FACTplayers
Active Member
Lately I've been getting asked to do more and more home recordings. These are typically high school kids that work with our community theatre who just want to record covers. Right now I've been running the AT2020 for vocals and a 1/4" for guitar into my analogue board, then the outs of that into a Zoom H4n, which connects to my MBP via USB. Finally, I use Audacity to capture the sound and edit.
Sometimes they will only want to sign along to an instrumental track. In this case, I will load the track into Audacity, then headphone out of the MBP into my mixer. The mic will also run into the mixer. From here, I will create the mix of vocals/track in their headphones and send ONLY vocals to Audacity. This way I can re-record the same track multiple times and mix certain parts together to make one awesome track.
I want to eliminate my mixer and purchase a audio interface and I am looking for suggestions and places to start looking/researching.
At a minimum I will need 4 inputs. XLR / 1/4" combo jacks (like the H4n has) would be awesome. It will also need to be able to supply phantom power to power the AT2020 and another mic if/when I need to use one. I would like to be able to record just vocals while I play an instrumental track similar to what I described in my second paragraph. Recording to an SD card and being able to run off of batteries would be a huge plus. I've used the Zoom R16 before and really liked it, but I think it's a bit overkill for what I need.
My MBP is 6 years old and only has USB 2.0 and Firewire 400/800 ports. Sometimes I do have access to a rMBP with USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt connections. Ideally, I would like to be able to use either computer; however, if push-comes-to-shove, I would rather go with the USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt connections.
As far as price, I like free... A couple hundred dollars would be fine to spend. I don't need top of the line for what I'm doing. I'll most likely try to find whatever I decide upon second hand. Any suggestions and advice will be much appreciated.
Sometimes they will only want to sign along to an instrumental track. In this case, I will load the track into Audacity, then headphone out of the MBP into my mixer. The mic will also run into the mixer. From here, I will create the mix of vocals/track in their headphones and send ONLY vocals to Audacity. This way I can re-record the same track multiple times and mix certain parts together to make one awesome track.
I want to eliminate my mixer and purchase a audio interface and I am looking for suggestions and places to start looking/researching.
At a minimum I will need 4 inputs. XLR / 1/4" combo jacks (like the H4n has) would be awesome. It will also need to be able to supply phantom power to power the AT2020 and another mic if/when I need to use one. I would like to be able to record just vocals while I play an instrumental track similar to what I described in my second paragraph. Recording to an SD card and being able to run off of batteries would be a huge plus. I've used the Zoom R16 before and really liked it, but I think it's a bit overkill for what I need.
My MBP is 6 years old and only has USB 2.0 and Firewire 400/800 ports. Sometimes I do have access to a rMBP with USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt connections. Ideally, I would like to be able to use either computer; however, if push-comes-to-shove, I would rather go with the USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt connections.
As far as price, I like free... A couple hundred dollars would be fine to spend. I don't need top of the line for what I'm doing. I'll most likely try to find whatever I decide upon second hand. Any suggestions and advice will be much appreciated.