Multitrack recorders or Macbook with DAW ?

[CA$H FLOW]

So I've given myself a budget of about $1000 give or take a couple hundred towards some recording gear. Basically what I want to do is record some instrumental jazz with my electric guitar, and the bass that I have.
I currently own a Audio Technica AT2020 condensor mic, an ART tube preamp for it, and have a Tech21 amp that has a great direct out feature which should work fairly well for doing this.
What I'm wondering is whether I should get one of those Boss or Zoom digital multitrack recorders which are like $400-$600 or splurge the extra cash and get a mac book and one of those cheap protools starter kits with the M-box. I'm kind of thinking that if I go with the multitrack recorder I can use the extra cash for a couple of extra mics(ribbon mic or something nice).
Thanks in advance for any advice or guidance given here.

 

[sergiodeblanc]

MacBook.

 

[Fran Guidry]

A cheap PC, decent interface, and REAPER.

Fran

 

[loudboy]

DAW, no reason on earth for a standalone in 2012.

 

[Blix]

No reason to spend cash on a multitrack recorder, they are obsolete.
Any PC or Mac does the job.
And Reaper rocks.

 

[KungFuLio]

DAW

 

[AudioEcstasy]

What Fran Guidry said! Don't be a mislead sheep like Apple wants. Research your investment, there are a plethora of more powerful machines for less on the PC side, but if it's down to the choices in the title a Mac DAW will be the better choice.

 

[justnick]

Frankly I'd go with a Mac and GarageBand. Intuitive, powerful as hell, and the stock virtual instruments and plug-ins sound great.

Have a look at the Roland Quad or Octa Capture interfaces. Amazing price-to-performance ratio. Generally I'd steer clear of Pro-Tools unless you particularly need to learn the interface because you'll be working on rigs/in studios where it's the platform.

I also love Reaper which works great on PC or Mac. It's my main DAW these days.

But GarageBand is way underrated. You can cut great albums with it and it's very easy to learn.



n

 

[Digitalman]

Absolutely MacBook and GarageBand. Super easy!

 

[TAVD]

Go PC because quite frankly, you don't have the budget. The cheapest MB Air is $1k and you still need a host of other goodies before you can record anything. Besides, you don't want to be recording on an 11" display. A $400 Intel notebook, $200 USB interface and $60 Reaper is more than adequate for what you want to do.

 

[Modulator]

Get a refurbished Mac and it will be under $1000 for the computer. but the desktop imac with a bigger screen would be better. All notebook screens are a bit small for editting and having a plugin window or two open. I use my MBP with a 24" screen 99% of the time, might as well be a desktop...

 

[CA$H FLOW]

So I splurged today and bought a M-Audio C600 audio interface(comes with Protools SE), M-audio 49 key midi controller, and a pair of $70 Audiotechnica headphones. I'm also going to get a Seagate 1TB 7200rpm external hard drive as well.
So using my laptop that has 4GB of ram I think I'll do just fine for recording 1-2 tracks at a time.

 

[Fran Guidry]

Your original info omitted the use of MIDI, which strongly implies the use of VSTi sources, which take a lot more resources than audio recording.

And I would expect PTSE to require a lot more horsepower than REAPER.

Fran

 

[CA$H FLOW]

Yeah I when I first started this thread I was not thinking about midi, but ultimately I will enjoy being able to use it. After doing some research on Protools SE, I think I'll give that Reaper program a try as well(free trial or whatever), to find which one works best for me.

 

[KrisHayes]

Standalone's are completely obsolete at this point. Editing capabilities on them are near impossible compared to what you can do on a computer. If you have a Macbook, GarageBand is on there, it's light years ahead of any standalone unit. Best of luck with it!