Thread: Musicians: Multi-track Recorder help

I am looking to buy a multi-track recorder for recording songs with guitar, bass, vocals, keyboard, drums etc. Right now I have a Boss BR-8 which records to 100mb zip disks so I obviously need an update.

The one I have been looking at is this one:
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...ner?sku=701049

That's $500 and I probably can't go very much higher than that for my price range. I probably need more than 8 tracks for what I am planning to record.

My other gear that I plan to hook up at different times:

*Guitars and bass straight in
*Through BR-8 for certain guitar and vocal effects and drum machine
*Through Boss GT-8 for guitar and bass effects
*Through my guitar and bass amps

I do use Audacity for some small editing on my computer but I'd prefer to have a standalone recorder rather than using software and recording everything to a computer because I don't have a computer in my music area and with that recorder I can do everything there and burn to a cd easily.

I am pretty new to recording so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

PC or Mac? Garageband is excellent for that kind of thing.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

PC or Mac? Garageband is excellent for that kind of thing.

PC but I'd rather not use software.

Think software, not hardware!

If you're on the PC, I recommend any of the Sonar line from Cakewalk. For the same money you're looking at, you could get Sonar Home Studio, a little outboard mixer, and maybe a few plugins to boot. You'll be much more able to incrementally update your setup in the future.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

PC or Mac? Garageband is excellent for that kind of thing.

I wouldn't suggest Garageband, its very limiting. I'm using Logic Pro on the Mac. Its great for what i need and theres tons of things you can do with it. Thats if your a Mac user.

PC user, i'd suggest Sonar or Cubase, however Cubase is a bit advanced in some areas thus why i don't use it.

Multi-track mixing desks, i suggest an 8 track desk and maybe going for a Soundcraft one because they do really nice ones. Check them out at www.soundcraft.com They have tons of stuff. Are you looking for a desk you can plug in via USB or just linked through standard mic jacks etc?

Let me know if you need any advice though.

I know jack-shit about standalone equipment. All I have is a couple of KORG synthesizers.

On the PC, though, I use a combination of Audacity and SonicFoundry ACID for all of my recording and editing needs. (I don't know if you could get multi-track recording out of the two, though. I'm just sayin.)

All of my guitars and everything is down in my basement whereas my computer is upstairs and there isnt much room around it which is why I was mainly planning on looking for a standalone unit.

If I were to use software what would I need to be able to do that, like for plugging my guitars into the computer or using an external mixer? Also is it important to have a high performance computer to be able to do that?

Thanks for all the help so far too.

Your PC doesn't need to be all that high-performance. Usually audio software doesn't use up too much RAM. All you would need is the correct wires. You can find wires that pretty much use all types of combinations, so you can pick up one that has the guitar output jack on one end, and the smaller 1/8 inch microphone type jack (the one that goes into your computer) on the other end. It's just a matter of getting the right cables for the job. But they are all available.

If you were to get an external mixer, you could run all of your equpiment into the mixer and then just have one cable going from your mixer to your PC.

I'm looking into both types now, what would you guys say is the advantage of using the software over stand-alone hardware?

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

All I have is a couple of KORG synthesizers.

Which ones do you have? I was looking at an R3 a while back but got a new guitar instead. If I had the money I'd definitely get a Radius though.

Originally Posted by ThePhobiaViewed

I'm looking into both types now, what would you guys say is the advantage of using the software over stand-alone hardware?

1. Upgrades
2. Plug-ins
3. Software libraries for expansion
4. Portability of media
5. Easy to make a quick mp3 and upload to the internet
6. Large screen to do edits on visually