amp/mac recording interfaces...

[andi.j]

Hi, forgive me if this is a stupid question or has been asked before...

I've got hold of an HT-1 recently and want to start recording guitar parts to edit/assemble in garageband (i guess?)

my question is, which of the millions of magic boxes do i go for as an interface between amp and desktop.  A search of the andertons website brings back a huge number of similar looking boxes, and being an absolute noob when it comes to  home recording i was after some advice before i walk into the shop and get sold the most useless/expensive piece of kit they've got!

cheers

[andi.j]

would something like this work...
http://www.andertons.co.uk/usb-interfaces/pid18429/cid712/alesis-multimix-6-usb-mixer.asp
...or are there other peripherals required?

[Roobubba]

I bought a Focusrite Saffire Pro 14 which is Firewire and works on both pc and mac. Superb piece of kit!

Roo

[andi.j]

ah, i was under the impression I'd need a mixer type device... firewire would make more sense than usb too
thanks- i'll check it out

[MDV]

You dont need a mixer, no. The DAW and often the interfaces software serve that purpose.

Get firewire, not USB. Peak speeds may be similar but firewire transfer is more stable by far, USB is burst and interuptible by other threads even when the CPU isnt under load. Thats important for audio as it means that USB interfaces either have more dropouts, higher latency or both.

Roos suggestion is a good one. The saffire stuff is about the best out there till you get up to RME, Apogee and the like. Maybe stienberg too, but I know of their interfaces only by reputation.

[JacksonRR]

How many channels in/out were you looking for? How many mic preamps? Budget? The thing is that all of these are intertwined. You can get superb quality, but a low number of ins/outs, for the same price as the devices meant to handle 10 instruments poorly. +1 on FW over USB.

[andi.j]

cheers guys - i was just looking for home/solo use, a couple of inputs (i can layer it up in the program), mic input would be useful so i can get my cello involved too and max £200, preferably lower :)

[choucas09]

Apogee are the ultimate interfaces for mac, but they are expensive. The Duet used to be about £300, but now it's been upgraded and is over£400. However the single channel Solo is £189. The reason I'm suggesting it is that it has a fairly massive 63db of gain so you could have the mike well back when recording which would be useful for the cello.

[MDV]

That sort of magnitude of gain is available all over the place, and cellos are loud; you could record one with an SM57 from quite a distance with a saffires gain (which is a little low, but perfectly adequate). If you get a condenser its not an issue.

I'm loathe to recommend NT1As since I hate them, but I dont know of a better mic at that low a price. Its that sort of thing that you want for the cello. Or a decent ribbon of course, but lets not go there :)

[JacksonRR]

Yup. The Apogee One (or a used duet) was going to be my suggestion for low number of inputs/low budget. One or two mono channels won't give any issues over USB, especially with Apogee drivers. Also, I've recently had some hands on experience with a T.C. Electronics Konnekt 6. Very impressive all around and you can also use it with a PC.

[andi.j]

awesome - i'll see if any of the higher end stuff crops up on ebay before i start planning my purchases
now i actually have a vague idea what's going on there'll be no more sketchy recordings through the mac mike!

[Lucifuge]

You only need the extra sustained speed of Firewire if you're going to be recording a lot of tracks at once. Also, Firewire looks likely to disappear from new Macs at some point.

[MDV]

You only need the extra sustained speed of Firewire if you're going to be recording a lot of tracks at once. Also, Firewire looks likely to disappear from new Macs at some point.

Incorrect. USB transfers often drop out at very low bandwidth use as its burst transfer master-slave, which basically means that its a very low priority operation thats easily overidden by pretty much anything else, even if other resources are available. Its because its not really made for device communication or continuous streaming at high speeds, but getting stuff from on drive to another with minimal resource use or impediment to any other operation the computers performing. Firewire is more stable and continuous even if youre recording one single track.

As for firewires disapearance....yeah, it seems to be going that way.

[Andrew W]

Also, Firewire looks likely to disappear from new Macs at some point.

It was this fact that spurred on to buy the E-MU Tracker Pre which has worked well for my needs. I use laptops exclusively at home and assuming I upgrade in the near future I'll probably be buying a MacBook Air which has no FireWire. At present the Pros still have one FireWire 800 port but I don't hold out much hope for it being there in a couple of releases time. Which sucks because FireWire is a proper interface and all my video kit uses it.

[MDV]

Also, Firewire looks likely to disappear from new Macs at some point.

  Which sucks because FireWire is a proper interface and all my video kit uses it.

Indeed. I know PCI is theoretically better, but I've never encoutered a practical difference between it and firewire; its a great technology and protocol for audio. I can only hope that USB3s shear speed can compensate for it not being optimised for continuous transfers.

Speaking of, I have USB3 ports, and nothing to plug into them :lol: Funny how that works. The next generation of interfaces will probably be USB3, but I really dont see any reason for that other than firewire being on the way out.