Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers please!

[webstersp]

If you don't want to read all of this and answer my question just read the 3 last lines!!

I have been in a band for almost 15 years but we decided to quit last year and I sold all my gear (amp, guitars...)
Me and my drummer decided to record some songs we were doing outside the band and this is where i need your help!

I don't know very much about recording on pc beside pod ux2 (my drummer got one) and we also tried m-audio
fast track ultra usb and firewire solo and a presonus firestudio but I don't need that many ins/oits I think.
So i started looking for a better alternative and since I'm living in an appartment I can't record any real
drums or really loud amp!!

At first someone told me to try the Eleven Rack, and each time you google eleven rack you end up with a thread
eleven rack vs Axe-FX. I have done my homework and even if the cool interface and pro-tools/usb interface on the
11R is great i would prefer to have more options, and a better sound!

So my question is (finally!!!)

I already have some KRK rokit 6, great mic for vocals, my guitar and a bomb for pc...

]I'm looking for a sound card that would really worlk well with the Axe-FX.
USB would be better since never really had great results the few times we tried firewire.
We won't record any real drums, we might use EZdrummer or something like that, my drummer
also have a roland v-drum that we would like to be able to track with..


So...
USB sound card that work well for AXE-FX, Windows 7 64 and my krk rokit 6
That can track guitars (direct from Axe-fx), vocals, and a V-Drum (midi??)



thanks all!

 

[MarkR]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

Recording multi tracks to a computer, you want something fast and as much memory as possible. A firewire audio interface, a dedicated firewire PCI card with a Texas Instruments chip, and an external FW hard drive.
I use the M-audio Profire 610 with a firewire PCI card. The M-Audio is a small external interface with mic/instrument/SPDIF Ins/Outs.
Record/Reason, Win 7, 8G of memory. Works great. Use the SPDIF for recording straight from the Axe to the Audio interface.
Also do a search here on recording interfaces, you'll find allot of good info.

 

[DonPetersen]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

I'm very happy with my Focusrite Saffiire Pro40, so I assume the 'smaller' USB devices sound as good, just with fewer I/Os
highly recommended

also, instead of ezdrummer you might wanna check out addictive drums, completely different league when it comes to mixing.
rephrased: ezdrummer disappears in a mix Addictive behaves as drum tracks should.

 

[jerotas]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

Ditto what another guy said, USB bad - Firewire good. Don't listen to the "firewire is on the way out" comments. They've been saying that for a long time.

Myself, I've been unlucky with Saffire stuff. I got the Pro 10, it had a noisy channel. Exchanged it for another of the same product, this one had 2 noisy channels. So I went with a MOTU 8pre. Excellent, no problems since and the software that comes with it is terrific.

Ez Drummer is cheap I believe. If you want to move up after that, my sound quality took a quantum leap when I bought Steven Slate Drums. Believe it, sounds tons better than Superior Drummer et al. They are already mixed to fit in a mix perfectly. With tons of choices of Snares and kicks. Life-saver!

I record on a Sony Vaio laptop with "only" 3Gb Ram and Vista and I run 20-30 plugins no problem.
Just make sure your hard drive is very fast (Sata or E-Sata) and the more ram the better, as was said.

 

[DonPetersen]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

Steven Slate Drums. Believe it, sounds tons better than Superior Drummer et al. They are already mixed to fit in a mix perfectly. With tons of choices of Snares and kicks. Life-saver!

good call - the EX version is a bargain and can be easily expanded with add ons.

 

[guitarnerdswe]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

I'm very happy with my Focusrite Saffiire Pro40, so I assume the 'smaller' USB devices sound as good, just with fewer I/Os
highly recommended

also, instead of ezdrummer you might wanna check out addictive drums, completely different league when it comes to mixing.
rephrased: ezdrummer disappears in a mix Addictive behaves as drum tracks should.

Turn of the room and blead, and it wont.

 

[VirgilGuitar]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

Welcome to the forum....
I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and have been pretty happy with my M-Audio FireWire 1814 - it has 8 channel audio input, with 2 of them being balanced in the front of the box and the other six are unbalanced in the back. I run the Axe/FX into the front 2 and run any other audio I need out of the back - I don't do allot of vocals here, just on occasion and have been fine with a Rode NT1 running through an ART tube preamp into the inputs in back. The midi cables are only 1/in/out with this box, so you may need another box that has more than 1 set - not sure if they have them, but I also have an M-Audio Anniversary Midi box for anything else I need to run MIDI with and it's a USB box thats around $50 and is about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

Good luck to you!

 

[VirgilGuitar]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

I'm very happy with my Focusrite Saffiire Pro40, so I assume the 'smaller' USB devices sound as good, just with fewer I/Os
highly recommended

also, instead of ezdrummer you might wanna check out addictive drums, completely different league when it comes to mixing.
rephrased: ezdrummer disappears in a mix Addictive behaves as drum tracks should.

Turn of the room and blead, and it wont.

+1

 

[VirgilGuitar]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

One more note... I had a drummer here one time with V-Drums and ran him right into EZ-Drummer, had a bass player and another guitarist and we all had headphones on recording on Sonar - it was a blast and my wife couldn't believe we were playing in the other room - hehehe

 

[DonPetersen]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

I'm very happy with my Focusrite Saffiire Pro40, so I assume the 'smaller' USB devices sound as good, just with fewer I/Os
highly recommended

also, instead of ezdrummer you might wanna check out addictive drums, completely different league when it comes to mixing.
rephrased: ezdrummer disappears in a mix Addictive behaves as drum tracks should.

Turn of the room and blead, and it wont.

nope.

the samples just don't cut it.
besides, I like bleed and room, very integral part of a real drumsound to me.
I've miked and recorded a bunch of drumsets over the years, bleed and room always were good things.
If you lke ez, Addictive and/or Steven Slate will blow you away.

 

[Matman]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

We're way off topic at this point, but here goes....

Though I am sure it is by fine degrees that one or the other caters to a personal preference, I just wanted to say that in my experience, nothing beats Superior 2.0 for variety/versatility, sound quality, and ease of use.

The poster who said "Slate" was "already mixed" put their finger on exactly what I DON'T like about it. Superior is for the producer who knows what they want and knows how to get it. While you do need more of a Sound Designer's skills to really dig in and tweak a kit to the sound in your head, the degree of control is unprecedented, and after a while, it becomes very easy to arrive at a set of sounds, articulations and variations suited to your tastes or track. With xdrum the add ons there are literally hundreds of instruments to choose from for any kit, and the newer layering capabilities make it easy to be creative with compound sounds... = HUGE! The Sonalksis plugs -- especially the transient designer -- are top notch too (designed by engineers from Neve). The mixer and multi-track bounce capabilities round out why I think this is the way to go.

 

[jojo]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

If you want to keep it simple.....

1. Get a Mac (this from a hardcore PC user).
2. Since you've used presonus before, try again. I use a firebox. Two inputs is all I need most of the time.
3. The Mac just "sees" the firebox, you don't need drivers. But you can still install some of the control software.
4. Open garage band and go for it. It's stupid easy to record rough drafts in garage band and if you are careful you can do a whole lot more. For drums, just get a drum machine or buy some drum software as has been suggested already.
5. When you're ready, go out and buy Logic, for a fraction of pro tools. It's compatible with Garageband and has most of the tools you'll need. Hard to imagine what you'd do at home that it couldn't handle.

Just a thought, if you want to get up and running fast and easy. I bought my first Mac recently. I'd never even touched one, I had no clue how to even turn it on. I pulled it out of the box, plugged it in, and just like that it worked. I plugged in my firebox and the Mac recognized it. I read a blurb about how to get the firebox controls into the mac by dragging off the disk, and did that. Then I opened Garage Band, plugged the my axe-fx into the firebox, and started recording test tracks. All of this took well under an hour, and I never opened a manual other than to read the mac paragraph of the firebox installation pamphlet.

But since you've already got a stout PC and seem not to be intimidated by it, I'll add a +1 to the firewire question. Especially if you go firewire 800.

 

[godprobe]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

We're way off topic at this point, but here goes....

Though I am sure it is by fine degrees that one or the other caters to a personal preference, I just wanted to say that in my experience, nothing beats Superior 2.0 for variety/versatility, sound quality, and ease of use.

The poster who said "Slate" was "already mixed" put their finger on exactly what I DON'T like about it. Superior is for the producer who knows what they want and knows how to get it. While you do need more of a Sound Designer's skills to really dig in and tweak a kit to the sound in your head, the degree of control is unprecedented, and after a while, it becomes very easy to arrive at a set of sounds, articulations and variations suited to your tastes or track. With xdrum the add ons there are literally hundreds of instruments to choose from for any kit, and the newer layering capabilities make it easy to be creative with compound sounds... = HUGE! The Sonalksis plugs -- especially the transient designer -- are top notch too (designed by engineers from Neve). The mixer and multi-track bounce capabilities round out why I think this is the way to go.

+1 (except replace "Slate" with "Addictive" -- I haven't tried Slate. And don't get me wrong, all are nice, I just prefer Superior for the reasons above)

 

[guitarnerdswe]

Re: Almost bought it online today!! Need a few answers plea

I'm very happy with my Focusrite Saffiire Pro40, so I assume the 'smaller' USB devices sound as good, just with fewer I/Os
highly recommended

also, instead of ezdrummer you might wanna check out addictive drums, completely different league when it comes to mixing.
rephrased: ezdrummer disappears in a mix Addictive behaves as drum tracks should.

Turn of the room and blead, and it wont.

nope.

the samples just don't cut it.
besides, I like bleed and room, very integral part of a real drumsound to me.
I've miked and recorded a bunch of drumsets over the years, bleed and room always were good things.
If you lke ez, Addictive and/or Steven Slate will blow you away.

I have tried Steven Slate too. Still use the Toontrack software. Nothing wrong with Steven Slate, I just prefer Toontracks stuff. Infact, I pretty much only use EZdrummer. Saying their stuff doesn't cut it in a mix, is just wrong IMO. I have had no problems cutting through a mix with either EZdrummer, Superior or Steven Slate.