Hello!

For over a year now I'm expanding my home mixing setup and everything has been great except the tracks I'm getting from the people.

Thinking that every good mix starts with recording I really motivated myself to setup my own mobile recording setup which I can use to track and then to mix it in my studio.
I will be tracking in a well treated practise room which is not so far away from me.

My budget would be around £1k-1,5k for the recording equipment not including the microphones. After few days of reaserching I got two ideas for my setup.

I hope you guys can tell me if my choices are good and give me some opinions and maybe suggest something else.
Just wan't to add that I don't have a car by now but I have a guy doing this with me so we have 4 strong hands and backpacks to carry everything by now.

So let's start..

Setup 1:

Alesis HD24 or HD24xr as my recorder
Audient asp008 as my first 8 pre's ( I will have a chance to borrow another set of Focusrite Octopre's till I get money for more channels)
A chep line mixer for headphones - that's where I'm stuck and I will need some advice on that, basically I just need this mixer for headphone mixes so I don't really care about the quality, just so I have no latency monitoring.

So this should do to start with. I guess this will be on the top of my budget but I hope the quality would be an advantage.

Setup 2:

Mac Book Pro with Pro tools 10 which I already have.
8 channel interface like Focusrite Pro40 or any suggestions?
Headphone amp like Behringer HA8000

This setup will be probably cheeper but I guess the quality would go down quite a bit.

I hope someone could comment on this and give me some advice or other ideas how to set it up.

Thanks for your time!

You might also check out Tak's Boom Recorder.

This is what I would look at:

RME UCX and focusrite Octopre II

Or if you wanna go big:

RME UFX and 2 focusrite Octopre Dynamic II

Pick up a headphone amp and some cheap cans if you need em.

I'd second the RME UFX, not so much the Octopre Dynamic, though only if you can afford better, even if it meant saving for a little bit, though they are certainly some of the better budget 8 channel pres but even then I would just go with the one without the comps.

I heard the octopre's are not nearly as good as the 008's.

I can get one for £750 with the digital I/O card.

Would that be worth it?

also I still can't decide if to go with the bulky alesis recorder or with the Mac.

If you go with the UFX (mac) you would also have a backup. Add an 8 channel pre, even one without any adat and you would be able to record 12 channels. Is the 008 second hand? Because £750 with a card is a steal.

Hey!

I'm affraid the UFX might be out of my budget considering I still would have to buy the mac and the pre's.

it would be way over £2k I think.

The 008's are second hand, in very good condition with the digital card included.
I'm not sure how much advantage the digital card would be for me in the future.
I know a new 008's are around £800 w/o the card, so maybe to keep the cost down I could get them second hand without the card maybe around ~£600.

Oh sorry I thought you said you already had the Mac. Well the fireface 800 is also just as well suited and will cost around the same as a second hand Alesis, will do up to 28 channels and will come with 4 pres already in it too, so you can get started as soon as you get it.

I would also get the cards while you can, £750 is a great deal assuming everything still works and will save you £320 in the future should you decide you want one at a later date.

Ok, so that's for all the replies. I just realize that I have my old desktop pc which is quite good and I use to mix on it before I got my new one. It's so small I would fit in a backpack easly! So I just saved myself some cash!!

I think most of the stands are already in the room so that would leave me with the pc, interface and mic's which isn't bad for two people!

So I can get this audient for £700 which will leave me money to get let's say focusrite Pro40 and all this will lock around £1k. That will give 16 channels to start with!


So then my whole setup would be:

Windows 7 based pc
Focusrite Pro40
Audient asp008
and the headphone amp.

what do you think?

The Pro 40 already has two headphone outputs. So you'll need that headphone amp (Behringer league should be sufficient) only if you need more headphones, say, for musicians.

yess! I wanted to be able to do let's say two different headphone mixes and then just send them to the headphone amp.