Advice for setting up

[Chris Watson]

Hello.
I am planning on buying recording equipment to use in my college, to record the choir and organ in the chapel and live chamber music in our two performance spaces.
The suggestions I have had so far are:
2 matched pairs of Røde NT5s plus one pair of omni capsules.
Pro Tools 11
MboxPro

Does this sound like the right combination of equipment? Are there any better suggestions for the same budget, particularly the preamps? I can get Pro Tools for the educational price, but I guess the hardware isn't available for the same rate.

Thanks

Chris

[nst7]

From briefly checking things out on the academic side, it looks like there is an educational price for hardware as well, but it must be bought by the institution itself, not a student or teacher, whereas the Protools software can be bought by a student or teacher at a discounted price.

However, the Mbox Pro will not have enough inputs for the amount of mics you're using. It only has 4 built in mic inputs. You could get 6 by using a separate 2 channel preamp and converter, but for that cost, you'd be better off just buying a different interface that has the number of inputs you need.

A couple of ideas in that price range (considering buying the academic software separately) would be the Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 or Scarlett 18i20, or Steinberg 824.

[Mike496]

Hi Chris, tell us a little more, there are lots of options out there.

What's the budget your dealing with?
Do you have a good computer to run the DAW?
How many channels will you need to record at one time?
In addition to mica do you need mic stands, cables, and headphones?
If recording live you may want to additional mics to capture ambiance and the audience, is that something you're interested in?

[Chris Watson]

Hi Mike - thanks.
Ideally this won't cost me more than £1500.
As a singer I'm used to recording with 2 pairs of mics (though some engineers I've worked with like to have some spot mics very close so that they can play with the balance) - I tend to record acapella stuff in churches - and the stuff I'm most likely to be recording is the chapel choir with or without the organ (small chapel, but lovely sound), live concerts of chamber music with up to 4/5 players or piano, either alone or with a single soloist.
The recordings I've done that I like the best (I've made over 100 CDs) tend to be the ones with the least complicated mic set-up - ie a pair of omnis in the best place in the room, possibly with a closer pair of cardioids for a bit of extra clarity.
As for channels, no more than 4 at once - if I want or need to do something really complicated I will get someone in.
And yes - cables, stands etc - though we already have a fair bit of stuff like that in our music room as I bought a sound system for the college bands last year.

My computer: iMac, mid 2011, OS X 10.9.1, 12 GB RAM, 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5

Chris

[JFreak]

You have the right idea there, but I would very strongly suggest that another pair of mics would be large diagphram mics, such as Rode NT1000. It will give you a lot more detail.