Hello... newbie here. Have lots of questions.. about to invest in home studio gear..

[GORILLA]

The 001 JAMS... Those Octopre's run around $980 without the lightpipe card($280-ish), I believe the Digimax is a little bit cheaper. The 002 has better converters and ALL ins & outs are balanced and 96kHz ability...may not seem like much now, but down the road it will.
Plus you can use it as a mixer for practice!!$3200 you have to play with right?
plan A) Basschairs plan or
plan B)002-$2200 and a pair of Presonus Blue tube stereo mic pres(aprox $300)! I don't know how good they are, but they're cheap, you can get em' at SamAsh and they're tube. That'll give you 8 channels, enough for 2 kicks/2 overheads/snare/2 rooms or 2 toms/ and one extra for a guitar!?!? Thats $2500 and you said $800 for your computer....eh..$100 bucks over [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img] You said beg,borrow, and steal [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] I'm sure between all the guys in your band you could borrow some of your buds mics to record a couple of weekends.
Either way you'll be in the Pro Tools world [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
GOOD LUCK !!

[soundsurfr]

Nobody mentioned this, but I think the Roland uses a built-in audio compression algorithm that bites the big one. The guys at guitar center were right that most commercial establishments use Pro Tools, but they seem to have stopped short of telling you why. Here's why:

It sounds better.

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Oh wait, did they mention the unbelievably superior editing capability of PT?

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Oh wait, did they mention hard disc storage? As in...the Roland doesn't have very much?

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And did they talk about future upgrades? Not always easy on a standalone DAW. Not always happening, either. Can you say *planned obsolescence*?

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And one more thing about the Digi....

It sounds better.

[img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Siberian]

Hey all, so far thank you for all the informative input. Until now I did not even consider the 001. Looking back I don't really know why. I guess I was hell bent on having a physical control surface, but if I never worked on one before, I realize that I don't really have an absolute NEED for one. Maybe it's just a perception of having been in studios and SEEN it done that way for so long. Being a musician (drummer) I am a hands'on kind of person so a control surface is appealing to me. And as some have suggested, if I REALLY needed to have one, I can upgrade later on and buy a compatible controller.

Someone mentioned portability... No, I don't need it to be portable. This is strictly a home studio environment and as such, it will stay at home.

What about the A/D converters being better on the 002? What does that get me and how do I bypass them? Let's say, for example that I got the Focusrite Octopre, or two of them for that matter. Are the converters part of the preamp and would that bypass the internal Digi001 converters or do I still need to add something else?

Also, someone asked what are my goals with this stuff. As stated earlier, it is mostly for my band's own demo recordings. However we are looking for more than just your average weekend warrior, play for your friends and family, joke demos. We are a very serious career minded band driven towards a goal. We are constantly writing new material and we like to record that material once it is perfected.

We distribute our demo's at live shows, use them in our promo kits for soliciting new venues for booking live shows, as well as send them to record labels. In addition, a couple of our songs have found their way into the hands of many local and worldwide gothic/industrial dance clubs who spin them for dance mixes on a pretty regular basis.

That said, we need our demo's to have a certain level of professional polished quality significantly above that which you can achieve from a local studio working over a weekend at $50 bucks an hour, using generic engineers who care about little more than to get you in, get you out, and get paid.

Realizing that it is very difficult to achieve such quality on limited resources, therein lies the challenge. Our sound can best be described as gothic/industrial metal. Think Rob Zombie's music with a female singer. Our sound has to sound "big". It's a very processed, polished sound we are going for. We need the kind of gear that will give us the tools to manipulate our sound to achieve that goal.

It will take some time to learn good recording techniques. I understand that. I don't have any dillusions of grandure that we are just going to plug in, record, and BAM we have a perfect result that rivals the finest recording studios around the world. However I am confident that in the long run we will overcome the learning curve and ultimately get some great results.

That leads me to another question though... I read in a review somewhere that if you track your music on a PC based Protools LE system and try to reopen the tracks on a MAC based system, or a TDM system, that there could be compatibility issues with certain plugins. Is this still true today or has Digidesign found a way to address this? Although we wouldn't make a habbit of it, we would like to think that if the need arises, we could do our tracking at home, then just take the portable hard drive to a Protools based professional studio and have them dump the tracks into their system and mix away. If there were compatibility issues and they were solely based on plugins, then would the problems be eliminated by simply recording raw tracks without any effects or plugins?

I'm sure I'll have many more questions. I am going to a local music store this week to see if they can demo the 001 and 002 systems for me so I can get a better idea of the hands-on differences in using both. I have the Protools Free disc that came with a book on Protools that I bought, but I haven't been able to get it to run on my computer..... yet.

Anyway, I am still about one month or so away from actually taking the plunge. I am just trying gather enough knowledge to make the most informed decision I can. Nothing worse than buyer's remorse! I started this quest about a month ago with absolutely ZERO knowledge of what is out there, what I need, and WHY I need it. I am slowly starting to understand things, but I am still far from where I want to be in terms of knowing what equipment does what. My goal is to start out with enough basics to get up and running, learn the ins and outs of good recording, and then expand the setup as future necessities dictate.

Thanks again for all of your input so far. Keep it coming!

[Calvin]

Well Pro-tools is very High quality. Once you know how to use your stuff you can get amazing results with pro-tools. As you have seen if you run into any problems or have any questions, people here are always willing to help as best we can. As for the question about the converters, yes getting the focusrite octopre with the adat optional card will bypass the digi 001's converters. However 8 channels is the most that you can go in this way. You could get another octopre or some other kind of pre and bypass just the pre's on the 001 and go into the converters on the back of the digi 001. While no they arn't the best converters, I don't want you to get the Idea that they arn't usable. If you are in a pinch and need more than 8 inputs at once you can use those. I currently am working on a project that was done totally with the digi 001's pre's and 2 microphones. It was just piano and vocal and cello, But the project is coming out sounding great. While you can easily get better hardware for the 001, the digi 001 is still usable alone.

[Siberian]

Well yes, there are cases where I might need more than eight at once... specifically when tracking drums. My kit consists of a kick, snare, two rack toms, two floor toms, and of course, cymbals. Now on most songs I don't use all of the toms so I just remove the ones I am not using and keep the kit as minimal as possible. However, on a couple songs I am using all the toms. So figure I would need individual mics for kick, snare, four toms, hihats, two overheads, and possibly a room mic out front. At that point I'm up to nine not including the room mic. Now I suppose if I HAD to, I could have the 10" and 12" toms share one mic as they are located right next to each other, and do the same with the 14" and 16" floor toms. That would get me back down to eight total. However I fear it would be at the expense of good sounding tom recordings.

I just want to make sure I am covered for any scenerio that would be thrown my way. I want the ability to experiment as much as I can with different mic placements and I don't want to be limited. Also, I might want to try double mic'ing the snare. One on top and one on bottom. I have heard tales of engineers getting great results with layering both tracks out of phase with each other for a "bigger" snare sound.

Now couldn't you, say, use two Octopre's and run one through lightpipe, and the other with direct patch cords into the eight analog in's on the Digi001 and would THAT bypass all of the internal convertors?

[Calvin]

No, by using that second octopre and plugging the cords into the back of the digi 001 you are using it's converters. What is happening is the sound is comming analog out of the ouctopre and being converted by the digi 001 into a digital signal. You may not be bypassing the converters but at least your bypassing the digi 001's mic pre's.

[GORILLA]

No, that won't by-pass the 001's converters, bringing the octopre in that way by-passes its converters. Why do you need ALL your toms mic'ed?
You got some great help here from the DUC so far, if your really that serious about your sound and need it now....sorry but,$3200 aint gonna get you to far.

[Siberian]

Let me clarify. I do have realistic expectations. I know I am not going to get the same results as going to a professional studio recording on 2-inch analog tape. However with the gear available today (and at a little higher budget than the $3200 you suggest), I honestly believe that we can eventually achieve better results than we have gotten thus far in the local project studios.

Our previous recordings have gotten us by up to this point, But they are several notches below the ultimate in pro quality. I think with our budget we can achieve at least another step up from where we are now.

Here- check out the mp3's at our website and maybe you'll see what I mean... www.grigori3.com