Motherboards or sound cards needed?

[DG Whitley]

I'm in the process of saving up for a new system that will be recording friendly for Pro Tools. I wanted to see if anyone had suggestions on motherboards with good sound card qualities imbedded or whether most folks use sound cards as add-ons to the motherboard.

I want to use an Intel I7 quad-core processor, so hope that makes sense.

Please provide any suggestions for integrated or external equipment for consideration.

Thank you in advance for your input, deeply appreciated.

[Earnest Bovine]

.. or whether most folks use sound cards as add-ons to the motherboard.

I think everybody uses an interface such as Mbox, or any of a hundred similar devices, usually USB.

[Jack Stoner]

I would post on one of the recording forums to get some advice. An i7 is about the best but an i5 will probably do as well, unless you plan on lots of MIDI tracks.

I have a Sonar (Platinum Version). I have an older i7 3770 with 16GB of RAM. It "idles" even with analog tracks and a couple MIDI tracks.

Avid has a ProTools forum. The www.gearslutz.com forum is a good place.

The built in PC sound is basically useless for recording. It has poor latency, will not accept standard P.A. type microphones or instruments, Signal to Noice ratio is usually marginal, etc. You will need a recording interface unit. The Focusrite Scarlet USB interfaces are popular. I have a Roland Studio-Capture (USB connected) interface. Roland has units with less mic preamps (e.g. the Quad-Capture with 4 mic/instrument preamps). Avoid what is left of the Firewire interface units. www.sweetwater.com is a good place to look at recording equipment.

PC speakers make poor studio monitor speakers so that is something else you will need.

[Rick Schacter]

Please provide any suggestions for integrated or external equipment for consideration.

Using the sound card on your mother board is not a good option.
You will need some sort of external interface and a good pair of reference monitors.
Your reference monitors should have a flat frequency response (or as close as you can get to flat).

There are many choices.

What is your budget?


**Regarding the use of PC speakers for mix down:

The only time it would be advisable to use PC speakers would be as a cross reference from your studio monitors.
I use my studio monitors to dial in my mix, then switch to a pair of Roland MA-8's for a quick listen.
The reason I do this is because I know that most people will be listening with speakers that are very similar (like PC speakers).
In the old days, they used Auratones (nicknamed "Horror Tones").

[DG Whitley]

Rick, it's going to be pretty conservative, around $1500 - $2000. I'm not one who can go the 5 figure route, so I'm going to have to made do with what I can get in that range.

I'll be looking at any suggestions that will work with that budget, so all contributions deeply appreciated, thank you in advance for any input.

I guess what I'm saying is that Pro Tools is going to take a big bite of that budget as it is, not much left for nice "toys" to play with. Hope that makes sense.

[Rick Schacter]

I guess what I'm saying is that Pro Tools is going to take a big bite of that budget as it is, not much left for nice "toys" to play with. Hope that makes sense.

Protools is a very nice DAW to work with but it isn't the only game in town anymore.
It is the one that is compatible with most pro studios, but there are ways to take your tracks to a pro studio to finish your project if that's your goal.

Jack mentioned Sonar which is a very good DAW.
I used Sonar for many years but switched to Studio One Professional by Presonus and recently added Logic Pro X since I switched to using a Mac.
Heck, even the free version of Garageband can totally be used to create a nice project.

What are you hoping to accomplish with your set up?
Are you going to be recording a full band? Just songwriting, laying tracks down by yourself for demo purposes?

These are a couple of things to consider when trying to make a decision on a recording set up.

***I forgot to mention that Protools will be coming out with a FREE version of their DAW. It's called Protools First. Might be worth checking it out. I'm certainly going to. It's suppose to be out sometime this month.

[DG Whitley]

At this point, we're trying to get together a church band to do recordings and probably practice tracks. We'll have a Bass, two guitar rhythm players, a lead guitar, and myself on steel. We may eventually get around to making CDs, but just organizing right now.

Hope this helps.

[Rick Schacter]

At this point, we're trying to get together a church band to do recordings and probably practice tracks. We'll have a Bass, two guitar rhythm players, a lead guitar, and myself on steel. We may eventually get around to making CDs, but just organizing right now.

Hope this helps.

It would be nice if you could get a mixer with at least 16 mic inputs to record a full band.

But it can be done with 8 mic inputs.

Off the top of my head, I would say that a Personus Audiobox VSL 1818 would be a good choice:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/AudioBox1818

This one would probably do a nice job too:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Scarlett18i20

But you will still need a DAW,a computer and reference monitors.

You could record with a Zoom R-16 or R-24.
Then transfer your tracks into your computer for cleaning them up and finishing your project with the DAW of your choice:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/R16

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/R24

There are quite a few DAW's to choose from:

http://www.cockos.com/reaper/

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/search. ... &Go=Search

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/search. ... &Go=Search

[Rick Schacter]

My advice would be to also get as much information about home recording as you can possibly find.

Go to Amazon.com to find books, recording forums and any article that you can find on the internet (provided it's not just some article by just anybody with an opinion).

Here's a web site that I like to visit:

http://ronansrecordingshow.com

Good luck with your project and have fun with it.

[DG Whitley]

Great minds must think alike, I had considered the Scarlett18i20 for this project. I'm taking the info you've given and will give it study. Right now this is more of an info gathering task and trying to nail things down procedurally to avoid confusion.

Thank you so much for your input, deeply appreciated.

[Rick Schacter]

Your very welcome, DG.
I forgot to mention that there is a DVD put out by Alan Parsons entitled "The Art and Science of Recording".

It might be something that you'd be interested in. I would highly recommend getting a copy

If anyone knows something about recording, it would be Alan Parsons.
(Of course I'm a big fan of his).

Want to hear some pretty pedal steel and vocal harmonies?
Check out the song "Gemini" on the Eye In The Sky album.

I think he knows what he's talking about.

[Jack Stoner]

Disc Markers has a free downloadable "Home Studio Handbook". Get it and see what it says.
http://www.discmakers.com/

The Focusrite equipment is very good. I have a Roland Octa-Capture which is also 8 XLR mic preamps. I had a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 and after it died I moved on to the Roland. The Roland has built in Limiters and Compressors for each channel if you want to use them. I don't use the Compressors but I like the Limiters. I can set a channel level and then "forget" it as the Limiter will take over if it gets too loud. Music electronics GURU Craig Anderton wrote a great review of the Octa-Capture when he worked at Harmony Central. (Next best thing to girls - LOL).

The Roland has ASIO drivers and PT10 and above should be compatible.

[Rick Schacter]

Disc Markers has a free downloadable "Home Studio Handbook". Get it and see what it says.
http://www.discmakers.com/

.

Cool! I just downloaded it.

Thanks, Jack!

[Doug Garrick]

You might want to look at solid state disks if you're doing a ground up build. Totally noiseless and very fast.

[Tony Prior]

just to throw a wrinkle in the mix. I run a full version Pro Tools 8 on an XP Athalon 3700+ with 4 gig of Ram.

I don't run many midi tracks and the only time I run into any issues is if I am running multiple occurrences of memory hog plug ins such as Amplitube. My typical track count is in the 10 to 12 , but I have been in the 20 plus range.... my interface is a PCI MAUDIO Delta 6, 4 in 4 out.

Keep your buffers set properly and you will be fine with any DAW. I also would concur, do not use a sound card, acquire a set of reference monitors and send the audio to those puppies, also acquire a headphones distribution amp.

Yep perhaps I will move up to Win 7 with 16 gig at some point but right now all is well.

The strength of the PC will not solve latency issues or issues related to buffer sizes, those issues are common with ALL PC's.

Go for it !

PS, I should also mention that the XP PC is for PRO TOOLS alone, no other apps running , no internet.I also use a 1 T byte external USB drive for storage and plan to remove the spinning Hard Drive and replace it with a Solid State drive in the very near future.

[Charlie McDonald]

I think everybody uses an interface such as Mbox, or any of a hundred similar devices, usually USB.

Avid is very proud of the MBox preamps, and the unit is getting good reviews.

The ex-technical director of Philip Glass' ensemble uses MAudio, available here below retail:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/9 ... gital.html

Mbox says that it supports monitors; examinations of it indicate that you wouldn't really be able to use that feature for recording.

So the feedback here is that you'll need a separate monitoring arrangement no matter what interface or DAW you use.

[Les Cargill]

I think everybody uses an interface such as Mbox, or any of a hundred similar devices, usually USB.

Avid is very proud of the MBox preamps, and the unit is getting good reviews.

The ex-technical director of Philip Glass' ensemble uses MAudio, available here below retail:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/9 ... gital.html

Mbox says that it supports monitors; examinations of it indicate that you wouldn't really be able to use that feature for recording.

So the feedback here is that you'll need a separate monitoring arrangement no matter what interface or DAW you use.

People generally want ProTools because it is ProTools. My feeling is that REAPER or Sonar are better software. But if you feel you need ProTools...

You'll need monitor *speakers*. As to whether or not you really need a monitor desk, that's questionable.

I use a $400 desktop that's no longer in production - a ZT Systems dual core P5. Quite modest. It's connected to a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20. There are many modest systems even cheaper now - this one is from 2011.

I run REAPER as a monitor desk, with live plugins for EQ, reverb, dynamics processing. All foldback is in the box.

For the reason that I have used it since it came out ( and it worked as master with MTC based sync when I had a Fostex VF16 ) , I use N-Track 3.0. SFAIK, I could do it all in REAPER. I have... many, many N-Track projects from years past.

The cost of that is about 5msec latency. IOW, five feet of distance. I mainly do that because I don't have a good place to put a mixer.

The Scarlett does support zero-latency mixing but without effects. I could exploit that with an outboard reverb that supports S/PDIF but I have not.

[Tony Prior]

I would take a different position from my good friend Les, people don't buy Pro Tools just because it is Pro Tools, it has earned its name and place and is a force in studio's all across the globe because of it's full production feature set and it is NOT difficult software to learn and use, that is unless you are trying to learn to build Rome in one day.


Sonar is an equivalent full production package to Pro Tools, Reaper is a nice package as well but if you need to do some serious or advanced editing you will learn that a full production package is worth the cost.

right, not everyone needs or requires an advanced production package.

I am not dissing Reaper, it's a nice package and users like it. It's $60. Yeah the other packages are $500 !

Reading some of the Reaper reviews I see people comment that programs like Sonar, Logic and Pro Tools take a few extra moments to load when first booting up for the day, compared to Reaper. uh..yeah...thats not a deficiency in programming as some are trying to claim, it is the full package feature set loading so that when you decide to use a " feature" it is available. Quite frankly if someone is trying is to say that booting a software package in half the time is an advantage over the others,well, think about it...They advertise that it takes up half the space. Well ok...then it should load in half the time. If it takes up half the space as advertised, well evidently they are not equal...



Software is funny stuff, give the same package , any package to 50 people, 25 will figure it out with minimal or no training, 10 will need training, 10 will need a lot more training.

And 5 , no matter how many times they get trained, will never figure it out. And 10 or 15 people will blame the software saying it is not intuitive, they would be correct, to THEM, it is not intuitive, to the other 35 or 40 , it is.

Ever wonder why in school, all 45 students in the same class, same teacher, same books,same assignments etc, don't all get an A on every test ?

several years back before I went DAW, I purchased a 16 track Yamaha Workstation (AW2816) off of EBAY, list price for a new one was around $2000, I acquired it for $900 listed in mint condition. When it arrived, it was indeed mint, basically brand new, it had 3 min on the HD. I contacted to seller and he told me it was a piece of crap, he couldn't figure out how to use it. It did indeed have a learning curve, but after some minimal seat time I used it for 5 years ! Oh yeah, I didn't get A's in school either. This stuff just makes sense to me.


So yeah ,I am a full version Pro Tools user,reasonably skilled, but I have found that my skill set and the package is way more important when other clients are recording at my home studio ( The Rumble Room) than when I am doing my own small template projects. Totally different scenario's, not to be compared.


Thats all I got...