Guitar Gear Forum

So I've been using a boss micro BR (small digital 4 track) for years to record stuff at home by myself playing all the instruments layered on top of each other, but I can't be bothered to fuck with that awful little thing anymore. I've decide that I'm a big boy now and that I deserve a laptop and an audio interface to record demos of myself. I'm also justifying this as being "for school." Unfortunately, I don't know where to even start. 'm starting with a microphone and a cable, that's it.

Which laptops should I be looking at? I'm going to limit the price to $600 and give a hard no to Apple anything because I irrationally hate them.

Which DAW should I use? Free is always best, and I'd like to have something as simple as garageband (which conflicts with my anti apple stance) to use.

Which interface should I get? I'm going to be recording myself by myself, and sound quality is not of great importance; durability and price are.

Basically, I'm starting from scratch knowledge-wise and I don't want to put my money into the worst stuff possible. I don't need anything terribly intricate or complicated, and I'm not looking for all the bells and whistles by any means. I'm just looking for a midrange laptop that can run a DAW that will let me record and playback simultaneously and perhaps a two channel interface to plug into. Recommendations?

I’m not gonna be any help on the computer itself, but Reaper is free to use besides the ‘buy me’ prompt that lasts for like 5 seconds, and the Mackie Onyx Blackjack is a solid interface for a cheaper two channel. $99 at Sweetwater. I’ve been using mine for like 3 years, no issues with it.

Hopefully someone can chime in on the laptop; I run big orchestral templates and needed a bunch of RAM and an SSD drive so I had to spend more than you’re looking for.

I don’t have an interface but I do have a $35 shipped minty Mackie mixer that you could technically run into your computer’s mic input. Not ideal, but would work.

You can find it in the classifieds.

Steinmetzify wrote:I’m not gonna be any help on the computer itself, but Reaper is free to use besides the ‘buy me’ prompt that lasts for like 5 seconds, and the Mackie Onyx Blackjack is a solid interface for a cheaper two channel. $99 at Sweetwater. I’ve been using mine for like 3 years, no issues with it.

Hopefully someone can chime in on the laptop; I run big orchestral templates and needed a bunch of RAM and an SSD drive so I had to spend more than you’re looking for.

From what little I know about this stuff, it seems a gaming PC would have been the way to do due to ram and SSD. If OP can get away with 8gb-16gb of ram with a 128 ssd for the process, then store saved files on an external, I think $600 would be enough for that.

I recently bought the behringer u-phoria 4 channel, but haven't heard any issues with the cheaper ones too. Focusrite scarlet seems to be the go-to for interfaces as in you can get that and no one would tell you you're wrong. For software I've been using Audacity because I'm passingly familiar with it.

Take all of this with a grain of salt as I know next to nothing about this stuff.

Kardula wrote:From what little I know about this stuff, it seems a gaming PC would have been the way to do due to ram and SSD.

Exactly what I did.....grabbed a Dell 15-7000, built for gaming but it had the specs I needed to run the big templates.

OP, you might look at Dell, they run sales all the time; look up some specs online and see what you can grab....like Kardula said, you don't need very much for what you're looking to do, 8GB of RAM would most likely work.

Gaming PC is not a bad way to do it. I was running Reaper on my XPS Desktop before going to the Mac and it worked great. And that thing is 6 years old. Processor speed will be important but honestly, RAM is going to be huge (I have 16 GB on my PC and on my Mac).

Interface wise... I have a Blackjack also. It works and it works well. I got mine used for like $60-$70. Worth it to me. It works well, the mic pres are awesome, and about half of each song that I've recorded so far has been done through the Blackjack (we use a Tascam 2488 Neo to record drums, bass, vocals and one set of rhythm tracks. I use the interface for everything else once it's loaded in GB on my Mac). Everything is 24 bit, but I think the sample rate is 48 kHz. I think most new interfaces have a 192 kHz rate, but to my ears, this thing sounds clear enough and works well.

Mics... the SM57 is tried and true. There's a lot of guys here who have used a LOT of different mics. I'm limited to a SM57 clone and my Sennheiser E906. I could live on a desert island with the E906 for recording guitar tones. I use both actually. The SM57 clone is a Pyle and I use that at the practice spot for getting the first set of rhythm tracks. It works great with my Greenback cab. The E906 is my home mic and that's where it stays. I love that mic.

I've had great luck with my setup.
Computer: some HP desktop with a lot of ram and a BIG hardrive
DAW: Reaper. I bought it. It's great.
Interface: Focusrite Scarlett 18i20. Works great, but I'm using mostly outboard preamps (outboard preamps are interesting and fun. Even cheaper preamps can sound really good). Latency isn't a problem because it monitors in real time. or something like that.

My biggest piece of advice; get more inputs on the interface than you think you need. 2 inputs is NOT enough. I outgrew my Focusrite 2i2 after 1 recording session.

2nd biggest piece of advice; splurge on a few decent mics, but even cheap mics can sound great. Get at least one GOOD dynamic mic that can do guitars/bass/vocals/bass drums. Shure SM7B is aces.

Also, the real fun starts with plugins. The right ones used correctly will take your recordings from amateur chump level to nearly pro level.

I've been buying Dell laptops lately. For around $600 you can get one with a 256GB solid state drive. Definitely don't fuck around with old-school spinning drives anymore. The SSDs are much better.

I used to use Audacity, which is free, but I switched to Reaper. Reaper has a cool black theme but is kind of difficult to learn. Expect to have to watch YouTube vids to learn how to do basic things like cutting little snippets out of a track. For bringing in a media track the term is not "import" I think it's "insert" or something. And to export to wav format you "render". I'd switch again but I have zero patience for this shit and Reaper is doing the job, kind of.

As far as mics and interfaces just listen to the guys here. I ended up with a Blue Yeti USB mic (as a lightning deal on Amazon) which works ok but something meant for guitar might work better.