basic recording setup

Hi everyone,

I'm a Mac newb (heck, I don't even have one yet) but I will be acquiring one in the not too distant future. To make matters worse, I'm a sound engineering newb as well. One of the reasons for my switch to Mac is the vaunted ease of doing your own recording. I'm a saxophonist and would like to be able, to start out, just record myself with reasonably good sound quality. I'm assuming that the mic in whichever Macbook Pro I end up with is not particularly well suited to something like that. Could you guys recommend a basic setup that would facilitate this? Another assumption I'm making is that it'll take a mic and a box to run the mic into before it gets to the MBP. Which combo of these things would work well, with the possibility of expanding it to 3 or 4 inputs at once (I'm the front man of a jazz combo and we're trying to come up with a way to record without shelling out huge amounts of cash.)

Anyway, long post. If you've made it this far, you are to be congratulated!

-B

Garageband comes with every new Mac so you'll be covered on the software side of things. I recommend buying a little mixer. Something like this is cheap but does the job.

http://www.behringer.com/802/index.cfm?lang=eng

Get some speakers, a decent mic and you're good to go.

Wow... I'm more than a little surprised at the inexpensive-ness of that mixer, cjay. I was envisioning $300 to $500 to get a workable setup.

brentsax check this out
it was recorded using olny the mic in my macbook and garageband...
the saxophone, voice and the flaute was recorded, everything else was midi programmed
i think it sounds good, considering that im not a sound engineeran advisable recording setup
(just to make you know that you can use the integrated mic to sample simple things)
n_n

Sorry, but Behringer's quality isn't great. With recording, you get what you pay for. If you buy a $50 mic, preamp and input, you get a $50 sound.

And your computer being an Apple has nothing to do with the ease of recording, trust me, I know.

You'll need a decent mic, probably about $100. AT2020 is a great condensor for the price. It works great on vocals and guitar. I don't know about a sax though, I haven't tried that just yet. Sure SM57's are also good for the price.

You'll need a decent preamp. A $5000 mic plugged into a $50 preamp will probably still sound like crap.

Input device - Firewire = $$$. If you only want one or two tracks at a time, that's fine. Stay away from USB. If you're looking for 8-10, you're going to spend about $800 on the device, be it MOTU, Apogee, or Presonus.

You really don't want to record multiple instruments at once if you're going to try and fine tune each track. You'll get bleed and your sax track will have trumpet, trombone, and drums on it, making it impossible to seperate them.

If you want a decent mixer with decent preamps, look at Mackie mixers. They're a little more expensive, but they're a lot better quality than the Behringer products. I have an old 1402 VLZ that I paid nearly $300 for on e-bay that is still rock solid. You can always just find a mixer for mixing and then go buy a good preamp and mic, but you could end up paying $300-$500 for just a preamp.

Quality is expensive and isn't easy. Just keep in mind 2 things. You may be completely frustrated at first and if you want it to sound really good, then it's not going to be really cheap.

I own a studio with a partner of mine and do some recording along with an engineer that works for us. I'm no pro, but I know enough to get by. Check out the site below and look up different recording forums with google or yahoo. You'll get more professional answers than you can find on a computer forum.

www.recording.org has a lot of full time professional sound engineers and production people on it. It moves a little slow at times, but it's a great resource for any questions you have or problems you need solutions for.

Edit: Sorry, forgot a really important part. If you're just looking to record a demo and don't plan on doing much recording afterwards, buying studio time can be the cheapest and best way to get really good results. Some places charge as little at $25 an hour and some places have very knowledgable engineers to help you out and give you suggestions and guidance while recording. Beats taking a lot of time to troubleshoot your software and equipment.

Yes all that is true but unfortunately if you don't want or have the money to spend then you have to do it on the cheap.

You could get the M-Audio Firewire 410 (has a built in pre-amp) and an SM57 mic. That should give a pretty nice sound if you record everything one track at a time. Unfortunately the Firewire solo doesnt have a built in pre amp

If you want this:

brentsax said:

I'm a saxophonist and would like to be able, to start out, just record myself with reasonably good sound quality.

Click to expand...

Then don't go with the idea of this:

cjay said:

Yes all that is true but unfortunately if you don't want or have the money to spend then you have to do it on the cheap.

Click to expand...

Recording a saxophone with garage band and a usb mic probably isn't going to get you a recording with "reasonably good sound quality". It will, however, get you a recording.

You should kindly donate some of your equipment to the OP.

He has to compromise somewhere. It's his choice whether it's money or equipment. I don't think anyone here is stupid enough not to know the quality issues involved. If the OP had stated he had $$$ to spend people would've recommended appropriate hardware/software.

iLove Garageband. It's totally versitile. I'm a musician (rock band) and recording is much more convenient. There's like, almost no learning curve. Well, a small one.

cjay said:

You should kindly donate some of your equipment to the OP.

He has to compromise somewhere. It's his choice whether it's money or equipment. I don't think anyone here is stupid enough not to know the quality issues involved. If the OP had stated he had $$$ to spend people would've recommended appropriate hardware/software.

Click to expand...

He did say he was expecting a mixer to cost about $300. You can get a good mixer with decent preamps for that much.

brentsax said:

Hi everyone,

I'm a Mac newb (heck, I don't even have one yet) but I will be acquiring one in the not too distant future. To make matters worse, I'm a sound engineering newb as well. One of the reasons for my switch to Mac is the vaunted ease of doing your own recording. I'm a saxophonist and would like to be able, to start out, just record myself with reasonably good sound quality. I'm assuming that the mic in whichever Macbook Pro I end up with is not particularly well suited to something like that. Could you guys recommend a basic setup that would facilitate this? Another assumption I'm making is that it'll take a mic and a box to run the mic into before it gets to the MBP. Which combo of these things would work well, with the possibility of expanding it to 3 or 4 inputs at once (I'm the front man of a jazz combo and we're trying to come up with a way to record without shelling out huge amounts of cash.)

Anyway, long post. If you've made it this far, you are to be congratulated!

-B

Click to expand...

I'm afraid i have to agree with the Village Idiot on this one, if you want a quality professional quality recording you are going to have to put out some bucks. If, however, your just looking to get a decent recording that sounds quite good you can get by a bit cheaper.

First and formost you will need a quality mic. I use and like a lot a Heil PR40 myself, it does a very good job. DO NOT SKIMP on the mic it is a MOST important piece of recording equipment.

Yes you will need a box between your mic and your computer, this is where you can save a few bucks depending on just what you are wanting to do. If you want profesional results, you will have to pay pro prices, but if you just want something to amp the mic and do a little you can get by with less. A Behringer UB802 mixer is very inexpensive and gives you good amping to the computer. Again it depends on how much you want to do and the quality of recording you are looking for.

Another thing you will certainly want is a good audio editing program. I use one on the Mac called Amadeus Pro, it does a very nice job for what i need it to do.

To sum it up, get a good mic, don't skimp here. Depending on the quality you want, get a mixer\amp you can afford and an audio editor that will do what you need.

Sax play huh... i used to play Alto, Tenor, Baratone back in the 50's in a marching band and a jazz band... great stuff... do you have anything recorded that i might be able to listen to? I play a little jazz on my podcast now and then and maybe i could give you a little play...

James said:

To sum it up, get a good mic, don't skimp here. Depending on the quality you want, get a mixer\amp you can afford and an audio editor that will do what you need.

Sax play huh... i used to play Alto, Tenor, Baratone back in the 50's in a marching band and a jazz band... great stuff... do you have anything recorded that i might be able to listen to? I play a little jazz on my podcast now and then and maybe i could give you a little play...

Click to expand...

Thank you everyone for your comments. It has been (for the most part ;D ) enlightening. I guess what I think I'll start out with is a quality mic, for which I'll spend the appropriate time researching mics for acoustic instruments. And I think I will try and find a reasonably priced mixer/preamp and give GarageBand a chance before I try other software.

James, as far as recordings go, the only things I have of myself w/ my combo are from a year and a half ago, and I wouldn't want to torture anyone w/ that stuff. We've been doing a lot of gigging though, and are getting to a point where I think we put on a good show. I'll have to see what I can do about recording one of our next gigs. Maybe just set up our piano player's macbook in front of the stage and see what happens.

brentsax said:

T

James, as far as recordings go, the only things I have of myself w/ my combo are from a year and a half ago, and I wouldn't want to torture anyone w/ that stuff. We've been doing a lot of gigging though, and are getting to a point where I think we put on a good show. I'll have to see what I can do about recording one of our next gigs. Maybe just set up our piano player's macbook in front of the stage and see what happens.

Click to expand...

Sounds good man, looking forward to listening to some of your songs. You know where to find me when you have something. Save it in .wav format, i don't mind large files i have a cable connection.

I would also like to second dropping the money on a decent condenser mic (probably upwards of $150 for a somewhat decent one). Bad mics will always sound like you plugged a mic into a boombox and recorded on tape. The Shures (sm57, sm58, i think the difference is one has a windscreen on it-both around 70 bucks or so i believe) are decent, you could get away with it, but are much more properly suited to live performances where durability and ease of use are more important than sound quality, and they are quite durable. Alto Saxophones are loud instruments with an interesting dynamic to the sound, the quality of, and the careful placement of a mic, are all that's gonna keep it from sounding like a casio synth keyboard upon recording. But if you've gotta do it cheap, I know how it is, done that as well, still have to most of the time. I used to play saxophone in middle school, very beautiful instrument.