Thread Stand alone Porta-Studio VS Computer Recording?

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Bilbo

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First post

1 Posted on 01/27/2004 at 11:35:31

I'm a singer/folk Harper/guitarist type of guy and have been agonizing and marveling over the new recording possibilities.
Stand-Alone portable studio, Roland VS880 or 890, Boss 1180? But I want highest quality 24bit/96Khz even if it ends up 16bit on the CDR and after looking at all the computer interfaces like the M-Box and the 001-002 it appears that going computer might actually result in a professional studio quality CD?
Here is the problem: My computer is a Windows 98, Pentium II
processor speed 349 MHz
Ram 320 MB
Soundcard, I believe is Yamaha DS-XG version 4.06.1026
1997-98
I'm am, of course, Midi illiterate, computer illiterate so be gentle with any recommendations.
I noticed that Echo and lots of other interfaces included some software and two to eight plug-ins for mics and 1/4 inch phone jacks, some stated they would work with PC or Mac.
Maybe I need to get a used Windows 2000 XP or whatever it's called?
Thanks for any help....think Old Folky wants to record his voice and harp
and record his Cello player later...
Thanks

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Axeman

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2 Posted on 01/27/2004 at 17:12:53

Hi Bilbo-

You're computer is going to be a problem, I think. Time to upgrade.

You can find stand alone packages that will put out good quality stuff as well, as you've seen. Computer based recording is more flexible in the long run, though.

For acoustic based music, a good condenser mic (or two) is going to be a must.

The Axeman (##(===> Cuts From My New Blues CD

Bilbo

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3 Posted on 01/27/2004 at 18:48:53

Thanks,
Anyone have any experience with any of the hard drive recorders like the Tascam 788; the Boss 1180 or others?
I'm thinking I might get a recorder that has enough GB's to hold the songs and then if it's possible, send one song at a time into my old Windows 98, it has 6 or 7 GB's and a CD burner. My last question is: would the Pentium II with a speed of 349MHz, Ram of 320MB's even be able to handle one song at a time to mix and burn? Would it work with any available software that I could possibly download?
Hope I can find some answers, I'm all Googled out...
Thanks,
B

sta-Jim

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4 Posted on 01/28/2004 at 08:37:57

I transfer tracks from my 4 track Analog recorder to my PC using Cool Edit Pro multitrack software. I calculated I am using 10 MB per minute per track for all songs in WAV format. I think your PC can handle that. If you mix the tracks on the Tascam prior to making the transfer to your PC you will save HD space.

bushman_en

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5 Posted on 01/28/2004 at 09:29:23

Bilbo, My Band has a Tascam 788, which works well for us right now. It has enough room to store an entire cd's worth of songs using about 10-15 tracks per song in double takes and redo's, bounces etc. When I first started I could do all the mixing & tweaking on the 788 and the bounce everything to two stereo tracks and send to my computer via S/PDIF out on 788 and use Windows sound recorder to record to .Wav file each song. Then burned them all to cd.

I still basically am doing this except I am using a wave editor to trim, EQ, and normalize the songs before burning them to cd.

If you plan on doing the mixdown and pre-mastering on the 788 and just recording / burning the cd's on your computer it should work ok. If you are planning on doing any computer based tracks or effects processing you might want to upgrade.

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