Studio ramblings 1 - interface or mixer?

[Pete on guitar]

My recording rig is delightfully simple. It’s little more than an Audio Technica condenser mic (or sometimes the £1000 Neumann that I’ve just been lent…), into a Behringer Xenix 1204 desk, into Logic. You probably tuned out, didn’t you, when you read the word “Behringer”, and skipped to the next thread about top-level boutique microphones... I know, I would have done too. But the fact is my studio is up to a reasonable standard, which, were you so minded, you could check out here… http://soundcloud.com/grifgraf7/o-ho...al-sarah-kelly.

The Behringer is not that bad, but it has very little headroom and is somewhat noisy, so I was thinking about changing to a USB interface (I'm thinking Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 ?). I feel more as though I have a studio if it has a mixing desk, albeit a small one, but I can get my head around changing that.

What I do like about the B. though, is that it has built-in effects, so I can give my singers some reverb in their headphone mix, with no danger of me - ha ha - accidentally recording it, plus also it doesn’t use any of the computer’s valuable CPU cycles. How do people usually provide reverb in the headphones, which is surely a common requirement?

And what else do I look out for in a recording interface? I mean, obviously, good ADs, but then I want something that gives me a good intuitive workflow, and I don’t want to end up with something like so many of the bits of kit I’ve bought, where it does task A (e.g. recording) perfectly well, but renders itself unusable by making task B (e.g. headphone monitoring) too inaccessible. The Behringer, for example, drives me nuts, because when you push a mute button on a channel (it’s not really a mute button anyway - it just switches busses) it DOESN’T MUTE THE SEND TO THE ONBOARD FX, so you still get a ghostly reverb. There is, I suppose, some convoluted logic to the thought process in the design, but it drives me nuts anyway.

All comments welcome!

Pete

[Bob Womack]

I do believe you have discovered the glass ceiling of inexpensive gear.

Bob

[moon]

Since you're on a mac and (I assume) only need two channels, a second-hand Apogee Duet has good pres - much better than others in its class - and is fairly inexpensive.