Questions on a setup for a band

[zervun]

I'm currently in a alternative band and we are embarking on our first recording album and are doing all the recording ourselves and I need some advice on the recording setup. Here is the computer I am using for the setup. I've spent about 3 months saving and building this bad boy. I went for ultimate silence and achieved it so this can be our main recorder siting right in the room with everything. It's absolutely silent.

Epox 4bda Motherboard
p4 1.6a Costa Rica@2.4ghz/1.7v
512mb Samsung pc2700@2.9v
1x seagate barracuda IV 80gig 7200rpm ATA100
1x Maxtor Liquid Bearing 20gig 7200rpm ATA133
TDK 32x10x40x CDRW
Acer 50x CD
Watercooling, Dangerden Maze3, eheim 1250
Camry Heatercore w/ tygon R-3603 1/2" chemical tubing
4x L1A Panaflo hydrosleeve w/fanbus
2x Sanyo 120mm low noise ball bearing fans w/fanbus
Geforce TI4400@315/660
Chieftech antec 1030b clone case w/420watt PS
Pax Mate sound reduction mat & accoustical Foam
21" Conerstone monitor
win XP pro

Now that I've got the fat machine, I'm having problems understanding what I need to record our setup. Currently we have.

1 Guitarist w/ effects pedal & Marshal amp
1 Basist w/ Crate amp
PA and 3 mics connected (we all sing)
Drum kit with everything miced (about 8 mics)

I was considering getting an M-Audio audiophile 24/96 or a Echo Mia and then running through a mixing board but I'm not sure that that would be the best setup. The M-Audio and Mia only have a few inputs on them I believe, so things would have to go through the mixing board I'm assuming. (I'm new to recording audio). I will be using Cubase VST. What I would really like to do is possibly run the bass, guitar, and all 3 mics to the sound card on a different channel each and then posibly mic all the drums through a mixing board and then send that to the soundcard. This way we could either record all at once, or each seperately without changing anything.

Now as I said I'm kinda new to recording computer music, and am wondering if this would be a good setup and possible equipment that would allow me to do this. From what I understand, because the audiophile or Mia only have 2 inputs or whatnot, if I wanted to record the whole band at once, then I'd have to go through a mixing board and everyone would be recorded together. I'd like to have every instrament and vocals on a different channel so that we could record all of us together at once and then lets say if my singing sounded like crap but everyone was perfect, I could just rerecord my channel. Are there any resonably priced 6 input soundcards? and what type of inputs would I be looking for on these?

Would appreciate any advice.

[Stoned Zim]

With that computer you should certainly be able to record a lot of tracks simultaneously, if you want.

First off, what do you want to do with your recording? Two track recording off your mixer will do a decent job if you want to create disks to listen to how your band is doing at rehearsal and live, and could make a half decent recording.

At the other end of the spectrum, you'd want to go with all input sources tracked at once. That's one track for each drum mic, 3 for your vocals, 1 each for bass (usually through a DI box, but some mics could pick it up from the amp) and guitar (usually a mic on the amp).

To do this well, the instruments must be isolated from each other. The bass is no problem if it's DI. The drums need to go into their own room, and if you're drummer sings that's going to be a problem that can only really be solved by overlaying the vocals afterwards (although you can record scratch vocals at the beginning so that everyone in the band knows where they are in the song). You can put the guitar amp in a separate room for isolation.

Then of course, to play together, everyone has to use headphones.

All this means that your mixer has to have outputs for each channel, and you need 12-16 tracks of input, and a headphone distribution amplifier.

You can also use less tracks (say all the drums together on one stereo pair), but have less flexibility in the mixing. You can also record the instruments consecutively which require less tracks but will take more time.

The little studio my band just recorded in had 3 MOTU 2408 for up to 24 tracks in.