recording console help

can anybody reccomend a recording decent console for $300 to $350 for home use.I have a drummer,songwriter friend who is looking and i,m trying give him some help on this.

Is he looking for:
- a portable multi track recording unit?
- a mixer that he can plug into his computer to record through a pc/mac?
- an audio interface other than a mixer that he can plug into his computer to record through a pc/mac?

Stu asked all the questions I was gonna...

Cheers, Tim

a portable multi track recording unit.Such as the TASCAM DP-02CF.I,m just not up on this sorta thing.

For analog, still seems the Mackie stuff is hard to beat in the low dollar range.

How many tracks?
If 2 (for recording) + 2 (for playing back) is enough, point him to the Zoom H4 - I love mine, very practical, no matter whether used as a mulit-tracker, live recorder (it has 2 very good on-board mics), or headphone practice amp (it has a couple of onboard amp models - which sound way better than eg. a VAmp2, effects, etc.).

Monfoodoo --

Tascam, Zoom, Roland (Boss) -- at that price range, they're going to be very similar, and all will be pretty good.

I'm not that excited about recording to Compact Flash cards, like the model you mention; I prefer a hard drive. Then again, a hard drive is more delicate...

The biggest thing to research, IMO, is how to get your songs OFF of the recorder, and on to a computer. You'll want that so you can do editing, make CDs, etc. Ideally, the recorder will connect to the computer via USB, and it will let you bring your work over as separate ".WAV" files.

If it's strictly "home use," has your friend thought about just recording on a laptop or desktop computer?

Monfoodoo --

Tascam, Zoom, Roland (Boss) -- at that price range, they're going to be very similar, and all will be pretty good.

I'm not that excited about recording to Compact Flash cards, like the model you mention; I prefer a hard drive. Then again, a hard drive is more delicate...

The biggest thing to research, IMO, is how to get your songs OFF of the recorder, and on to a computer. You'll want that so you can do editing, make CDs, etc. Ideally, the recorder will connect to the computer via USB, and it will let you bring your work over as separate ".WAV" files.

If it's strictly "home use," has your friend thought about just recording on a laptop or desktop computer?


This is a real good post.
I highly doubt for under 300 clams you'll end up with a unit with cd burner or hard drive unless it's a second hand machine so researching how to get the media in a useable form is really important.

I've been using a Zoom MRS 8 with alot of success and has been a great purchase. SD card with no usb so it's a a matter of putting it into a card reader on my pc, downloading a software utility from zoom that converts the MRS 8 files into mp3 or wav files.

For 300 and under I don't think there really is a unit that would shine head over heels above another and really the choices are pretty limited to probably half a dozen models.

if he is not going to be moving it around i,d say a harddrive would be the way to go or to an external.Then off to pc.