Hi Dan,

Hmmm... good question. Well I would like to be able to mic drums properly (10 to 12 channels here would be fine for me) and have the ability to scale up if needed. Occasionally I have a group of guys around that we attempt to record and have even a few inquiries about recording a band or two for pay. Whoo Hoo... pay! :P

The budget is going to be somewhere between 10 and 13, I need to make a few small studio structural improvements as well, and I haven't quite costed that out yet - so I have to put some things in motion next week to shuffle some things around. And... hopefully make a move in two weeks or so.

Keep in mind that I'm above an amateur but not nearly a pro. Sort of Pro-Am? I've recorded on mostly old Teac tape gear / 8-16 channel type stuff with an old mixer, etc., and mostly this was from 5 to 10 years back - I took a bit iof a music hiatus - long story. I recently picked up Cubase SL/SX3 after trying several DAWs - I'm pretty thorough with this stuff -- been accused of analysis paralysis in the past :P Anyway I'm cool with Cubase now that it has the Nuendo engine. Unfortunately the PC running it has issues.

So... where I'm at in general is:

1) I'm going to build a rackable PC I think, I was leaning toward a Mac for a while, but I think I can spend money more wisely somewhere else. it's cheaper and easier to build what I want, and I've built a few PCs in my time, no sweat there. Something with enough CPU/Ram/SATA to satisfy that part of it. I'll keep Cubase for final mixing and any plug work that pops up.

2) The converter dilemma pops up here: I've talked at length with several pro studio owners in various parts of the country (New York, Nashville and LA) and two of the three have an extra RADAR or two they might part with. Various models, One upgraded with the Nyquist 192, etc. The other is a standard 24 Classic I believe is what he told me, so that one records at 48k I believe - both had the remote w/meter bridge. Now, both places were willing to work with me, the used units would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 to 5 thousand. The Pros here is that those record 24 simultaneous tracks, more than enough for me but scalable in the event I needed that. Pristine RADAR converters is a nice thing too obviously and of course the bulletproof recording as well. The Cons, expense obviously, I'm not crazy about the recording software - but could live with it I suppose. I'm told that you can bypass the recording function of the RADAR and go directly to DAW basically utilizing only the converters - I'm not sure on that (latency issues, etc.).
Obviously jumping to that and no longer having the old mixer (which woulnd't really have worked that well for this anyway) I'd need to pick up a mixer up as well, a slightly used Mackie, Eurodesk or Soundcraft, etc. The Eurodesk is fairly inexpensive, about half of a Soundcraft -- so there's some home work there as well.

Anyway, sorry... there's tons of TMI there but that's sort of where I'm at.

If I don't go the RADAR route I might look at 16 channels of Apogee and mixer to boot -- same scenario other than I can mount the RADAR hard drive from the DAW -- which is a plus that I forgot to put in the Pro category above.

Hope this makes sense.

-Adam

If you're going to drop some serious green on converters you might want to check out 3D Audio's test CDs of 28 different A/D converters. I haven't picked this up yet so I can't comment directly on the test results but the CD is $50 - not a big investment to listen to a bunch of different converters head to head.

3D Audio ADC test CD

BTW - thanks, Dan, for making the listening sessions free. You da man.

That's a GOOD idea.

I second the kudos on the Listening sessions Dan.

-Adam

quote:

Originally posted by 8th_note:
If you're going to drop some serious green on converters you might want to check out 3D Audio's test CDs of 28 different A/D converters. I haven't picked this up yet so I can't comment directly on the test results but the CD is $50 - not a big investment to listen to a bunch of different converters head to head.

3D Audio ADC test CD

BTW - thanks, Dan, for making the listening sessions free. You da man.

Hey 8th Note. I wonder do that converter CD have the Jim Williams modded HD24xr version on it?....

Don't see that one on the list, Snatch.