Recording 101 The Basics...

[76Strat]

Ok so we have ben having a lot of confusion regarding recording equipment as of late so I thought I would create a thread to go over the basics of computer based recording and the 2 ways to do it. I will discuss the pro's and con's of each and tell you the basics about how it works.

2 Ways to record with a Mac/PC

1. "GOING DIRECT"

THE INTERFACE

First you will need an interface such as this from line 6. It has amp modeling software included and also has many built in effects to give you an all around ITB way to record guitar and get decent tone.


http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com...arm?sku=250006

You could also use this though it would require some sort of plug-in to create the modeling. We will get into plugins more later.

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com...102?sku=241228

Both of these Interfaces (or one of your choice) will be the base of your recording system.


THE DAW

The next thing you need is the DAW or Digital Audio Workstation. A DAW is the software equivalent of a Multi Track Recorder of old. This is the new way to record the track's. there are many choices of DAW's some choices are.

1. Garage Band- from my experience this is a great DAW especially for beginners and you can do many cool things with it plus if you own a MAC chances are it was free.

2. Audacity - Its free easy to use and accepts VST plugins great versatile free option for Mac or PC i have used it for a few projects myself and its a very good piece of software. Learn more and download here

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

For going direct with a simple interface such as shown above these DAW's will more than suffice for your needs i will get into more complex ones later. The last piece we need to "go direct" is a Plugin.

THE PLUG-INS

What a plug-in does is provide the modeling power to your guitar it will model guitars amps and what not to provide the tone needed to sound like an electric guitar. Remember these can vary in quality and your tone is only as good as your weakest link so high quality plug-ins are a must. A few choices are these.

1. Free VST for users using Audacity these are great choices. I havent had a chance to personally hear them but hey they are free and i hear great things about them and there are plenty to choose from and more added all the time.

http://www.acmebargig.com/index.php

2. Some interfaces come with it for free such as that Pod USB devices i posted earlier

3. IK Amplitude is also pretty good there are many different variations here is one for metal tones.

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com...dio?sku=502057

So now that we have discussed the basic equipment we will do a quick recap. going Driect-In is pluging your guitar straight into the computer via an interface and modeling the guitar amp/effects digitally on your PC/Mac so here is a list of what is required.

REQUIREMENTS FOR GOING DIRECT

1. PC
2. Some Sort of interface such as the ones listed
3. A DAW to edit the music and do the recording
4. A Plugin or Piece of software of some sort to do your modeling
5. Of course your guitar and all necessary cabling.

So what are the pros and cons of this route of recording?

Pros-
1. Much cheaper to get into you can combine the line 6 interface and audacity for a recording rig startinga t around 100 dollars. 40 dollars if you use the 2nd interface audacity and utilize free plugins.

2. Will provide a great tone with much less needed no need for an expensive amp as it is modeled for you.

3. Simple and you can talk to others while recording.

Cons-
1. Not very versatile you cannot decide later that you want to mic something up and start doing that with one of these interfaces.

2. Not as expandable as some of the other choices its a one trick pony.

Ok so now that we have covered the necessary equipment for going direct and the pro's and cons of it lets go over mic'ing your guitar.

2. MIC'ING IT UP

So you think your the next greates guitar player and you've got a Soldano or Ancient Fender amp sitting around and want to capture that perfect tone to your recordings we need to Mic it up so where do you start?

THE INTERFACE

there are many great interfaces for mic'ing up your guitar and we can start out pretty cheap it all depends on the in's/outs necessary for you.

1. The Presonus Firebox is a great choice coming in at 199 dollars it gives us 2 Mic inputs and also 2 line inputs so you can plug in external preamps to it. Good flexibility of ins and outs makes this an extremely versatile bang for the buck piece of gear. Plus it comes with a DAW and oodles of plugins to try out.

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com...tem?sku=184133

2. M-Audio M-Box. This is my personal favorite piece of gear for budget recording ringing in at $299.00 we get PRO-TOOLS a great DAW and 2 Ins and plenty of outs plus some plugins and what not.

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com...ni-?sku=700498

3. Presonus Firestudio. Gives you 8 inputs and many choices of outs. Why on earth would you need 8 ins? Try Mic'ing a drum kit with 2 mics and having it sound great its not gonna happen if you wanna record a full band something like this is a great op[tion. Plus it comes with CUBASE LE all for $499.00

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com...ect?sku=241723

Ok so now most of the interfaces include preamps for 2 mics or more.So we will not get into the preamp debate or discussion here i may add more on that later. Next you will need a DAW.

THE DAW

most of the interfaces shown included a DAW but you can use others. The DAW like stated earlier is the software equivalent of Multi-Track recorder and will allow your interface to send its information to your hard disk.

There are many choices

1. PRO-TOOLS - If you are on a pro level of recording i highly recommend using protools just due to the fact that it is easy to give your files to someone else to mix and then to the final person to master because it is an industry standard. not beacuase it is "better" than any of the other choices.

2. Cubase LE- Great DAW with many options I used cubase for years. There are many plugins availible since it uses VST and they are easy to find many times for free.

There are many more but for times sake we will not get into them you could also use Audacity or Garageband as discussed earlier.

THE MIC

Now that we have a good quality interface and some preamps goin on we need a mic. There are tons of great choices so i will go into a few of these real quick but remember you are only as good as your weakest link so i suggest an SM57 to anyone on a budget as its been an industry standard for years and its rings at 99.00 new and as low as 45 dollars used.

1. The SM57 as mentioned earlier great for just about anything Guitar, Drums, Vocals try it on anything and everything it will get a decent sound not always amazing but decent. And its only 99.00.

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com...Mic?sku=270102

2. Sennhieser MD-421 is also a great choicefor an all around mic but it runs a little steeper at 379.00 dollars. Makes the SM57 sound like a toy IMO.

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com...one?sku=270820

3. AKG C414 this is the most expensive mic i will get into it is a go to mic in nearly all professional studios for anything you can imagine from drum overheads to guitar amps to kick drums this mic does it all and does it all great. It has switchable patterns and pads. Steeply priced coming in at a grand.

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com...one?sku=278590

Now with all these mic's placement is of great importance so heres a link to get you started on that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyuwxBN09Mk

So whats next? Plug the mic in get your gain and record to your hearts content... A Quick recap to what is needed.

1. Interface such as the one shown or many other choices.
2. Microphone.
3.DAW
4. Mic Cable.
5. Adjustable Mic Stand.
6. Guitar
7. Amp

Ok Pros and Con's of Mic'ing

Pros-

1. You can capture the sound and nuances of your amp.
2. More Live feel to your recordings.
3. More interface so you can do more later and the ability with many interfaces (not all) to upgrade and have more channels later.
4. Capability to have your own full recording studio to do live vocals, drums, guitar, bass in your house.

Cons-
1. More Expensive
2. A little more difficult to get acustomed to.
3. If you have a crappy amp it will only sound as good as your amp.
4. More gear to haul around and store.

This recording game isnt so hard as its made out to be hope this helps out i may later go into more indepth recording techniques and what not but hope this helps for a while.

[Katau]

Schweeeeet.

[76Strat]

F you see anything i should expand on let me know thank you

[shredd]

Write less. Play more.

[76Strat]

Lol well due to my recent surgery it hurts to hold my guitar so i did this instead...

[Melodic-Fate]

Pretty cool

[RatedZ]

Great stuff here! Thanks for posting this.

Hey mods, how'bout a "Sticky" on this one?

[cactusandy]

Great article, very well done. I'd like to add that if using method 1 and Audacity, there are 300+ VST's available if using a Linux based OS; not so many with a PC or MAC. Also, you failed to mention the Pro's and Cons of using method 2. Thanks for sharing this.

[76Strat]

added pro's and cons for your cactusandy

[Scali]

It's a good post so far, but I'd like to add something:
If you record with software modeling (VST plugin or such), the actual recorded sound is your clean guitar sound, and it is sent through the modeler everytime you play it back. This is commonly referred to as 're-amping'. This allows you to change the plugin settings, twiddle the effects and all that.

When recording with a microphone, you don't really have that luxury. You could record it all-wet, or you could record just the basic guitar tone, and add various post-distortion effects through plugins though (delay, reverb, chorus, that sort of thing). Then you can at least tweak those after the fact. The problem there is monitoring. You'll want to be able to hear the effects while you record. You could do that, but then you'd somehow have to place your guitar amp in another room and/or use headphones, so you hear the monitored sound, rather than just the dry sound coming from your amp.

I'd also like to point out that there's a third way of recording... direct recording of a modeling unit such as a Line6 Pod, or a recording preamp. In this case, the amp sounds are modeled before they are being sent to the PC. This gives you the same limitations as a mic'ed up setup, in terms of re-amping. The more fancy modelers have an audio interface built in, usually you can just plug a USB cable into them, and the computer detects them as an audio interface (assuming you've installed the drivers). Otherwise, you'll have to take their output (either analog or SPDIF), and plug it into a separate audio interface.

Finally I'd like to mention that the latency of the audio interface is very important when using plugins. What you're doing is recording a few samples, send it to the PC, have the modeling algorithms and effects run on them, and then send the processed sound back to the audio interface to your headphones/speakers. On the PC, there's a special protocol for this low-latency audio, known as ASIO. Be sure that any soundcard/audio interface you'd like to use supports it. The common 'semi pro' brands like Line6, E-mu, M-Audio and such will support it, but generally cheap sound cards or onboard chips won't.

Be sure to also select the ASIO driver in your DAW. Cubase for example comes with an ASIO emulator which can use DirectSound or the old Windows MM API to simulate ASIO on incompatible devices, but the latency is generally very poor. So when you plug in your ASIO-compatible audio interface, and it is still set to using the ASIO emulator, you're still getting poor latency, until you set it to use the actual ASIO driver for your audio interface.

[76Strat]

Thx scalli i forget some of those points due to the fact that i never have latency with my 002 & i never have recorded direct with a pod... Thx for adding that...

[fishtaco]

PreSonus Firebox has a couple of drawbacks:

1) It randomly stops working. I've only experienced it very occasionally, so far not when I was recording (my computer uses it as default audio device, like when I watch a video or play games). But it seems to be worse for some other people.

2) The mic preamps on there sucks. Not the tone, but the gain is pathetic. It's so bad that they implemented a software 12db boost to compensate. When I record say vocals with a condenser mic I have to go through another mic pre to boost it, even with the artificial 12db gain.

If you want to go with PreSonus, get the newer models, not Firebox. The newer ones have better mic pres.

[Kulyeh]

An alternative to the PreSonus units, which are decent for what they are is the MOTU 8pre. It's a little more money, but while it isn't top end, it isn't bottom end either. It's certainly better then any of the PreSonus units by way of mic pres.

[76Strat]

Thx yall i didnt want to get into too many different gearsso thx for adding some

[little_chick]

Great post for us recording newbies! Thanks, 76Strat!