Diving into audio interface

Dan Beller-McKenna · From: Durham, New Hampshire, USA

I am strongly considering a Tascam US1800 to do some live recording of small quasi-acoustic groups I have been playing with lately: no drums or electric bass; 2-3 vocals; acoustic guitar, that sort of thing. Probably running 5 or 6 tracks at a time. My plan is to take my decommissioned Dell laptop that has a 2.3ghz dual core processor and 16Gb Ram, strip it of just about everything but Studio One (which I have used for adding steel tracks to other folks' recordings), and making it a dedicated recording machine.

Any thoughts on whether this will be sufficient equipment for the job? I know the processing requirements are pretty steep both for the audio interface.

Thanks,
Dan

mtulbert · From: Plano, Texas 75023

Hi Dan,

Just took a look at the Tascam specs and it will not do the job for you. It has 16 inputs but only 4 outputs so that would be max number of tracks that you could record simultaneously sad to say.

I think your laptop will be okay. I run Pro Tools on an old ASUS laptop that I don't think is as powerful as yours and have recorded 16 tracks at once with no problems. I tested it once for 24 tracks and it worked great. Note that it was through Firewire and not USB. Your mileage may vary.

Mark

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

I tried out a Tascam unit and sent it back. I didn't like the preamps and the headphone output was noisy. The Tascam units have a lower price than many others with similar features, but you have to use the old adage of you get what you pay for.

You have to look carefully at the number of channel specs for units. e.g. my Roland Octa-Capture says 10 ports but only 8 are actual analog (mic/instrument) input channels.

I have a Lenovo i5 (first generation i5) Laptop PC with 8GB of RAM that I use for "on site" recordings. I have Sonar X2 Producer 64 bit version installed on it. I use either my Roland Octa-Capture or my MAudio Fastrack Ultra 8R (8 channels like the Octa-Capture). I can only record 8 tracks at a time with these devices but I haven't had any problems. I record with the Lenovo and then transfer the recording project to my desktop DAW system and do whatever I need to do to it there, mixdown, master, etc.

Bill Moore · From: Manchester, Michigan

The Zoom R-16 would make things much simpler. Record up to 8 tracks at once, save to an sd card. Transfer all the tracks to any computer for mixing etc.

Bryan Cook · From: Ohio, USA

Hey Dan,

Glad to hear you're interested in capturing some of the live recordings you're experiencing. I'm currently an audio engineer at Tree Lady Studios and work at a music store to pay the bills.

I'd first like to say your computer should definitely handle Studio One as long as you don't start running too many plugins (save the editing for after recording if you plan on editing at all)

Most interfaces as you probably know currently offer 1, 2, 4, or 8+ mic pre amps and i'm also keeping in mind you need USB not firewire. If you can get away with just using 4 preamps you could find something very reliable but probably more along the $300-400 price range. From what it seems you're more than likely going to want 8 or at least to have the option for 8 rather than being stuck with 4. If you don't mind spending the extra money you could absolutely find an interface that will offer Nice clean preamps but since you're more than likely looking at 8 you're looking more in the $400-500 price range.

If you're willing to spend the extra cash I'm sure you're computer would be able to handle your applications and who knows maybe you'll end up filling those 8 channels!

Not to get too personal but if you had a ballpark figure of what you're looking to spend I could point you in the direction of a nice, clean 4-8 channel USB interface!

Best Regards,

Bryan

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