recording

I'm interested in getting a little setup going for recording. Just to get started all you really need are two overheads and a bass mic right?

For mics I was thinking about 2 mxl 990s or 2 audio technica at2020. I'm still looking for bass mics. I was also looking at getting a behringer x2442 mixer, since it would allow me to expand my mic setup in the future.
 
It's a little more involved than a few mics and a mixer...

What's the purpose of you recording? What is your budget?

I'd go with 2x Small Diaphragm Condensers (SDC) (there's a pair of Audix SDCs that are pretty decent in Musician's Friend for about $120), a bass drum mic (Shure Beta 52a and Sennheiser e602 are my favs, some folks like the Audix D6 an awful lot) and the trusty SM57 on a snare.

What are you recording into? For example, I do not have a mixer because my computer is my mixer. I used a 16x XLR input interface into my computer. If you're going to record into an all-in-one multi-track studio (FOSTEX, TASCAM make them), then you'll probably need the mixer, but you're much more limited on your recording (and quality).

Decent interface will run $300, mics another $300...always look for used gear though.
 
Don't let what simmsdn said throw you off. I don't know your budget but I'm assuming if you are just starting to record then you are not planning on throwing a ton of money in just yet. Yes you can get an extremely good quality recording from just two overheads. There are a couple different ways you can set it up, which I'm sure you know. The overhead mics don't even need to be that expensive, obviously higher quality mics will sounds better, but I've used $20 mics and it sounded good. I've also got an actual drum microphone kit, but after using it for a while I went back to the overheads because I thought they sounded better actually. You can run your mics to a mixer, then the mixer to the computer, I'd recommend using USB. I also use Audacity to record, it's a free program if you aren't familiar and is actually pretty good. So there you can get recording for under $100 and still get some decent quality. The bass mic is where you want to spend the money. Getting a good bass drum sound is one of the harder parts of recording drums, and is where a good mic can make all the difference.
 
The mixer I was looking at has a USB interface and 10 xlr inputs. I know about audacity, I use it now to split mp3s. Another free program is ardour, its a complete daw.
 
The mixer I was looking at has a USB interface and 10 xlr inputs. I know about audacity, I use it now to split mp3s. Another free program is ardour, its a complete daw.

Sounds like a good mixer then...with good headroom for growth.

Big problem I've seen is underpowered computers, so make sure you have a dedicated USB card (yep, even if it has 4x USB ports on it, just use one when recording, and reboot the computer before you start recording). If it's a dual-core windows system, need at least 2.8 GHz per core and 4GB RAM. Quad core, you can get away with 2.-2.2 GHz and 4GB RAM. Anything less and you can have issues with latency using a USB interface (yeah, USB 2.0 is 'faster' than firewire, but firewire bus rate is constant whereas USB's max is faster, but it's speed fluctuates based on other factors in the computer).

I'm not trying to be a douche, but just don't want folks having great expectations and not getting the results in recording because when I got into it, I wasted a lot of time and money because I tried to go cheap and easy.

Recommendation to stay cheap in mics is to get a pair of MXL 990s and not use as overheads, instead use as room mics, add a third mic on the bass drum (Bonham?).

Good luck.
 
The mixer I was looking at has a USB interface and 10 xlr inputs. I know about audacity, I use it now to split mp3s. Another free program is ardour, its a complete daw.

Jut curious, what mixer are you looking at?
 
I have a 15in. macbook pro. Its an older core 2 duo with 4gb ram.

I have a 2009-model MacBook Pro 15.6". I think we may well have the same model.

It's fine to record with. In fact, I'm using it for my Music Technology degree - which includes recording, editing, software development and a lot more. I use Logic Pro 8, but Garageband is fine as a basic recording editor.

I have my MacBook Pro operate on the 64-bit kernel as standard. It's unlikely that you've made that tweak so there shouldn't be any issues with driver support for any interface you may buy. I finally got 64-bit driver support for my interface a few weeks ago (after waiting for 18 months) and I'm very happy.

One of the great tricks that people don't know about with OS X (I'm on 10.6.7) is that you can create your own custom sound configuration and select it in the preferences just like a piece of hardware. For instance, you can have an interface set up, but use the sound output from your internal headphone jack by enabling the internal CoreAudio as the output device. May sound a little arcane, but it's sometimes useful.

Another thing people don't realise is that the output and input jacks also work optically. This can be handy if you have (say) a home cinema receiver that has a Toslink input - you can use your MacBook Pro as a source. I do this at Uni sometimes in the 5.1 monitoring room we have. My 2006 iMac has this feature too.
 
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