AUDIO INTERFACE

hi guys, im searching for a quality audio interface that is compatible with my mac. mite anyone point me in the right direction and any tips before i buy anything??
 
Tascam US-1641. $300. Eight mic pres plus two more 1/4" ins. USB 2.0 - it rocks. Because of the price, there's no point going cheaper and getting less channels. That's false economy talking. You're going to eventually wish you had at least 8 channels in. Just make sure your Mac is up to the task.

I sold mine though. I hate recording into a computer. Too much work. Good luck!
 
hi guys, im searching for a quality audio interface that is compatible with my mac. mite anyone point me in the right direction and any tips before i buy anything??

Presonus firewire is the way to go. i have a mac that i use logic pro on as my main tracker that i use in my studio i own. its a completely finished basement studio that i use to support me financially while i go through music school. they are great and come in at 400 bucks.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS FIREWIRE!!!

just make sure you get a firewire interface, dont get usb man. fire wire allows you to track multiple channels at one time, something you cant do with usb. that means when you pull up logic or garageband or w.e on your mac, you can have a separate channel for each mic and compress, limit, EQ each drum (providing you mic them all). and most importantly you can actually mix your drum track(change the levels of each drum) which is so important to getting a good sound. you cant do that with USB.

Presonus has high quality pre-amps and 8 channels. another good thing about their stuff is if you get serious about recording you can buy another interface and link them together and record 16 tracks at once or 32 at once ect. we have 3 of them in our studio. i use a nice A&H mixing board and run each channel out to the 3 interfaces and bypass the interfaces pre-amps with no connection noise, that means you will never out grow them.

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.co...0-10x10-FireWire-Interface-Firepod?sku=242036
 
I also use a Presonus Firepod. They have newer versions out now though (the firestudio i think). You can usually find one on ebay for a pretty decent price. It all depends on what you want to do though. How many channels do you want to record at once? What's your budget?
 
Yeah, the Presonus Firepod is really clean and it gives you 8 inputs which is really good for drummers. I am happy with mine.

I'm thinking about picking one of these up. Can I run Audacity instead of Cubase? I know literally *nothing* about multi-tracking, or even recording drums properly. Right now I run 4 mics through a little cheap-o Behringer mixer, directly into my sound card (single track.)
 
Presonus firewire is the way to go. i have a mac that i use logic pro on as my main tracker that i use in my studio i own. its a completely finished basement studio that i use to support me financially while i go through music school. they are great and come in at 400 bucks.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS FIREWIRE!!!

just make sure you get a firewire interface, dont get usb man. fire wire allows you to track multiple channels at one time, something you cant do with usb. that means when you pull up logic or garageband or w.e on your mac, you can have a separate channel for each mic and compress, limit, EQ each drum (providing you mic them all). and most importantly you can actually mix your drum track(change the levels of each drum) which is so important to getting a good sound. you cant do that with USB.

Presonus has high quality pre-amps and 8 channels. another good thing about their stuff is if you get serious about recording you can buy another interface and link them together and record 16 tracks at once or 32 at once ect. we have 3 of them in our studio. i use a nice A&H mixing board and run each channel out to the 3 interfaces and bypass the interfaces pre-amps with no connection noise, that means you will never out grow them.

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.co...0-10x10-FireWire-Interface-Firepod?sku=242036

I completely disagree....
You most definately CAN record separate channels with usb
and despite what most people think USB 2.0 is just as fast as firewire.

My vote goes for the tascam us 1641 (USB 2.0)
I use it all the time and the preamps are good and it is a solid unit.
 
Yeah, what's with this "it must be firewire" business? USB 2.0 has proven to be just as fast as Firewire with no latency issues. I've used both the Tascam US-1641 and the PreSonus Firepod and found the difference negligible. In fact, I liked the Tascam a bit better because it ran a little cooler. Everything I've ever use with Firewire seems to run a little hotter than USB. And keeping things cool is the name of the game for me.

You can go Firewire if you need to, just be aware that the USB 2.0 equivalent (the Tascam) does the exact same thing for $100 less.
 
I'd read complaints about drivers and support on Tascam elsewhere. Guess that's improved some?

Can the Tascam do 0 latency monitoring? The Firepod can with the caveat that you can't do any mixing on the monitor out. The Firestudio Project has an onboard DSP that let's you do up to five independent 0-latency monitor mixes, IIRC.
 
I'm thinking about picking one of these up. Can I run Audacity instead of Cubase? I know literally *nothing* about multi-tracking, or even recording drums properly. Right now I run 4 mics through a little cheap-o Behringer mixer, directly into my sound card (single track.)

Yes, you can. But the Cubase software comes with the interface. There is a learning curve, to be sure, but it's not that hard to figure out.
 
Presonus firewire is the way to go. i have a mac that i use logic pro on as my main tracker that i use in my studio i own. its a completely finished basement studio that i use to support me financially while i go through music school. they are great and come in at 400 bucks.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS FIREWIRE!!!

just make sure you get a firewire interface, dont get usb man. fire wire allows you to track multiple channels at one time, something you cant do with usb. that means when you pull up logic or garageband or w.e on your mac, you can have a separate channel for each mic and compress, limit, EQ each drum (providing you mic them all). and most importantly you can actually mix your drum track(change the levels of each drum) which is so important to getting a good sound. you cant do that with USB.

Total tripe.

True maybe ten years ago before USB 2.0, but all USB Interfaces are totally capable of handling almost anything you throw at them. I'm sorry, but you're just wrong.
 
USB 2 is as fast as firewire 400. but you can't daisychain USB devices, which means you'll need hubs and power if you don't have enough ports. firewire 800 is faster than USB 2, but not as many interfaces have 800 ports. the real pro stuff uses dedicated connections and neither USB or Firewire.
but USB 2 is very capable of handling recording, although i use firewire b/c of the things i mentioned above.
 
Point one: I'm not sure if Audacity will track more than stereo at one time. If it does I have yet to uncover this feature. I find it useful for mastering and getting a file that will actually burn to a disc, where Cubase exports are not recognized by the Windows Media CD burner (or not that I've been able to find).

Point Two, Firewire vs. USB: I think the main weakness of USB is latency, which can be a problem depending on how you monitor your setup. You are using a Mac, so perhaps Firewire is a better fit anyway. I'm using a Tascam 1641 with USB 2.0 into a Lenovo H-series with Windows 7 and Cubase LE5. So far so good, but I have yet to figure out all of the little things that Cubase is capable of, so I have a glorified 10-track right now. Also, I would have had to retrofit the Lenovo with a Firewire input, as it did not come with one.

Now I just need to do something about my inferior microphones...
 
Im not sure if this will work for mac, but you could try what i do, I run all my drum mics into a mixer and then run the mixer's L and R output channels into my lexicon omega interface, and then record through adobe soundbooth/cubase. You could do basically the same thing but u'd have to use a mac recording program i think. but that way you can mix the individual mic's and if u get a reasonably good mixer u can compress each individual channel aswell.

I think external mixing is essential before mixing digitally, it just makes it sound that much nicer :). Anywho goodluck with your interface hunt, my friend! :)
 
20202020202020202020
 

Attachments

  • tht.jpg
    tht.jpg
    49 KB · Views: 167
I'm thinking about picking one of these up. Can I run Audacity instead of Cubase? I know literally *nothing* about multi-tracking, or even recording drums properly. Right now I run 4 mics through a little cheap-o Behringer mixer, directly into my sound card (single track.)

If you want a really but inexpensive alternative to Audacity google Reaper Software, you can have a free 30 day trial and even then it still works after that although I tend to think for the cost if you like it and are going to continue using it I'd pay for it.
 
Back
Top