Man o' man, I don't know what to do. Help a newb please.

[glagola1]

I've been lurking here for a short while and a few other boards and there's no options that jump out at me.

Here's what I want to do: 8 track (at least) simultaneous recording to either my Mac (OS9) or my PC (Win XP or Win 98 )

Here's what I have so far: Cubase SL 2.0 (Win XP or OSX)

The Aardvark Q10 looks to have all I may need but it seems to have driver problems with XP. Is there any thing else similar? Should I look at getting a separate interface and separate preamps? I want to be able to expand my studio in the future but I don't see this getting huge. I've used a SeaSound Solo EX for a couple of years and I thought it sounded great but I need more channels of simul record.

I'm lost in this sea of equipment. It's all so new to me. Thanks.

[mrc]

galgola 1,
It seems like you've been doing it for a while, and it sounds like maybe you need more than the Seasound offered. It's always best to view what you're doing, and what you think you might be doing in the reasonable future. It's usually cheapest to buy good gear the first time. If you are a one man band, you may have one need, and if you are doing projects or recording your band live, you may have another.
It does look like somewhere in the near future we'll be moving to 64 bit processors and something other than the pci bus, but there may be several years of usage for the pci bus left. So far, some of the 64 bit boards are offering a combination of busses, as well as the possiblities of using such things as networks, via fxteleport, possibly with something yet to come, or perhaps Steinberg's system link to tie 32 and 64 bit independent platforms together.
You might look at something like a unit that allows you to connect it to either a pci bus card or to a lap top via pcmica, or perhaps to a firewire connection and with or without dedicated converters. Midi I/O is important as well. Flexibilty and future options are important, and may pay off in the ability to use most or all of your investment on the next platform. Afterall, even the most expensive 16 bit ISA cards of less than 10 years ago can command only about the price of a sixpack and a cheeseburger on Ebay now
good luck
mrc

[kcrusher]

Check out the ESI stuff.

www.esi-pro.com

[anewman]

I highly recommend the MOTU 896HD if you can do firewire. I started out with the first version of the 896, which was nice, but the HD has some features that you might find useful. Most important to me was the addition of DSP cuemixing that allows all channels to be monitored, and the cuemix to be mixed outside of the computer.

The 8 mic pres sound fair, and the conversion is better than average. I have to say, that at around $1200, you get way more bang for your buck than you will most other places. You'll want to get better pres later, but this will get you rolling with 8 ins and 8 outs.

If you'd like to talk about this offline, feel free to message me or track me down and give me a call.

-Adam

[glagola1]

yeah, it's looking like the Motu 828 is pretty sweet. Hook up a ada8000 for a few more preamped channels for a short while then expand as I grow. I like the firewire to the mac connection.

thanks for the ideas.

[EasyGo]

Delta 1010 is worth a look. My buddies have one running on XP using an older version of Cubase, and it works fine. I have used theirs to transfer/record 7 tracks of audio simultaneously with success. No preamps, but maybe that's a good thing?

[lilcapn]

have only used it for stripped down recordings so far (ie one or stereo tracks at a time), not really using it to its full potential (it;s got 8-ins / 8-outs), but i like the Presonus Firestation, and the pres are actually really good. check it on the presonus site for all the features and stuff, but in terms of compatibility with what you're already using, the presonus help people recommended Cubase as something that works well with the Firestation (eg Cool Edit would not work as well due to driver support).

[glagola1]

I don't know.. the way that presonus stuff is packaged is kind of cheesy.

[JamesHE]

I'm using a MOTU 828 MKII and i think it's really amazing for the money. The conversion is really good. I had a Gadget labs 424 and a Delta 1010 in the past, i feel the MOTU is the best of those 3 as far as converters go. 10 analog in's including the mic/guitar inputs, plus ADAT i/o for 18 channels. The pre's are nice, very clean sounding.

Using it with Vegas 4 under asio drivers with 0 problems.

[melloman]

The Aardvark Q10 has new drivers, so check out what people are seeing on XP with the newer drivers. Personally I am on the windows 2000 side of the equation, have a nice steady DAW running a Q10 on a 3 ghz P4C/800 mhz bus. I love the Q10, and it has a lot more flexibilty than some comparable units (the Layla24), the preamps are good, the effects loops work quite nicely, and the whole package works well (I use Sonar 3.1).

[mrc]

Since price doesn't seem to be an object, I bought one of the first group ofRME Hammerfalls here in the US, I upgraded a little chip in it, and it's worked flawlessly across several motherboard/cpu combinations, and OS's, starting with the original win 98, up to XP SP1 today. I use not only the adat connections for converters and adat units, but the spdif I/O as well. Great purchase. No Cpu load for ASIO 2 software. Zero latency monitoring.

mrc

[glagola1]

Well, here's what I'm thinking now. Please advise.

Motu 828 MKII and a Behringer ADA8000 (just for the premics for the time being).

I just can't decide which computer to use. Which would be best?
1. PC- AMD 1gig processor w/ 512 ram running XP
2. Older G4 with 500 mhz processor and 256 ram running OSX

I called Motu to see if they had a preference and all they said was that if I wanted to use the Mac I should upgrade the ram since OSX is ram intensive. They didn't really lean one way or the other!

[JamesHE]

it's firewire. so use the computer that closest to you at the time lol. You could easily try both setups and see which one works the best for you. isn't firewire great?

[GhettoDuk]

I use the M-Audio Delta 1010, and I can't reccomend it enough. I have 2 in an XP box and they are rock solid. They come with built in bass management and an excellent monitor mixer/routing system. I've used these in a P3 866 and a P4 3.2. Has been rock solid on both. They don't have any preamps, but you can buy an 8 channel pre for $99 from Mu$ician$ Friend, and buy better prees as you go.