Thinking about spending some $$$ on recording equipement

When installed properly, some of these high-end workstations are incredibly transparent. We have very good engineers working here so my system is quiet enough that I can hear very slight grounding problems and bleed-throughs from material which comes from out of house. With out of house music, I can hear the problems the originating engineer had with his monitors. I'm very fortunate.

If you get the right gear, there is nothing wrong with the PC recording approach and it can give you first-class recordings. Here's the rub: Many of those who take this approach don't flesh-out their gear into a really viable system and many end up with data-signal corruption bleeding into the audio side of their system and raising the distortion and noise floor. The audio and monitor-out circuits and cards on the PC need to be built and installed extremely well. For that matter, you also simply can't use poor mics and poor computer monitors and end up with a decent product.

I can't emphasize too much the importance of a good pair of monitors. Have you ever tried to look at the world through extremely dirty glasses? Imagine adjusting your TV monitor through those. Now imagine adjusting your TV monitor through dirty, tinted glasses. That's exactly what you are doing when you make recordings using poor monitors: You really have no clue what is on the hard drive (or "on the tape", as we said in analog days). A bright monitor will make you record and/or mix dull, and visa versa. A wrong contour in the midrange can make you mix the vocals out too far in front or into the background. A monitor which compresses the bass or midrange can make you record an overly dynamic product. For that matter, a mic with a funny frequency spike will color the recording of its signal. I deal with this on soundtracks which are brought from project studios. The disappointment on the faces of some of these composer/producer/engineers when they hear their work on our large monitor systems is so sad to behold.

The main reason I encourage novice recordists to go stand-alone is that without a good reference, they often have no idea how good their signal and monitor chains are. Stand-alone gear tends to keep the signal chain clean (without data signal corruption in the audio side) and using stand-alone tends to force people to buy better monitoring gear (there's nothing onboard).

I'm really not an elitist, and I don't play one on TV. You CAN get great recordings with very reasonably priced gear. We had an engineer working here who had an audio engineer/I.T. fellow build him a dedicated sixteen-track I/O system on a PC based around Cubase and Acid Pro, complete with mastering software. It was gorgeous. But both of them had a handle on the price points and quality needed before they went in.

So you get the idea. Just trying to help.

Bob

[RL]

Hello Bob,

Great to hear from you. Since I'm one of the few in my rural area that enjoys recording, it's really great to have access to folks like you and your thoughts on the matter.

Hello to all others reading this post.

RL

[RL]

Hello Again,

To those of you who have PC recording systems and are reading this... The following comment that I made about PC recording was not very helpful I'm sure to this post.

As Bob W. points out, there are great sounding PC systems and I really hadn't intended to downgrade anybody's PC systems...I'm not all that knowledgeable myself...the following comment was made after a long period of working and major sleep deprevation.

"Soundwise, listening to the VS2480 after I've recorded to it. And compared to anything else I've listened to(including my friends with 'high end' computer systems) is like listening to a Walmart CD radio vs. a full surround system."

Happy recording all.

RL

[Gutch]

RL,

Don't sweat it! PC recording is completely dependent upon the user's hardware - Down to the speed of the hard drive! There are so many variables to the equation, that it's very difficult to compare it to an all-in-one unit like the Roland.

The most important thing to consider is the music coming out of it at the end of the day!

Good luck in your quest!,
Dave

[J.R. Rogers]

RL - You might want to consider looking into the Roland Studio Pack. It includes the Roland VM3100PRO mixer and a PCI interface card to your computer. You can also use it to hook up with VS standalone units later if you wish.

I've been using the Gadget Labs setup, but since the company went out of business, I want future support, and I've been wanting to go pure digital, the Studio Pack looked like the best deal. You get the digital mixer with onboard Effects, the PCI interface card and some software for $600 (I got zzounds to match the price of another dealer.):
http://www.zzounds.com/love.music?p=...=1204026362768

Computer-based recoding gives you a lot more flexibility than the standalone units give you. There are some drawbacks... acoustic noise from your computer, etc. But I think the pros outweigh the cons.

As far as sound quality goes, you're not going to get much cleaner than having a pure digital signal path from the mixer to the system. I really wanted to take analog out of the mix, (at least on the mixer side), because level setting became such a pain that I was spending most of my recording time trying to get my gear matched up right. I still never got the results I wanted - never could get a clean sound onto disk with my previous setup. It was either hot and full of hiss, or not hot enough - and the hiss would return when I bumped it up digitally. I'm hoping to be able to avoid this mess by getting a good signal into a digital mixer first.

J.R.

[RL]

Good to hear from you all.

I'm still in the evaluation process of the 2480. I watched the video manual yesterday. There are some pretty impressive features about that unit.

J.R., I can see your point about the pc recording and digital in. Analog inputs do add a variation to the mix so to speak. And pc recording may, in the end, be cheaper. But like Gutch says, it boils down to what it sounds like at the end of the day.

Whether or not I keep the 2480 depends on a few things not the least of which is that I do need access to a stand alone unit. But then I could keep the 880EX.

Happy recording all.

[J.R. Rogers]

There shouldn't be any difference in sound quality between the Studio Pack and the VS standalone units. They're basically doing the same thing except one has it's computer built in.

One thing I forgot to mention is that on the Studio Pack you can save mixer "scenes" - basically all settings you've made so you can come back to that exact position later. That's a BIG HUGE time saver, as you don't have to go back and set everything up again the next time you go to record.

J.R.

[RL]

Hello All,

First off J.R. good insights into PC recording...at least with my limited knowledge your points are well taken.

That in mind, my impressions.....

I recorded my 514CE to my VS2480 the other day.

I recorded to my Rode NT1000 to two tracks and the fishman blender to two tracks on the 2480. Both mixed down in streo.

The Rode mike recording seemed to have a 'fuller' sound than the fishman blender but both were good. The fishman blender(although it had a good sound) didn't have the input signal of the Rode.

One guitar = 4 simultaneous stereo tracks...miked and plugged in.

The interesting thing is that each track seemed to have it's own distinctive 'cumulative' effect. In other words, the effect seemed to have a geometric progression. Add them all together..... and the sound grows...4 x 1. Especially true with my 2480.

Well anyway, like the old saying goes...'it takes a 1,000 words to describe one picture.'

Bob and J.R. thanks.

I want some time to absorb what you've both written.

To anyone else reading this post. The rources to make good recordings are there.

Take care.

RL