Fostex?

[g.]

What I would buy and what the poster says is within his budget even after some coaxing to go higher, are widely separated ; }

[The Geoff]

It's reality.

 

I have pennies to spend.

 

I am retired on a very small pension.

 

And it's for my own pleasure more than anything.

 

G.

[EmptinesOf Youth]

if sound quality isnt that important, why dont you just download audiacity(sp?), im not sure thats the exact name but its freeware. It is for the computer and i know you can re cord way more than four tracks. You could probably just get a computer mic for 10 bucks and make hat work somehow, or may a really cheap audio interface for your computer....

[fantasticsound]

If you're looking between the Ebay items you linked, buy the Tascam. The others are already bid for more than they should be worth.

 

But I'm with Bill and Ryan. If you have a half decent computer you can download Audacity, though I wouldn't recommend it. Get N-track or another low cost, downloadable multi-track. I use Audacity at work, mostly as my own sketch pad, but it is severely lacking in function and user-friendly controls. I've yet to find a way to drop markers for use as edit points, and that's about as basic an operaton as you get after play, ff, rewind, and record.

 

If you want something you can take away from the computer, just don't spend more than £30 for a used cassette 4 track. They simply aren't worth it.

 

Having said that, we made some wonderful (If relatively noisy) recordings on a Fostex 280. As much as I wanted to like Tascam better, the Fostex units of the design that 120 has were great little recorders. Of course the heads on that thing are probably shot or close to it.

 

Mini-Discs are rewritable. They're simply another kind of floppy-disk, in a small, rugged holder. AFAIK, they were never set up for use as anything other than audio read/write from dedicated hardware, so it's not like you can use them for data. I may be wrong about that, but who cares. Get a flash drive if you need portable data storage.

[EmptinesOf Youth]

i remember when i got my korg and soon after i was looking at one of THESE

i dont know how outta your range this would be but ive heard descent things about em...

[fantasticsound]

That Fostex MR-8 would appear to be the way to go, if the price doesn't spike at the end of auction. It even has a USB port for direct transfer of wavs to your computer.

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

Well, yes and no. Again, this is a device that relies on heavy data compression. A Tascam US-122 doesn't... there are a lot of options that do not.

 

Maybe data compression doesn't matter to most of you, I don't know. But I don't care for it.

 

Bill

[The Geoff]

Originally posted by RyanVollmer:

if sound quality isnt that important, why dont you just download audiacity(sp?), im not sure thats the exact name but its freeware. It is for the computer and i know you can re cord way more than four tracks. You could probably just get a computer mic for 10 bucks and make hat work somehow, or may a really cheap audio interface for your computer....

Good idea - I tried it a while ago, and found my computer has a big latency issue with Audacity, so no go, but thanks, yes it might have worked.

 

G.

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

Latency is usually an issue when the recordist trys to run the aufdio through the software and back out for monitoring. This is not the right way to do it, and any audio app will present excessive latency when trying to do this.

 

If you can describe what you did and what the results were, we may be able to help you to get a setup going with what you have.

 

Bill

[The Geoff]

I think that's exactly what I was doing.

 

I have a 2.6MHz PC (ASUS Pundit), 1 Meg RAM,120Gig drive, with an unknown soundcard and Audacity plus a pair of small Soundlab speakers - that's it.

 

When I put it together I wasn't contemplating doing recording with it.

 

G.

[The Geoff]

I wasn't impressed with Audacity for this kind of stuff.

 

G.

[EmptinesOf Youth]

by meg you mean gig i hope, which should be plenty...

 

but since were on this topic bill...maybe im doing something wrong too...even though ihavent had latency issues, even when using 20+ tracks...but i have stuff going in my Audio interface, and thats firewire to my computer and then i monitor the track with the monitor track button on cubase and press record and it plays back out my AI...is this wrong?

[The Geoff]

Yup, I meant 1 Gig RAM, although I remember when 1 Meg was enough.............

 

G.

[g.]

Thus, why some people prefer cheap standalone units ; }

[The Geoff]

Well, GB, if I can make what I've already got work properly, then so much the better - no need to fork out pennies :0).

 

G.

[EmptinesOf Youth]

i have 1 gig on the comp i use to record, if you click the link in my sig and listen to all in my head...theres alot going on and i didnt have any latency issue...

[The Geoff]

Originally posted by RyanVollmer:

i have 1 gig on the comp i use to record, if you click the link in my sig and listen to all in my head...theres alot going on and i didnt have any latency issue...

I'd love to, and when I get broadband, I will, however it's a futile pursuit using Dialup.

 

G.

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

Originally posted by Geoff B.:

I think that's exactly what I was doing.

 

I have a 2.6MHz PC (ASUS Pundit), 1 Meg RAM,120Gig drive, with an unknown soundcard and Audacity plus a pair of small Soundlab speakers - that's it.

 

G.

And what is it that you are trying to do, musically? You have a console of some sort, or what? Mics? Headphones? You want MIDI or VSTis and such? Or just audio recording?

 

Bill

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

Originally posted by RyanVollmer:

..maybe im doing something wrong too...even though ihavent had latency issues, even when using 20+ tracks...but i have stuff going in my Audio interface, and thats firewire to my computer and then i monitor the track with the monitor track button on cubase and press record and it plays back out my AI...is this wrong?

What I am saying is that data moves through a computer to the click of the clock. One tic, one step. The OS has a built in latency. The audio card driver will. The audio application will. If you have enabled any plug ins, they will. If you've added eq or compression or any other effect, you've lengthened the path. These are the types of things that cause latency. So if you are, for example, trying to sing along with some audio playback, and you have fed your mic through all of this stuff and stuck some reverb plug on it etc... when the sound of your voice gets back to your headphones, it could be quite a while... even a couple of seconds, in extreme cases, depending upon buffer settings, etc. It is very hard to sing along with something that is repeating in your ears some number of ms behind.

 

The easy way for me, is (since I use RME cards with ZLM) to set up cue mixes from the audio card applet. Someone with a console can set up a standard monitor mix, via a pre-fade aux.

 

 

Bill

[Guitar55]

A great, inexpensive software package is Power Tracks Pro from PGMUSIC.COM. 48 tracks, very versatile. Base price is $29 US.

[The Geoff]

Originally posted by Bill@Welcome Home Studios:

Originally posted by Geoff B.:

I think that's exactly what I was doing.

 

I have a 2.6MHz PC (ASUS Pundit), 1 Meg RAM,120Gig drive, with an unknown soundcard and Audacity plus a pair of small Soundlab speakers - that's it.

 

G.

And what is it that you are trying to do, musically? You have a console of some sort, or what? Mics? Headphones? You want MIDI or VSTis and such? Or just audio recording?

 

Bill

I don't really have anything, Bill.

 

I just want to create multi-track with guitar, bass & voice. I have those instruments and a mike. I also have an ancient battery-powered mixer box with gains only. That's it.

 

That's why I thought that getting a 4 track might actually be easier.

 

Geoff

[Kramer Ferrington III.]

Originally posted by Geoff B.:

I just want to create multi-track with guitar, bass & voice. I have those instruments and a mike. I also have an ancient battery-powered mixer box with gains only. That's it.

 

That's why I thought that getting a 4 track might actually be easier.

 

Geoff

Well, in that case, I'd go for something that's PC based. Someday, you might want to share what you've recorded with other people so you'll eventually need the PC in order to convert to MP3 format or post the music somewhere and so on.

 

At that stage you might as well do everything on the same hardware ie the PC.

 

I use CuBase and, because I've always been crap at counting, I love the way that the desktop looks like a Gantt chart: you can actually see the tracks you've laid down and how they fit onto each other. And you can see the marker coming up to wherever you are supposed to start recording

 

On the other hand, a four track has a more traditional feel. You have actual knobs and faders and so on, which feels a lot more "normal" (to me at least).

[The Geoff]

My PC is an Asus Pundit 'small format' PC. It has a basic sound card built into the motherboard (planar, if you're IBM), and is not intended to be upgradable - I built it a few years ago before I was contemplating this.

 

My current thinking is to get a 4 track, and maybe later I can transfer it to the pC for capture via the stereo line out.

 

We'll see.

 

G.

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

You have options.

 

Your current sound card has 2 ins. (L & R) You canb plug in any mic or mixer, use any multitrack software, record, mix, etc.

 

Or you can buy something like the Tascam US-122 (USB) which has mic and guitar and line inputs, comes with software, everything you need including an 8 channel sample player, software drums, MIDI etc.

 

You could look at the 2 channel firewire piece that shows up in the banner ads above.... same idea.

 

I find that , for beginners, these type of devices are worth it simply because they put it all together for you. You just have to read the manuals and follow directions.

 

The Tascam sells for around $200, about $125 used from ebay. I don't know the price on the firewire piece.

 

Bill

[The Geoff]

Thanks, Bill, I'll watch out for the Tascam and see if it comes into my price range.

 

Geoff