Almost afraid to ask this

[krenski]

Ooops! You're right, and you're welcome.

[myrmidonlord666]

Yes a book would probably be helpful. Any books in particular to look for? I mean obviously I wouldn't go and buy a book on mixing or mastering, when I hardly know anything about recording.

The hand held is really sounding like the best idea, the reason why I wanted a multi track recorder, was to lay down the 2nd guitar parts later and see how they sat over my main guitar lines.

We are a 3piece so its hard to be able to fully tell what the harmonies will sound like unless i have something to play them back.

Hmm gives me alot to think about before I buy something though, I came in thinking a multi track recorder may be the best and Now have a few more options presented to me.

[peeder]

Originally Posted by myrmidonlord666

The hand held is really sounding like the best idea, the reason why I wanted a multi track recorder, was to lay down the 2nd guitar parts later and see how they sat over my main guitar lines.

The Zoom H4 actually has a 4-track mode, so you could overdub directly onto it. Or you can bring your tracks home to your computer and overdub to your heart's content in the DAW you're using. This isn't designed to make you miserable.

As for books, I don't know what's good for the basics these days. In my era we read the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook. There's a guy up in Seattle or something that writes books nowadays that looked OK. There's a microphone book that might help.

[Blast9]

Wow, the Zoom H4 looks amazing bang-for-the-buck.

I eas looking into the Sony 24/96 PCM D-1 thingie last year, but that was very pricy (aroud £1500 witha 4 gb memory stick)

[peeder]

Originally Posted by Blast9

Wow, the Zoom H4 looks amazing bang-for-the-buck.

I find it tempting, but it's by all reports chintzy and fragile feeling, but pretty powerful. For me it would be a songwriting scratchpad thing, but I'm actually thinking it might be better for me to fire up Pro Tools whenever I get an idea anyway.

[reddirt]

The Zoom definitely has an enticing feel to it but to back up what I've said about the Roland ; they record 8 tracks at once which could mean 4 - 5 mics on drums(if you want to go that far) 1 on guitar , 1 on bass and 1 on guide vocal. Obviously you can overdub after that up to 16 tracks in the case of the 16 series.
if you are committed to the music, this isn't going to stop here and the Roland will grow with you for the foreseeable future. It's surprising how pro it will sound. You certainly don't need a computer to mix with. The Adat thing is a trip into unreliability (I have one), computers are a bit unwieldy , Roland is self contained, portable and in my experience reliable.
Cheers , Ross

[peeder]

Originally Posted by reddirt

if you are committed to the music, this isn't going to stop here and the Roland will grow with you for the foreseeable future.

How does an all-in-one unit "grow with you"?

[AllAboutTone]

Akai DR16 or a Fostex D2424 is what you need....good price range as well.

[Lay in Wait]

Originally Posted by Randall

got a computer?.. grap a copy of reaper (Shareware) and some type of 8 channel interface.. they come in lots of flavors

Very good reply And hey, dont sweat the metal shit, there is alot of us here.

[reddirt]

Peeder, how "it will grow with you" is as you get more knowledge it will have the facility and sound to further that knowledge for some years to come ; more particularly if you are a novice at the game.
As I've said previously, ease of use/portability is what gives it (Roland) a head start in keeping the focus on the music.
Cheers, Ross

[pipelineaudio]

REAPER and metal is like EMG's and Lee Jackson

if you REALLY want ease and portability though, even though I am a REAPER shill, I can't disagree that those VS-Studio all in one deals aren't great.

But if you have a laptop already, then I would go interface+reaper...we have an EASY, fast, Presonus Firestudio + 2 X Presonus DIGIMAX F/S setup thats 4 rackspaces and a laptop, fits in my toyota for 24 tracks

[skillzburn]

For 500 bucks you can get a laptop and an mbox that comes with the protools software to do your stereo pair or for another 50 to 100 you could get a 12-16 channel mixer to send it all to protools in stereo. When I started recording our live shows this is what I did and it's actually a pretty badass little setup for musicians that already have a bunch of shit to lug around

[oradii]

myrmidonlord666

IMO you should drop a few hundred on any of the 3-500 dollar firewire interfaces. They will come with some kind of software(seems Cubase is what ships with all this stuff)that you can use to record all the tracks at once. Its a very basic setup but very functional and you can get some really great tracks as long as you have some decent mics.

I picked up a Firepod for $500 last christmas along with a 7 piece drum mic set for $150. Been recording every practice since then.

PM me if you want to talk more about it

[7161]

adat is a good choice especialy on a budget, cos after recording in a location you can take it home, connect it to your (starting at) 100 dollar ADAT pci card and transfter the tracks to your sequencer for mix... and you keep it copnneted to the pc adat card and use the adat as an 8 x i/o rack unit for your pc audio system

and, bonus, if the heads wear out or transport fails you should still be able to use it with the adat card as an 8 x i/o rack... then go and buy another for the transport/heads and with an 8+8 channel adat card you have 16 x i/o pc rack systemif you like

[pianodano]

Originally Posted by myrmidonlord666

Not really trying to get a studio record or hell even a demo out of this. Just recordings to here what we sound like before we go and spend money on recording, that way we make sure we got all the little minor details worked out, before we get in the studio. That way we don't waste our time or the engineers.

Theres a roland on ebay for 499, think ill pick it up. To send the tracks to my computer if I wanted to burn them or mix them with a recording software, I need an A and D converter correct?

I can't figure out it you don't like a digital recorder or what. But if you are open to one, consider a Tascam DTRS.

Here's why.

A Da78 sold for nearly $3k new. You can get them now for lesss than $400.00 on ebay.

The line was killed by more powerful computers available to the masses.

When you need to you can get a 2nd, 3rd,4th, on up to 16 for a total of 128 tracks.Syncing them together is a piece of Cake. Just run a sync cable from one to the next and hit the chase button on units down the line.

Tape is Hi 8- although it is a DTRS tape. Still cheap though.

It has just about any type of I/O you may need. Balanced via dsub, unbalanced via RCA,spdif, tdif.

It has pretty dang nice convertors that you could use for a computer if you do go that way later.

Internal mixing available in the DA-78 if you need to.

24 bit recordings.

NO hassles, no muss, no fuss.

+ You can get help with it over at Tascam forums, if you ever need it.

If you do consider looking for a DA-78, try to find one that has the drum hours clearly stated in the listing. The lower, the better. The DA-78 does have a minor problem of killing the bup memory battery, but it's just a vcr type battery and for what you'd be using it for, it's a non issue.

BTW, you can get a DA38 for no more than $200 and DA88's are about the same. But they are not quite the same machines.

Best of Luck

Edit, Opps. sorry to waste your time. I just realized this thread was dug up from July.