Laptop Recording Options...

[Icculus]

I have a new laptop, and I am willing to spend about $2,000- Anyone got suggestions for purchases? I am fairly new to recording, but I will be starting Sound Engineering School in a month, so i want to be able to practice/ learn/ grow with some decent sounding recordings. Until now, I have just run a Tascam 424 MKIII into the Mic input on my CPU, and then tracked some SM57's with Acid 4.0. Burned to disk it sounded pretty good (for the cheap technique). I always ran into the problem of the mics being to sensitively loud for my purpose, so I want some good preamp/ mixing involved. I don't know if I should do everything outside of the computer (Buy a good mixer, premps, effects and run it simple to the laptop for recording), or do everything inside the computer (go with something like the Echo Layla and mix and touch up with computer programs.) Keep in mind that Acid 4.0 is the only program I have used, and I repeat the question- I have a laptop and $2,000 to get the best sounding sessions... GO!

[Randall]

http://www.esi-pro.com/viewProduct.php?pid=8&page=1 gives you a choice,,cardbuss for laptop or PCI,,sorry to beat a dead horse but I think this thing is awsome

[provide86]

just out of curiosity, where exactly are you going to school?

[countjoffrey]

I got a FW pismo laptop a couple of years ago with an 828 running dp3 and I have to say it's been a wonderfully productive two years. if i had to do it now with 2 g's i'd probably get a zippy little imac with one of the newer 828's, or buy an older 828 on ebay and save a couple bucks and get a firewire drive(the internal drives on laptops aren't fast enough for anything over a few tracks).

[aeser]

i have a tibook and am planning on getting a magma pci expander and putting 4 large hard drives in it and hooking my motu 2408mkII to it. 4 rack spaces, 4 pci slots, 4 hard drive slots, like $1300. then you can put any damn audio interface you please in it. and even change your mind later.

[countjoffrey]

Oops I meant ibook not imac. sorry.

[the velour fog]

i am in the same situation as you. I have a tascam 424 mkIII as well, and got a laptop. I started by recording through the 424 to the 1/8" in, using a simple program (n-track, which is pretty powerful for the price, $45.) i am currently looking at some sort of audio interface, but i have quite a few great programs.

I find going through the 1/8" in to be too noisy...you can clean it up once on the computer, but for me it's quite a headache. the solution to this for me is to get a USB audio interface. there's lots of different options, but to decide what hardware you're using, you need to choose your recording platform. really this is only choosing whether or not you'll be using pro tools. pro tools only works with digidesign hardware, and vise versa. so if you go pro tools you have your choice of Digi 1, digi 2, or the mbox. it comes with pro tools software, and for most this is all you need. pro tools is capable of recording audio, midi, has the use of vst and direct-x plugins, the capability to complete mix and master a project.

I went (or am still going) the route of more freedom. I plan on getting either some sort of m-audio usb interface, or a tascam interface. i may even go as simple as an edirol usb interface, because it's cheap, and i can continue to use the tascam 424 as my mixer (which is good for me, because i'm used to the 424. and i don't have to learn something totally different.) but the main reason i went this route was to be able to have access to many other different programs, such as ableton live (an amazing, yet fairly simple to learn sequencing program.), NI absynth (which has the capabilities to emulate so many amazing keys), etc. I may be completely wrong...you may be able to still use all these programs in conjunction with pro tools...and if so, maybe i will look into an mbox...

hope any of that helps.

[wenzel.hellgren]

For the Macintosh I would reccomend the Metric Halo Mobil I/O (www.mhlabs.com), it is firewire and has 8 very god mic preamps on board. But Mac only, unfortunately.

For the Mac or PC, I would recomend the Hammerfall DSP PCMCIA with the Multiface breakout from rme-audio.com. Added benifit is that you can get a PCI card also so you can use the same multiface breakout with a laptop and desktop. No preamps though, if you are recording mics you could get a preamp with ADAT output and keep the 8 analog line inputs free.

For something smaller, check the Emagic EMI 2|6 and EMI 6|2m USB intergfaces (Mac and PC).


I just finished a killer sounding recording with a Sony Vaio Athlon4 1Ghz notebook, Emagic Logic Platinum 5.5.1, Emagic EMI 6|2m, and the SM-Pro audio 8 chanel mic preamp (http://www.americanmusical.com/item.asp ... SMA+PROPR8) ($99!!!).

[rajbot2]

what about the digi001/002 units? i heard they weren't that recommended, though for miscellaneous reasons involving the actual unit and pro tools that it comes with. hrm.

[silversound]

Toshiba or a Mac!