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Thread Buliding home studio, please help.

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1 Buliding home studio, please help.
I am trying to build a home studio so that I can make recordings playing all of the insturments myself. Basically I want to lay down guitar and vocals at once, then add roland v-drums for the the drum trax. Then at some point I may double tracks and other little studio tricks. The trick is I am trying to spend the least amount of money on this as humanly possible. I have the insturments, mics, amps,a computer, and a copy of cool edit pro 2.1 and reference monitors. What else do I need? Some kind of interface so I can record two tracks at once? I don't want to spend any money if I don't have to because as of right now I am just trying to see if this is something I want to do. So please think cheap. Thanks in advance for an solutions offered.

Justin
2
p.s. I will never record more than 2 tracks at one time as i can put the v-drums direct and record as one track.
3
sorry one last thing i forgot, I would like to record guitar and vocals at the same time, but I want them to still be 2 seperate tracks so I can edit them individually.
4
xaosengine-

What kind of soundcard is in your computer? How fast is your computer, and how much ram and hard drive space do you have?

From what you described, sounds like maybe all you need is a small mixer and possibly a soundcard upgrade. I'm not familiar with Cool Edit Pro, but I know a lot of folks use it!!
The Axeman (##(===> Cuts From My New Blues CD
5
I was trying to run it on a pentium pro 200 with 130mb ram and 32-bit 2 channel esoniq sound card. Everything was running great today in the test run until I got all the tracks down and started adding effects. then the sound started skipping. I thought I would put the program on my spare computer, but that doesn't seem like its going to work. This computer is a AMD xp 2000+ with 512mb ram and a 4 channel cmedia ac97 soundcard. I think I am going to try it on here. As for recording 2 trax independantly at the same time? I found that cool edit supports multipule sound cards so Im just going to pick up some used ones from my friends, because I am using multipule cards it doesn't even matter if they are full duplex. This seems to be the route to go for now, at least until I decide if I like it. Then I could get a digi 001 or somthing simaliar down the road, just for convience. What do you think about this idea?
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I don't think I'd go for multiple soundcards. You can induce a lot of problems that way. Doesn't your Cmedia have a stereo line in and a stereo line out?
The Axeman (##(===> Cuts From My New Blues CD
7
yes but i dont think that will solve my problem because then when i record they will be mixed as one track, and I would like the vocals and the guitars to be to seperate tracks in cool edit even though recorded at the same time. If I am correct, to do this I would need more than one regular sound card to get 2 stereo tracks. Or replace my card with a pro audio card of corse. Is this correct?
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If you really want 2 STEREO tracks at once, then yes, you will need another card. But your vocal track will be mono (unless you use 2 mics), and you guitar will be as well, unless you specifically record it in stereo. I would not do it this way.

Lets say you want to mic your voice and run the guitar in direct, and then make a stereo mix out of it. Set up your mic, either through a board or other interface, so that it goes to the left side of the stereo mini plug on your soundcard. Set up your guitar, again through a mixer or other interface so that it goes to the right side of the input. Arm the tracks for recording in your software. Set the audio source for one track to the left input (vocals) and the audio source for the other track for the right input (guitar). Record your song (realize that you will get some bleed of the guitar through the vocal mic.) While recording, I would monitor with headphones rather than speakers (one less thing to bleed into the vocal mic).

When done recording, you should have speparate vocal and guitar tracks. You can then use software plugins to add some chorus to the guitar, or copy the tracks to other tracks and pan them off in different places to fatten them up and add a stereo ambience.
The Axeman (##(===> Cuts From My New Blues CD
9
I do use Cool Edit Pro. I am using a Pentium 4, 1.4 ghZ, 60 GB HD and 128 MB RAM. However, I first experimented with my Pentium 133 mhZ, 1.6 GB HS and 64 Mb of RAM, and connected to my P4 60 GB HD via ethernet, and I was sucessful using that setup.

I have had No sucess with using two sound cards. However, I can record two tracks at once in sereo mode with CEP. If you record it as a stereo song you can transfer each side of the stereo into a seperate mono track in a session. Then you can build on that with additional tracks.

My experience with adding drum tracks after recording guitar and vocals is bad. I will never try it again, I will alwys lay the fundamental drum track down with the guitar. Vocals is always the last thing. If you need to record more than 1 track or (1 stereo track) you should go for a Pro Soundcard.
10
Does Cool Edit have a "bounce to stereo track" function? If so, record you tracks with vocals panned right and guitar panned left. You'll end up with two mono tracks. Bounce each track to a stereo track and voila.

There are two other ways. Copy and paste the mono track to another mono track and pan one left and the other right with the software. Or record the track a second time in mono and pan each track.

Two mono tracks panned left and right gives you the option of using different effects on each track (gangs of fun experimenting), then if you want you can take the two tracks and bounce it to one stereo track to cut down on CPU useage. Bouncing two mono's to stereo kepps the sound nice and tight and you can add real stereo effects at that point.

If you really work at mic placement, you can minimize bleed between tracks, which is very important when messing with effects "in the box".

What do you have for mics? There are some techniques you might be able to use to minimize bleed.