Dawless Recording?

The Lounge Other Gear
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My old laptop is on its last legs. I can barely get iTunes to run properly.

One day I’d love to get one of those Allen & Heath Qu series mixers but those are 1k plus.

Curious what devices do you guys use for recording final songs without using a daw.

I run all my gear into a mixer. Mixer into an sp-555 (love the compressor on this guy) and then the sp into my analog heat.

So really I’d only need stereo inputs. Would prefer something with maybe an sd card or something to drag and drop into my computer.

Suggestions?

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I know I can go look at reviews and what not. But I’d like to hear some personal experiences. I really liked using old cassette 4 tracks. I’d just need another device afterwards to get it to my computer.

And at the end of the day it needs to go there for playback and eventual release. Maybe a light mix/“master”.

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Been really liking my zoom h5.

Other than that - a 1/4" reel machine WITH DBX (the noise reduction is an absolute necessity), or a cassette tape if that’s all I got.

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There’s surprisingly more reel to reel’s in my area on Craigslist and offer up than multitracks but I’m assuming the maintenance on them is a pain the ass right?

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Another zoom fan here. Plus, if you get a hand-held unit, you can endlessly, mercilessly sample the real world as well as direct audio.

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Less so the maintenance than just finding tape.

Plus yes once you find it, you really need to clean the residue off the heads every time you use it.

But with the dbx on, its a great way to just lay down stereo mixes fast.

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I agree with the search forum for many many many solutions…
myself i prefer recording video+audio straight into an old secondhand zoom q3hd… you get semi-nice video with good enough for most people audio… downside is… you need a computer to edit the files after… as in truncating and whatnot… which takes ages on a “crap computer” audio is allot more forgiving with cpu then audio… 1 step above a separate recorder in my book would be a computer running obs… but darnit you need really good computer as soon as you use a fancy trick on your inputs… so thats not really an option for you…

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Zoom Recorder is definitely one handy option. There’s also the new MixPre Series from Sound Machines. The MixPre-3M looks like it could be a fit. A bit pricy, but you get a lot of bang for the buck. It’s something I’ll take a long look at when my laptop finally kicks the bucket (early '11 macbook pro).

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