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Apartment recording setup
http://forum.theobelisk.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8267		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  cosmobozo [ Thu Nov 20, 2014 3:28 am ]
Post subject:  Apartment recording setup
Hey everyone,

I use to post on the old sr.com board, I see there's some good advice to be found here as well!

I'm thinking of buying a few things to record ideas in an apartment. I'm looking at an amp simulator (the tech 21 sansamp character series seem to be okay, maybe the "blonde" one) + an audio interface with my laptop + some way to program drums (software or a machine?)

My criteria are

  • Ease of use, I don't wanna spend too much time to get started. As a general rule, I like devices with few knobs!
  • Sound quality, obviously it's not gonna be as good as the real deal, but a decent approximation would be nice. I don't need lots of options either, just one good sound is enough. However an amp sim that does guitar and bass would be great. That seems to be the case of the Sansamp.
  • Reasonable price

I basically don't know anything about that stuff, so any advice is good. Software-wise, I think Audacity would cover my needs, but advice is welcome there too.
Author:  Nyarlathotep [ Thu Nov 20, 2014 11:56 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Apartment recording setup
I highly recommend using Reaper as your audio software. It's much more flexible than Audacity and can do multi-track recording should you ever need to do that. It also has great support for measure-based timebase + tempo changes, which is extremely helpful when using programmed drums. Reaper is more complex than Audacity, but actually very easy to use.

When I record demos with my band I write up the drums in MIDI, which I load into Reaper and run through Addictive Drums - you can specify the mapping of MIDI notes to drums in AD pretty easily and control all kinds of shit - you can also record the drums on an electronic kit and use that MIDI data to power AD. Addictive Drums is expensive, but there's a lot of options for computer-based drum machines out there that are cheaper (plus, you can always, uh, 'try it out'). There are a lot of freeware drum machines that require you to specify samples - if you do some digging you can probably build a good library and use one of those to play the samples.

As for audio interfaces, I really, really like this one: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/multitra ... controller but it's probably overkill. If you just need one input almost anything should work. I used a Lexicon Omega (http://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audi ... ing-studio) for a while, and that was decent.

Hope this helps!
Author:  agent of change [ Fri Nov 21, 2014 12:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Apartment recording setup
A good friend also raves about Reaper, and uses an Audiogram interface after hating some others. I haven't rebuilt my own home studio after living out of a van and then a backpack for about 6 years, but when I do this is what I'll aim at.
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