PC based A/D hard disc recording

[At Home]

I'm making the transition fron doing In-Studio voice-overs to doing them from home and I could use all the advise I can get.

So far I'm starting with a;

PC w/Pentium II 400 MHz, Intel Chipset, 30 GB HD & 256 MB RAM.

I've got an AT 3035 Condenser Mic and Cool Edit 200 already.

Thought I'd get a HHB FatMan Radius 5 for a pre-amp w/compression, an Echo Mia Sound Card, then use CompressorX plug-in compression software before burning to CD-R.

I'm trying to do this as "Clean and Inexpensively as possible". I also don't know whether USB interface is better or S/PDIF?

Thanks for your wisdom.

[Bob]

the Radius50 is a great, inexpensive pre/compressor. I have one myself. I'd suggest one of the Aardvark audio cards. it'll work great with Cool Edit, comes with Cakewalk, and probably has the best clock of any of the PC cards. What kind of monitors are you using??

[Alexander]

I also recommend an Aardvark card. They are known for their low jitter clock which really helps your stereo imaging. Also the Aardvarks have really nice shielding on the PCI card that you put in your computer which protects the converters from all the electro magnetic and radio frequency interference within the computer that can cause jitter which collapses your stereo imaging. They actually come with a nice on screen patchbay and even some DSP effects for monitoring without latency while recording.

[xxFT13xx]

usb is much faster...but then again firewire is faster than usb..

-Sin
http://zwap.to/ft13

[duslow]

I own the Aardvark Q10 and I highly recommend it. The 8 mic preamps (4 of which have phantom power) are very clean. It also has two Lo-Z/Hi-Z switchable inputs (7 & 8) that are great for plugging guitar and bass instruments directly in.

The other thing I really like about it is that it has 4 analog effects inserts that are inserted in the analog stage of the Q10 and can be mixed in and digitally recorded to any of the tracks. It also has direct, no latency analog monitoring as well which is a crutial, cpu saving feature.

The only downside of the Q10 at this moment is that is only supports 24/48, but the upside is the hardware is capable of doing 24/96 and Aardvark is promising new drivers. Some say, and I tend to agree, that 24/96 is overkill anyway, not to mention the complete cpu and disk i/o hog.

If you do any amount of live recording, and you don't want to spend a fortune for good quality, the Aardvark Q10 certainly fits the bill.