Advice on music equipment purchase

[james_B]

Hello

Glad to have found your forum. I'm a budding amateur musician looking to buy some basic kit to achieve what I'm trying to do. I'm going to be going to practice rooms to play piano and sing. I want to record voice onto computer, and will want to hear myself sing through headphones. I'll also want to listen to a backing track whilst singing and recording voice. I'm not bothered about recording piano. I'll do that later from home via a digital piano.

I'm thinking what I need to do this is a simple two way USB external premix table with a microphone connection. These are about $50. I have Adobe Audition on a laptop. Will what I'm suggesting work? To feed my singing and backing track onto the laptop to record (record voice - no need to record backing track), at the same feeding the singing and backing track into my headphones or speakers? Is an external sound card better or a little 2 or 4 way USB mixing table?

Sorry if this seems like a basic question. I studied audio engineering as an undergrad but it's been a long time since I've done any of this. I don't want to waste money on equipment which won't do the job.

Thanks.

 

[stehno]

Hi, James. Your request is a bit out of scope for me but perhaps I can help in a small way. Among other things it seems you're looking for a relatively straighforward efficient way to record yourself digitally so you can listen back later and perhaps use some software for mixing, etc.

For recording your signing, I'd like to suggest a small stereo condenser mic like the Shure MV88. I know nothing about recording mic's etc except that I purchased an MV88 a few years ago for capturing some in-room recordings and I've no real complaint, especially for its size. It also plugs straight into my iPhone which I place on a tri-pod.

If this interests you, I think there are some nice video examples on Shure's mv88 webpage that could give you a pretty good idea of the mic's capabilities / sound quality. I've also provided a demo here of what I use it for.

Anyway, hope this helps a bit.