a few ?s before I purchase mixcraft & toneport

[xstatic180]

OK I've been looking for a way to record my band for a while now, and it seems like Mixcraft is gonna be the way to go.

I have no need for loops and samples and MIDI, etc. Only live instruments.

I have an Acer laptop less than a year old - Celeron 1.2 ghz w/ 2GB ram running Vista basic. Built in sound card... that I probably won't end up using, but i'm gonna try first.

However:

Our main concern is live drum recording. We have 5 good quality drum mics. I want the ability to have each drum mic on a separate track in Mixcraft... we've had terrible problems in the past with recording the drums through an 8-track, then mixing and dumping to AcidPro. The drums come out weak and pretty much unadjustable after the mixdown.

What would be the best way to achieve this?

Here's my ideas:

- Record the 5 mics into the 8-track, then dump each track separately into Mixcraft.

- Buy a Toneport, record the 5 mics into the 8-track, dump each track separately into the toneport using the toneport's mic preamp to get bigger sound into Mixcraft.


Will either of these ideas work? I need separate controls over the kick and snare, this is why we need to do this. Is there a better way?

We also have a 10-channel Behringer mixer... we use it for PA, don't know if it would be useful here... We have no preamps.

I'm looking to get out of this spending the least amt of money possible on hardware... which is why the toneport is the way to go, right? To emulate a real preamp on the drum mics? Will that work if the sound is coming from the 8-track rather than the mics themselves (see above for my idea of pre-recording)


What are my other options? Can my little 1.2ghz w/ 2GB ram even handle a 5-track simultaineous recording with the right hardware?

[Acoustica Dan]

I recommend purchasing a Presonus Firepod. It is not terribly expensive and will let you record up to 8 microphones onto 8 different tracks at the same time. In this way you can mic up the drums, arm each track in Mixcraft, hit record, and have every individual microphone record to its own track.

The alternatives you suggest will give you problems with synchronizing the tracks, since the 8 individual recordings would ahve to be pricely lined up. Recording all 5 mics at the same time in Mixcraft is the professional approach. if the Firepod is too expensive (its actually quite reasonable -- check second hand on eBay, for example, but make sure you have a firewire interface on your computer), then there are many other alternative 8 in devices on the market, and I'm sure others can suggest many alternatives.