• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Audio Interfaces for drum recording.

M

Mechanix2012

n00b
Joined
Aug 17, 2012
Messages
3
Hello guys, I am new to this deal of recording drums (as a matter of fact, recording overall). I have been, however, digging around in the internet to find some answers to my questions, and while I gotta admit I learned some new things, I still have much to learn.

Hope you guys can help me. I have my eyes on the Tascam 1641 audio interfaces because. as far as I understand, it has 8 inputs (I want to record drums with at least 6 mics) and most importantly it is USB. Now, I've seen many drum covers on youtube, and most of what I've seen use either Motu's 8 pre or the profire 2626 and they use a mac. However, as I understand this need firewire connection, which I believe my pc doesn't support.

My laptop is a toshiba sattelite with 8gb ram, Windows 7 installed and basically what I want to know is if I am going to find trouble if I buy the Tascam 1641, because I've seen on some forums that the audio interfaces requiere drivers and I don't know if I have to download them, or if they install automatically when I plug the interface. I know I'm a noob, but I don't want to spend 400 dollars in a machine I do not know that much.

Other thing I wanted to ask: Will this work with audacity? Will I be able to record in this program with the 6 mics I intend? It is probably a stupid question for you guys but as I said, I am new to this and even though I searched for an answer I couldn't find one.

Thanks goes to any answer.
 
If you are using this specifically for recording, I would choose the tascam. Do not use audacity period. Use something like Ableton Live where you can assign each mic to an audio track and record each mic on its own channel simutaniously while you play, vs audacity, soundforge and similar programs whereas you can only record your drum session as 1 waveform.

I think there were latency issues that were fixed with the latest drivers set and I think has out of the box support with Ableton.

I'm not going to start on the Mac vs PC issue for sound engineering. I have no problems with PCs, and yet I have friends who produced on Macs running XP on virtualbox! (I keep telling them the latency has to be insane!) it is more about available software preference these days anyhow.

You may have a bit of lag recording 8 channels of uncompressed audio on laptop HDDs. you would at least want a 7200 RPM and at best a SSD. Welcome to the world of prosound! It may be cheaper to start a drug addiction! (J/K :p )
 
lol, no kidding, probably would end up addicted after going trough all this stuff in so little time. I see that Ableton Live is very expensive: https://www.ableton.com/shop/categories/full?a=live_buy

449 dollars, seriously? I think that would cost even more than the tascam lol. I am not saying it's not worth it, I think it is, but I can't afford that much, at least not in the moment, let's say that in 1 month I can buy the tascam, and then I would get my mics between three months, to get that program I would have to wait quite a bit, so in the meantime CAN I use audacity with 4-6 mics? I mean, yeah, I know that it is only 1 waveform, but would it still be recording the sound of all the mics? I downloaded Reaper (demo form, as it costs 60 bucks which I think is the cheapest program I could find) but I don't know the deal about it as I tried to record with it the other day and the only thing that I could hear was some weird noises.

I saw on some forums that I need to select ASIO in the audio systems in preferences, but it says: No ASIO drivers found.

I get that with the program you mention you get some quality stuff but I am not desperate for that good of a quality, so far I've been recording with a Rock band mic (yeah, laugh if you will), so my expectations are not that high.

Oh, and btw, so if I buy the Tascam, will it connect with no problems to my computer? Nothing that I have to worry about like drivers, etc?
 
I do not think that you should have problems with drivers. You should bee good to go with that reguard. As far as using audacity, why would you want to use it? It would be effectively the same as just using 1 mic in front of your whole drum set and recording it all. It would be a waste of using the Tascam. Yes, Ableton is expensive, but you may be able to find legacy versions for cheap on e-bay. At least that will give you the capability to record each of your mics into separate channels.
 
Oh sorry. what I understood from your prrevious post was that I only get one waveform, that I couldn't edit the volume of each individual microphone, but still would be able to record with more than one mic, thanks for clearing that up. And well, I guess I will have to look around to see if I can find a cheaper version. Thanks!
 
I use one of these pretty extensively. I've never used the interface functionality, I simply wanted a stand alone recorder. You can snag them on eBay for $300. I'm not sure what your budget is but I think they're pretty darn neat.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top