Advice on home recording

I'm beginning to do some digital recording on the computer and need some
advice. I have a Korg Triton ProX that I make most of my tracks on. I
take that and record it on to a multitrack program on the computer.
Then I run guitar and vocals through the keyboard (to use it's effects)
and record that to the computer.

With that I get a nice clean recoding with no noise. The problem is
that the recordings sound thin with no depth. They don't have that
professional mixed sound. Now I'm sure it's because I'm recording
straight from the keyboard to the computer.

What do I need to make my recordings sound more full? Should I be using
some kind of preamp before the computer? Is there some kind of general
effects unit that's good for an all around sound?

I can use any advise on this, I'm not sure what's the norm for
proccessing keyboard and vocals before it gets to the computer.

Thanks.

What kind of soundcard are you using?

Yes, you do need a preamp. Invest in a small mixer.

I'm using a diamond mx 300 sound card I think. I'm also going through a tascam 424 4-track just to use the mic inputs. I'm not sure if that has any kind of pre amp built in.

If the sound card's not good enough, do you have any suggestions for a soundcard that's good but not too expensive? What about a mixer, any decent ones that are fairly cheap?

did you recording all your keyboard tracks as one big wav file or did you record each of your tracks from your keyboard to computer in individual audio tracks?

you can try using software plugins to "warm" up your individual tracks.


[This message has been edited by mhuang (edited 02-20-2002).]

Hi, some sort of preamp for the mics will come in handy.
As far as mixers go, Behringer makes some very affordable mixers. I use a Behringer eurorack mx 2004a 16 track mixer with an alesis nanoverb effects processor. The mixer has fantom power, and of course the ability to dial in the sound with the eq, the alesis does the reverbing and other stuff. Works pretty well for both vocals and guitars.

Tascam 424 does have some pre-amps. What kind of sound card is the diamond card? Is it a 16bit card?

mhuang: Right now we record 4 or 5 tracks from the keyboard onto a single track in cool edit pro, but maybe we'll try puting them seperate so we can indevidully edit them.


sk880user: I made a mistake, it's a tascam 464. And the soundcard is a mx300 monster sound:

http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h156b.htm

I guess it's pretty good for a gaming type card so it's probably 16bit.

Yes,

So one step to enhance your recording is to invest in a quality 24bit sound card. Some of the preamps in tascam or yamaha are good enough in my opinion and so I won't invest in a mixer as of yet.

Also, what kind of recording software do you use?

What plugins do you use?

You need an "audio" soundcard...not a "multimedia" soundcard. You can keep the one you have for basic computer needs but audio cards do not have midi or sampling. I like Digital Audio Labs. You might want to look for a used Mackie mixer too.