Budget Home Studio: what type of audio input device?
I learned something about myself this week. I can’t stand it when people refer to an externally connected (FireWire or USB) audio device a “sound card”.
One of these things is not like the other. Know which one? The one that’s actually a card. The other are boxes.
I’m going to start referring to printers as “printer card”. That’ll show’em.
Moving on…
Let me get you up to speed. I have more time than money ($1000) and I want to put together an inexpensive home recording studio.
The first decision I made after several days of researching: I’m not using a digital-recorder-mixer combination plate. At first I thought I was. I had even figured out which one – the Zoom HD8CD.
This seemed ideal on the surface. Buy one thing and just be done with it – even a CD burner. It can communicate with a DAW to do further processing and mixing on the computer. What’s not to like?
Well … it comes down to several factors. Things like only being able to record 2 tracks at once … and those tracks are 44/1Khz 24 bit (mixed down to 16 bit mono). Very limited EQ means I’ll spend a lot of time in the DAW anyway. Questionable preamps (the only question is “how bad are they?”). I don’t need a CD writer but I’m still paying for it (instead of paying for something I do need).
So at the end of the day I get a highly convenient device (a card?) of that leaves me disappointed on pretty much every front but which does get the job done. Sure – I could spend more and get a better device but the price jump between “crappy” and “nice” is well outside of my budget.
So what are my options? Well – there is a PCI card or an external device connected by USB or FireWire.
I’m using a laptop so PCI is out (and even if it were an option I wouldn’t necessary want it). And since I’m using a lower-end laptop I don’t want to use USB since it puts more pressure on the CPU and has lower real-world transfer rates compared to FireWire. I want to get everything I can out of what I have.
There. I just saved you three days of reading and thinking.
You want an external device audio input device connected to your computer via FireWire.
That’s what I want and that’s what you want.
Next time I’ll look at some of the options I’m considering.
Tags: homestudio, music