[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by QBert

Alright, I'll take your guys' advice and go with the H4n and Reaper.

I don't want to oversell the portable idea, but it is a really good way to get started. On the other hand, there may be benefits to different form factors. For example, the Zoom won't fit in a rack, or sit nicely in a permanent spot on your desk. Little things like that can make a big difference in whether your setup works for you. On the other hand, the Zoom will let you seek out different places to record, in your house, or elsewhere, and the acoustics of the room play a huge role in how successful you may be. So it's a tradeoff. Don't let anyone on the internet talk you into things :-) I just wouldn't dismiss the idea out of hand.

That's an interesting idea. I also found out that it's a single stereo input, so in reality it would work with 2 mics. It just wouldn't be balanced. Not sure how good this room will be with electrical noise :/

I don't know anything about that unit, but it sounds like maybe this means you already have an interface? Try it out.

But you know how a bad guitar can prevent a beginner from progressing? That's really what I want to avoid. I do want to learn the techniques of recording and editing, I just don't want to have bought any gear that's actually limiting.

That's a good goal. The main thing to look at is what you want to do. The zoom would be limiting if you wanted 3 external mics, for example. But so would most interfaces anywhere close to your budget. A truly flexible setup will cost many times what you're budgeting, unfortunately. Again, I don't want to over-push the zoom as your solution, cause it might not work for you, but for me, I can start with the Zoom, and even later, when I've "grown" to spending 10's of thousands on recording gear, the Zoom's still very useful. A non-portable low end interface, on the other hand, ends up in the trash.

If you want a nice, flexible interface that you can buy once and that will grow with you, I'd move your budget up substantially and look at something like an RME Fireface, a UAD Apollo, or on the lower end, an Apogee Quartet (only 4 channels, tho) - just examples, there are lots of these. Add some nice mics, like some mid-tier Audio Technicas, or even Neuman KM184s or equivalent, and now you're closer to gear that you can buy once and be done for life. But this is way beyond your planned budget.

I'm actually able to get Sonar for free through my work, but yeah I'm just gonna go with Reaper.

I missed that you said Sonar. That's a very full-featured program, steep learning curve, but is going to have better built-in effects and plugins than reaper, and I think also has much better MIDI support, since you're interested in that. If you get that for free, why not go with that?

By the way, the 2 big pieces you're missing, as far as I can tell, are monitors, and room treatment. These affect what you hear and what gets recorded, so they're far more important than almost any thing else you're thinking about. Good monitors, especially, can be costly.