound card), which is connected to my dual core 2.6GHz with 2 Gb Ram running Windows XP...Or I can plug it directly to the line-in of my Macbook 2.0Ghz Core Duo. Which one do you guys think is the best setup, to record some hip hop vocals??

By the way, in my windows machine, I am using Adobe Audition...is it worth to change to other software? And in my mac, I am using GarageBand because I find it simple and powerful at the same time....Suggestions?

Thanks in Advance!
Carbono

‹ Reloading factory presets onto MPD24 with Uniquest Akai MPD 24 + PreSonus FIREBOX + Cubase LE + A Bunch of Samples, How does it all work??? ›

19 May, 2008 - 13:26 — Checkmate444
Checkmate444's picture

May 18, 2008
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

Hiya Carbono;

It sounds like you have some very nice equipment at your disposal. It seems to me that either way you go you are unlikely to have any problems concerning format compatability. With all things being equal your best bet is to go with the set-up that gives you the cleanest sound with the greatest ease of use, with the sound quality being the deciding factor.
That said you may wish to record some licks and from there you and maybe a group of friends or band members can decide where the best sound is coming from.
Best of luck to you.!

Checkmate.

19 May, 2008 - 15:49 — mortalengines
mortalengines's picture

Your audigy should work the best for recording instruments and whatnot (for now at least). I really don't suggest the mic input on the Mac for recording. If you use the Mac then you may want to look into finding a good interface with a mic preamp. Also check for OS compatibility. Many interfaces for some reason aren't compatible with OS 10.4.10 (the last version of Tiger) or Leopard. Right now you can count on Apogee, Motu and Line 6 for compatibiliy.....everything else you will want to do some research.

www.myspace.com/mortal_engines

20 May, 2008 - 04:40 — carbono
carbono's picture

Mortalengines, my behringer xenyx 802 mixer is a mic preamp, I'm connecting the mic in the mixer, and plugging the mixer into the mac line-in...so my question is, do you think the sound quality will be good without purchasing one external sound card?

Thanks for the help!

20 May, 2008 - 11:17 — mortalengines
mortalengines's picture

Well.....there is certainly no harm in trying it. But, I understand that the Mac's mic input is of limited dynamic range and its analog/digital converter is not the greatest. Having said that....I have played out numerous times and just plugged in to the house board with either RCA or !/4" plugs that ran right out of my G4 Powerbook's (yes my computer is that old) 1/8" stereo output and, you know what?.....It sounded just fine. The audiophile in me says that you really want to get the best possible capture and digital conversion of any signal you record. However, if you have tried just plugging into your computer right out of the mixer and it sounds good to your ears......well, that's all that matters really, isn't it? As you go along you will run into a whole bunch of people who are completely screwed up about getting the latest and greatest in technology to the point of not really getting much actual music made. Some of the best music ever made was recorded with some pretty crappy equipment (ever heard a Robert Johnson recording?).

You know what though? If you are really set on using Garageband you can still record live tracks in Audition on your PC and import them into GB by way of CDRW.....just convert each individual track to an aiff file from Audition....You can do the same thing with GB and then render each track to aiff or wav (Audition will read either....not so sure about GB) and open them up in Audition as well. There are always workarounds and I understand why you would like to use both. GB is a great way to kick off some ideas with loops and synths and Audition is a really good audio recording/editing program. If your email server is big enough you can even email yourself individual tracks to move between computers.

I hope this helps.

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