Home recording advice

[Olderama]

Hi all
I'm pulling my socks up and looking at getting into recording my ideas
Firstly I have about a grand and would it be feasible to get a apple product and an interface for that price?

If not I can stick with windows and just get an interface but I'm keen of trying an apple product t as I've never ventured down that route
It will be mainly guitar but would venture into keyboard based (slamming dub lol)
I'm looking at a Volt 1 for the interface and is that over kill?

[NippleWrestler]

There's no real reason to go Apple, and if you get the Volt 1 at $300 NZD that leaves you with $700 for some sort of Apple device. I don't see the benefit personally when everything works perfectly well on Windows.

That interface is fine. It doesn't look any better or worse than anything else, but bear in mind the Volt 1 only has 1 input at a time, which might not matter now but might later. My vote for quick and easy and quality interfaces goes to the Arturia Minifuse 2 which has 2 ins/outs so you can record 2 tracks simultaneously (great for singer/songwriter stuff, micing guitar cabs, more than one voice etc), and it also comes with a shitload of bundled software. I did use Audient stuff in the past but find their updates to be bloaty and actually bricked my unit (an iD4) and then Audient were zero help so they're out of my future.

For keyboardy things you'll just want a midi keyboard with your preferred number of keys, and you'll also need a synth plugin to actually make noise out of the midi tracks - the Arturia I mentioned above comes with a whole host of these as Arturia is firstly a synth company.

[MikeC]

I can't give you recording advice but I have this setup for sale. It's essentially brand new and only ever used for testing. All online manuals have been printed commercially and bound. I'm open to a reasonable offer https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/marketplace ... f=dbxNZMIc

[Olderama]

There's no real reason to go Apple, and if you get the Volt 1 at $300 NZD that leaves you with $700 for some sort of Apple device. I don't see the benefit personally when everything works perfectly well on Windows.

That interface is fine. It doesn't look any better or worse than anything else, but bear in mind the Volt 1 only has 1 input at a time, which might not matter now but might later. My vote for quick and easy and quality interfaces goes to the Arturia Minifuse 2 which has 2 ins/outs so you can record 2 tracks simultaneously (great for singer/songwriter stuff, micing guitar cabs, more than one voice etc), and it also comes with a shitload of bundled software. I did use Audient stuff in the past but find their updates to be bloaty and actually bricked my unit (an iD4) and then Audient were zero help so they're out of my future.

For keyboardy things you'll just want a midi keyboard with your preferred number of keys, and you'll also need a synth plugin to actually make noise out of the midi tracks - the Arturia I mentioned above comes with a whole host of these as Arturia is firstly a synth company.

Thanks heaps for that I've had a look and the bundled software looks good and covers guitar and keyboard

Might as well get a keyboard whilst I'm at it

[Olderama]

I can't give you recording advice but I have this setup for sale. It's essentially brand new and only ever used for testing. All online manuals have been printed commercially and bound. I'm open to a reasonable offer https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/marketplace ... f=dbxNZMIc

Thanks Mike I'll probably go with the minifuse after I've done my you tube reviews ect
Thanks for the offer

[jeremyb]

I can't give you recording advice but I have this setup for sale. It's essentially brand new and only ever used for testing. All online manuals have been printed commercially and bound. I'm open to a reasonable offer https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/marketplace ... f=dbxNZMIc

PreSonus make awesome hardware, and Studio One is a really nice DAW to use, I have a course I bought and downloaded on using it if you're interested I can send you a link

[Reg18]

I’ve got an Akai Midi keyboard for sale for cheap, bought it for my Son who never showed much interest unfortunately.

[Kris]

Out of curiosity, why the Apple device? You could get a mac mini (old) but really theres no strong pro and I've used both for over 20 years.
I did find OSX less likely to crash and keep folders tidy though.

Not much to add other than secondhand is the way to go, get something with a few outputs you can assign so you can re-amp later down the track, and dont worry about monitoring for now.

[Olderama]

Out of curiosity, why the Apple device? You could get a mac mini (old) but really theres no strong pro and I've used both for over 20 years.
I did find OSX less likely to crash and keep folders tidy though.

Not much to add other than secondhand is the way to go, get something with a few outputs you can assign so you can re-amp later down the track, and dont worry about monitoring for now.

The apple interest is purely that I've always seen peoples using them for music recording.
But that's all

[codedog]

Out of curiosity, why the Apple device? You could get a mac mini (old) but really theres no strong pro and I've used both for over 20 years.
I did find OSX less likely to crash and keep folders tidy though.

Not much to add other than secondhand is the way to go, get something with a few outputs you can assign so you can re-amp later down the track, and dont worry about monitoring for now.

The apple interest is purely that I've always seen peoples using them for music recording.
But that's all

Windows PC did just fine for me for the longest time. I finally switched over because I wanted to do something with the Kemper and my interface. It was a total PITA on Windows, and worked easily on the Mac.

[Kris]

FWIW, because i know what i need i was able to get a 20 dollar imac- paired it with zoom r16 and have a low cost 8 tracking solution at my jam shed. The low spec of the imac isnt an issue as all it does is give me a visual UI of the tracks being recorded into reaper and i then process the raw tracks at home on my grunty system.
Just a case where apple wins for a low cost solution heh
Also,class compliant means most devices are plug and play