First Mixer For Recording Multiple Instruments

[JustPete]

I'm new to the SoundOnSound forums and have little knowledge of recording except from playing about on Ableton Live demos and using GarageBand to record basic electric guitar using the line in.

Through playing in a band for sometime now I'm interested in recording some better tracks. Currently rough recordings have been made on my camera which offers .wav recording which to be honest is much better than I expected. Anyway back to the point, I have been looking at buying a simple mixer for sometime now to record guitars and drums at the same time and have the output going straight into a DAW.

I was wondering what is the best mixer to start off with and what options would it open for recording. I'm looking for a mixer in the price range of under £100 and have been looking at the Behringer UBB 1002 and similar products, would these do the job? Also what DAW would you recommend for recording?

Thanks In Advance
Pete

[The Elf]

Welcome to the forums Pete!

Regulars here will know what I'm going to say...

You don't need a mixer!

You can choose to use a mixer if you have your reasons (and there are good reasons to choose one - and that budget is a pretty good one!), but I'm not sure I'd go along with it here. Do you mean you want to just record a load of instrument inputs mixed as a single stereo take? I doubt it.

So maybe you would be better looking at an audio interface that gives you a number (your choice - more inputs=more cost!) of inputs where you can record each input separately and then mix it in your DAW. You might have a dig a little deeper in the pockets, but I think you'd find it worthwhile.

There are loads of similar questions (they arrive on these forums daily), so try a search and I'm sure you'll find sufficient advice to narrow down your choices.

[moo the magic cow]

You don't want to record your band all playing at once, it's going to be a mess.

[JustPete]

Thanks for the responses. I think the idea for a musical interface is a good one and like you suggested i'll have a look around. The only reason I was thinking about a mixer is that we've always played as a band and we run off visual cues if that makes any sense. For example we tried putting vocals over the top of a ready recorded songs of all of us playing and the vocalist found it hard to come in at the exact moment. However perhaps a cleaner recording would help this.

Thanks again
Pete

[The Elf]

Not having a mixer doesn't mean you can't all play together and record all the results at the same time. It just means you can separate the tracks as you record them and mix it more carefully after the event. I suspected you were probably thinking along those lines.

But I suspect you will have to look again at that budget (sorry!). Good luck with it, dude.

[hugol]

There was a post somewhere (maybe another forum) about a live act always preferring to use Ableton Live as a full blown mixer - i.e. the latency was low enough to mix live audio through it and use FX and EQ. Other DAWs would no doubt be just as capable.

Of course this is very dependent on your choice of sound interface and its drivers. This is ignoring the fact that many interfaces have near 0 latency DSP mixers if you just want a basic sub-mix.

Anyway I'm in total agreement with maestro Elf - you want a multi-input sound interface not a mixer - assuming you don't mind carting a PC / laptop around. There are cheapo solutions that do both of course - like the Alesis and Phonic although I can't vouch for the quality.