E-MU 1820???

I was thinking of purchasing something more robust for recording multi-tracks on my PC. Right now I have Music Creator. The question is how do I get the mic inputs (guitar & bass amps, drums, vox, etc) to the computer? Will the 1820 do the trick? What's the difference between it and the 1820M? I assume that Music Creator will recognise the inputs for each track somehow? I'm new to multi-track recording but I do know something about computers and PCI boards. So what do I need to get?

Well, I can vary this according to device but at a minimum I would need inputs for these mics:

- guitar amp
- bass amp
- kick
- snare
- overhead
- vocal

Right now I'm using XLR mic cables but I guess I could get a quarter inch adapter. If I did this I was going to order 3 condensers for the drums. Maybe a couple Shure 57s for the amp (worked for me before). Any better ideas? I use a Shure 58 for my vocals. Might get one of those fancy vocal mic's with a screen for vocals depending on the cost.

I don't have a mixer with alot of outs. I was thinking of using MC as the mixer on the tracks. I know it can do that. It can take like 16 tracks or something. Just not shure if it's possible to feed in all the signals to it and have it recognise them. Or maybe I should buy a small 8 chan mixer to feed the signals??? What's best?

Yes, I will record everything at once and save each instrument as its own track so I can go back and redub/fix mistakes later.

What's the difference between it and the 1820M?

Thw 1820M has much better a/d converters - buy it if you can.

If I did this I was going to order 3 condensers for the drums.

If you get condenser mics, you need phantom power. The EMU only has phantom power on the 2 XLR inputs. If you get a mixer with balanced outs, you can run those into the 1820 - you are limited to a total of 8 (analog) tracks at a time.

Right now I have Music Creator.

If you start running into limitations, you might want to upgrade your software. Home Studio 4 is essentially Sonar 2, and
will give you more options.

ORIGINAL: mbgc

If you start running into limitations, you might want to upgrade your software. Home Studio 4 is essentially Sonar 2, and
will give you more options.

The Sonar LE (and Cubase LE and Ableton Live Lite 4) is bundled w/ E-MU products --> but it does have the inputs limit

Here are the SONAR LE main features:

# 64 audio and 256 MIDI tracks
# 8 tracks of simultaneous recording
# up to 8 outputs at once
# 24-bit / 192 kHz recording support
# 14 studio quality real-time effects and 6 MIDI effects (total of 24 audio effects within a project’s tracks and busses)
# up to 16 auxiliary busses
# up to 16 aux sends per track
# audio loop construction tools including ACID loop support
# dynamic console view
# multi-port graphical drum grid editor
# multitrack piano roll view
# staff notation
# ReWire 2.0 support
# DirectX/DXi and VST/VSTi support
# up to 8 virtual instruments simultaneously
# MIDI clock and MTC slave
# Cyclone DXi groove sampler (up to 16 ACIDized loop tracks side-by-side for editing with automatic tempo synchronization)
# Audio Simulation’s Dreamstation soft synth DXi
# import ACIDized loops and Video files
# support for control surfacees
# support for ASIO, WDM/KS, MME -driver modes
# and more...


Junski

How about getting a Korg D888 and running that into a MIDI card or something? Will Sonar/Cubase be able to recognise each track independently? Just seeing what my options are.

Thanks so far.