Father and Son need advice :-)

[RichardMarkRead]

Hi Just like to introduce myself. My name is Richard and I have a 16 year son Blane who wants to be a sound engineer. He is going to take Music Tech at Post 16 next year and we have started to build him a studio in our garage. The site is fascinating and we have enjoyed reading a lot of the articles but it has raised some questions. Can you help? After using the soundcard wizard we seem to have come up with that we need the M Audio Fast Track Ultra. My questions are probably really niave but none-the-less we need to start somewhere. So here goes 1. Does this sound card have on board sounds. Years ago I used to try recording myself on the PC and I had a Yamaha card that had sounds built in but things don't seem as simple these days. 2. Because he uses Cubase at school, I want to get Cubase at home. Will Cubase Studio 4 give us most of the functions we need for recording and midi? Many thanks

[Electriclight]

No, onboard sounds are not in the picture these days. I'll explain.

This audio interface is also a MIDI interface which allows it to record MIDI information (which is data about which notes, length of notes, etc.) from keyboards, drum machines and the like. Cubase software allows you to record, edit and play back the MIDI information. If you want to hear something, you must play back the MIDI information, in Cubase, through some type of software synthesizer or sampler. There are thousand of synthesizers, and thousands of them are free. Samplers play notes recorded from actual instruments played by professionals. So it is posssible to play some notes on your Yamaha keyboard, record them to Cubase, and then let a violinist from the London Symphony play them back. So you can see that you do not need or want onboard audio because there is so much available these days using MIDI.

Cubase Studio is a very powerful program that he will not outgrow for many, many years, if ever.

[RichardMarkRead]

Hey thanks, very quick reply. I think I understand what you are saying so I need to get a software sythesizer or sample. Can you point me in the direction of where I might get a free one to try Many thanks Richard

[Electriclight]

Cubase comes with some. This site will keep you in VSTi 's (VST instruments) for a long time:

KVR: Virtual Instruments, Virtual Effects, VST Plugins, Audio Units (AU), DirectX (DX), Universal Binary Compatibility - Audio Plugin News, Reviews and Community