Interfaces, DAW, USB/FireWire??? Need help on all the above.

[ShadowFactoryX]

So I really wanna do more of the home recording stuff.
But I need some serious help in the line of what to get within my budget constraints.
To have the ability to record drums is what I'm aiming for, because for guitar and bass I can already go DI with my POD HD500 and my Zoom B9.

First off: Interface
So I'd like to have at least an 8 Channel Mic-Input interface, and I know there's decent options out there that are cost effective.
I'd really like to spend 200-300 on the interface....

but USB/Firewire comes into play.
My Laptop (specs I'm unsure of I'd have to look it up) Only has USB (3 ports) and no expansion slot.
I highly doubt I'd be running say at-par efficiency by any means for recording using this, though I am just guessing.
So in regards, what really is better, USB or FireWire? Windows PCs/Laptops really dont utilize FireWire, and its hard to find ones that do. Speaking off, I'd really like to stay with Windows, dont try and veer me away to macland.
So is there a good USB interface that would fit my current needs? I know tascam makes a few, but I've heard they can be realy shifty at times.

How about DAW? I've used Sonar 8.5, it made me want to quit music. I have X1 right now, and I'm definitely not in love with it, its still a pretty confusing piece of crap.
I've heard good things about reaper, and there's all kinds of options out there. I need something simple, but powerful, and can make it easy to mix drums.

I know thats a lot, but anyone who can offer any insight, I'd be grateful.

[EtherealEntity]

Dollars? I'd say you're going to have to double your budget unless you hit lucky on some preowned.
I reckon Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 is your best bet. You don't want to be skimping when working with 8 channels over USB I don't think.

I use Sonar X1. Heavy user of 8.5, X1, ProTools, and previously Logic. Personally I think they are all the same but offer different features. I don't see why you should find it hard to work in X1. Unless another DAW has FEATURES that you don't have in Sonar I'd say stick at it and keep learning. It's a very nice DAW and the new Smart tool makes things very fast when you understand how to use it.

[KingAenarion]

Yea I'm with EE on this.

Does your Laptop have an expansion slot? If so you can get firewire to it.

As to DAWs, try some. There's a Demo of Presonus Studio One on their website, Reaper has a great trial and is really cheap...

[S-O]

Originally Posted by KingAenarion

Does your Laptop have an expansion slot?

Originally Posted by ShadowFactoryX

My Laptop (specs I'm unsure of I'd have to look it up) Only has USB (3 ports) and no expansion slot.

Firewire has a large advantage over USB, FW sustained buffer rate is necessary for 8 tracks of simultaneous recording. So, I'd say either build a desktop for recording, which one can do in an affordable way, or new laptop with expansion slot.

or buy a macbook hehe

[EtherealEntity]

I don't know, I'd certainly be more comfortable using Firewire from what I've heard but it can't be a strict requirement else these interfaces wouldn't be selling, surely? I'm sure there's must be a ton of people that have recorded 8ch drums over USB and made a successful product. I haven't tried though so I certainly have no idea!

[mgh]

yeah a USB2.0 interface can easily do 8 simultaneous tracks. make you sure your laptop has USB 2.0 ports and use those, and nothing else USB on the same buss. personally i'd stretch your budget a little and go for the m-audio fast track ultra. (you need the 8r for 8 mike inputs...) or focusrite. avoid tascam unless you are very brave...

[ShadowFactoryX]

Originally Posted by EtherealEntity

Dollars?

Nope, I was looking to pay in blast beats and chickens.

Originally Posted by EtherealEntity

I'd say you're going to have to double your budget unless you hit lucky on some preowned.
I reckon Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 is your best bet. You don't want to be skimping when working with 8 channels over USB I don't think.

Thats actually not too bad. Did some quick searching online. Seems like you can snag one of those for as little as 360-370. But again, it is firewire.
Seems like i might need to upgrade hardware.
Though there's a pc in my house that doesnt get a whole lot of use and is only about 2 years old. I dont think it has FW, but could easily solve that methinks.
Its just in a location that would be hard to move stuff to.

Originally Posted by EtherealEntity

I use Sonar X1. Heavy user of 8.5, X1, ProTools, and previously Logic. Personally I think they are all the same but offer different features. I don't see why you should find it hard to work in X1. Unless another DAW has FEATURES that you don't have in Sonar I'd say stick at it and keep learning. It's a very nice DAW and the new Smart tool makes things very fast when you understand how to use it.

I guess it wouldnt hurt to get used to X1 a little more. I do really hate 8.5 though with a passion.

Originally Posted by S-O

Firewire has a large advantage over USB, FW sustained buffer rate is necessary for 8 tracks of simultaneous recording. So, I'd say either build a desktop for recording, which one can do in an affordable way, or new laptop with expansion slot.

what do you mean "in an affordable way"????
sounds like a trap!

Originally Posted by S-O

or buy a macbook hehe

.
not funny

thanks for the quick responses guys!
doing more research on the now

[ArrowHead]

Originally Posted by ShadowFactoryX

Nope, I was looking to pay in blast beats and chickens.

Throw in a pig for vocals and we just might have a deal.

[ShadowFactoryX]

Originally Posted by mgh

yeah a USB2.0 interface can easily do 8 simultaneous tracks. make you sure your laptop has USB 2.0 ports and use those, and nothing else USB on the same buss. personally i'd stretch your budget a little and go for the m-audio fast track ultra. (you need the 8r for 8 mike inputs...) or focusrite. avoid tascam unless you are very brave...

my USB ports are 2.0
How much ram should one need, regardless of the imput format?

Originally Posted by ArrowHead

Throw in a pig for vocals and we just might have a deal.

ewwwwww pig vocals

[S-O]

Originally Posted by ShadowFactoryX

what do you mean "in an affordable way"????
sounds like a trap!
not funny

Still looking at several hundred dollars, but with some basic hardware knowledge and how to assemble computers, one can put together a no frills machine that has all the fixin's for recording without all the bloatware and excessive stuff from commercial products.

I suggest googling for more detail and prices, but for I bet around $500 if you get the right deals you can piece together a build.

With the new ivy bridge Intel chips out, you ought to be able to pick up the previous sandy bridge chips on sale/clearance.

Also, while you may not want to go OSX, the OPTION of it is cool, check out some hackintosh builds, there are some sites with an amazon/newegg cart with all the build items all ready to checkout. These same builds often have nice hardware options, so they can just run windows rather than OSX, and if you know what you want/don't want you can substitute hardware. Like, you may not want to dish out the $ for SSD, so go for a 7200 RPM HDD.

[ShadowFactoryX]

Originally Posted by S-O

Still looking at several hundred dollars, but with some basic hardware knowledge and how to assemble computers, one can put together a no frills machine that has all the fixin's for recording without all the bloatware and excessive stuff from commercial products.

I suggest googling for more detail and prices, but for I bet around $500 if you get the right deals you can piece together a build.

With the new ivy bridge Intel chips out, you ought to be able to pick up the previous sandy bridge chips on sale/clearance.

Also, while you may not want to go OSX, the OPTION of it is cool, check out some hackintosh builds, there are some sites with an amazon/newegg cart with all the build items all ready to checkout. These same builds often have nice hardware options, so they can just run windows rather than OSX, and if you know what you want/don't want you can substitute hardware. Like, you may not want to dish out the $ for SSD, so go for a 7200 RPM HDD.

eh, this whole thing is making me bummed
looks like i might just have to start at the level of new compooter first

[EtherealEntity]

Shit, why did I think it was USB? Sorry man!
I don't know any 8 channel USB models off the top of my head.

Find out the CPU and RAM of your laptop, as well as the RPM of the harddrive and let us know. From that I think we can draw conclusions on whether you are going to be satisfied with it's performance after finding an 8in USB, or whether you are best off spending an extra $700 on a reasonably specced new PC with Firewire.

[ShadowFactoryX]

its ok...i guess
i guess ill have to find a way to incorporate firewire into my life somehow
are the presonus ones any good? i havent seen much love for any of their stuff.

[EtherealEntity]

Definitely Focusrite>Presonus.
I use Presonus at the moment, upgrading to RME soon. They sound alright I guess, does the job. But the drivers are unstable and many will agree. Mines getting worse and worse - I would never conduct a professional session with it or play live now. I have to restart it every 30 minutes or so because it will glitch out and go all distorted, I'm getting more and more dropouts in my DAW, etc.

[ShadowFactoryX]

dropouts = massive buttpain
and realistically focusrite dont cost much more than presonus
i did a session once with a guy who used the tascam 1641. had driver problems forever, massive ones too.
that was not a good time, he wants my new band to come in and do some tracks.
i dun think so...

[EtherealEntity]

Yeah man, I mean I can cope with it for myself and my friends band (guitars+vox only) where we are doing a line at a time..but never drums or anything with other people.

Haven't heard of any issues with Focusrite. They have rep as good quality, stable interfaces.

[EtherealEntity]

If you're looking into a whole new system, look for:
64 bit
6GB RAM or more
Best CPU you can find (reference them here PassMark Intel vs AMD CPU Benchmarks - High End , I wouldn't go below 5000 points on there)
7200RPM HDD

And the Focusrite I suggested will be a good one

[mgh]

there are plenty of 8 input usb interfaces - m-audio, rme, focusrite, motu, presonus, tascam, roland, esi, steinberg just off the top of my head

why do you need a new system, what are your current specs? any relatively modern dual-core and above pc will be able to cope with recording multitrack audio and using a few amp-sims or whatever at low-latency. you can bump up the latency and freeze fx for mixing.

the only thing you might consider would be your hard drive's rpm, you really need 7200rpm to avoid problems and most stock laptops run at 5400...

[EtherealEntity]

^ There are indeed. But I imagine he wants one with 8 preamps - that's where things get tricky. Not to say there aren't any in your list but I don't know any off my head.

[mgh]

focusrite saffire 40, m-audio fast track ultra 8r, roland ua1010, tascam us2000, presonus audiobox 1818, steinberg ur824...there's a few more these days.
the first two are the cheapest though!

[EtherealEntity]

Focusrite is firewire but good call on the others!

[mgh]

^d'oh, my bad! Firewire brings in a few more options such as the Focusrite, Echo, MOTU. and a few mixers with interfaces (Allen and heath, Mackie etc). or he could go behreinger ada8000 and an ADAT-equipped soundcard....

for what he wants, i'd go m=audio fast track ultra 8r all the way, super-solid, low-latency drivers, decent preamps, cheap.

[frajerik]

I would go for firewire. I have firewire interface on PC and its working great. You cant hot swap it like USB but it has better speed and less latency. Also USB is sometimes buggy.

You will need desktop too...or very powerful laptop.
DAW: i can recommend ableton live but you can try other daw too. Almost every daw soft have some trial/demo thing.

[IbanezFred]

Mixcraft is extremely easy to use. It will get you to understand alot of the terms associated with DAWs such as VSTs VSTi, Impulses, MIDI, etc. and will enable you to get better so when you buy protools or cubase or logic.. you'll know how to use all these things. Then you can be a badass like say nolly or misha mansoor, Ola englund..etc

[chrisharbin]

The unfortunate truth is that soundcard tech hasn't developed much in recent years. USB 3 has been around for some time, yet I'm not aware of a single device that uses it (soundcard)

Thunderbolt shows some possible promise.......but the only one on the table is in the UAD and it's going to be giga-cash.

So if you can't go FW, you are stuck with usb 2.0. So this is rough if you need allot of ins/outs.

It's not an easy thing currently because developers are not constantly working on drivers it seems.