Recording Interfaces

[grungeiceman]

Well I Have been looking around at the recoding interaces on musicians friend and cant seem to choose one. The reviews for the ones in my price range dont look promising. But i was looking to spend about 200 max becuase i still need to buy mics, i was wondeing if anyone here has had expeirence with any of them here is what ive been looking at , also what mics would be best i was thinking a shure sm58 for vocals and shure sm57 for instrument becuase i could probly get the cheap off ebayhttp://www.musiciansfriend.com/rec/n...=100001+304891

[abraxas]

I still have the M-Audio 1010LT and I can say that, for the money, it's a good choice. But if you don't need more than 1 or 2 inputs at the time, you are probably better off with something else.

See that it has good and tested ASIO drivers. That is a necessity. It's nice if you have included mic preamps but keep in mind that even a 150$ external preamp will probably sound better.

As for mics, the differences between SM57 and 58 are really minimal, so in your place I'd save for a condenser mic for vocals, along with a low cost external preamp possibly. There are often packaged deals for mics/preamps you can look for.

Good luck with shopping!

[TS808]

I've been using the M-Audio Mobile Pre for a couple of years now with Sonar Home Studio. It's a good little device with two instrument inputs and two mic inputs.

[Spudman***]

I have the Lexicon Omega and it came bundled with Cubase LE.

It provides all my needs and then some. I got it because I expect to grow with my recording system well into the future. Cubase is upgradeable, the Omega has midi in and out, more than enough inputs and also has an insert. The preamps are pretty good. Plenty of monitoring options and zero latency the way I have it set up.

Maybe it is overkill to begin with but the price is good and I won't have to buy anything in the future should I need to expand.

Mine has worked flawlessly for 2 years.

[grungeiceman]

Ok at the risk of sounding dumb.. What is a pre-amp ive heard the term many a many times just dont know the use

[Jimi75]

TONEPORT - LINE6 - TONEPORT UX1 - TONEPORT - LINE6

You will need nothing more and with 200 USD you have plenty of money rest to buy a decent microphone.

Just listen to soundcips I have posted, or even Robert posted some made with his TONEPORT.

The vocal patches are great, too!

[SuperSwede]

USB interfaces can be troublesome, especially if you want to input/output several channels at once. USB 1.0 interfaces will work if you only plan to record one or two channels at once, but if you want to be able to do more advanced recording I´d recommend either a USB 2.0 or a Firewire interface.
You will get a much higher bandwidth with that and the latency will probably be better (read: lower). Some interfaces comes with bundled software and I would like to recommend that you especially look out for bundles with Cubase.
Cubase has a very user friendly interface, and the learning curve is not very steep. You can also upgrade Cubase later if you want more advanced functions (the LE/SE versions are more than enough for home recording though). Good luck in your search, and let us know how it goes!