Starting to make home recording with my children (and maybe more...)

[Rodge]

Hi there!

I am glad that I found this forum. Seems to be good mood here also for newbies like me...

Well, I recently startet building up my home studio to make recordings with my children singing and playing piano. I have two girls, 4 and 8 yrs, and if they sing, its sounds like angels were singing
There's little technical help needed to adjust the timing and pitch, and I am glad that I had chosen Cubase from the beginning, because the recent Update to Version 5 fits in perfectly for me with it's new VariAudio feature.

I wonder if others are using this VariAudio too, because there are some problems involved with it, which I would like to discuss.
And is it true, that Melody has this functionality for years, as I read somewhere in a forum?

But since this is my introductory post, let me introduce my equipment too, as it has grown over the last two month since I started my recording intentions. Well, my PC ranch startet to grow much earlier, so I start with these:
- Main recording machine
* C2Duo 3GHz FSB1333
* 8 Gigs DDR2-800 CL4
* 4x Samsung 250GB RAID0 (on Intel ICH9R)
* ATI 3650 GS
* Vista64/Cubase5/Halion3.3/NI Kontakt3/NI Core2 with HW-Controller/Reason4
*** STATUS: Currently out of order, broken mainboard

- Replacement machine
* C2Duo 2.1GHz FSB1333
* 2 Gigs DDR2-533 CL5
* ATI 2xxx
* 1x Seagate STxxx 320GB + 1x WD 5000ABYS 500GB both SATA-II
* Mac OSX Leopard running Chamaeleon EFI emulation
* OSX10.5.6/Cubase5/Halion3/NI Kontakt3/NI Core2/Reason4
*** STATUS: Running

- Laptop
* Thinpad T500 2.4GHz/3GB 1066, 320/7200
* Vista32/Cubase5/Halion3/NI Kontakt3/NI Core2/Reason4
*** STATUS: Running (without a 2nd Steinberg dongle)

- Mixing: Yamaha MG102C
- Midi KB: CME MKEY-V2 / Roland JX-1
- Audio I/O: EMU 0404 USB (Mac/PC), Soundblaster X-Fi (PC), Audigy NX2 (Mac/PC)
- using ASIO4ALL on Vista64 with total (on ASIO): 24 Analog-Outputs, 12 Analog-Inputs, 2 Hi/Z with Preamp XLR, 6 Mic-Inputs (together with onboard HD-Codec), 8x Digital-IO (Chinch/SP-DIF), (Software-)Latency: 2ms
- Mics: MB3K, DM-20SL2
- Monitors: 2 very old unknown kenwood speakers on a kenwood tube amplifier (they just sound great!), Logitech Z-5500, 5.1 THX
- Displays: HP-2025 20", hp w2207h 22", 15" 1680x1050 on laptop


Well, about the Soundblaster X-Fi, I have to say something. Wanting to have a great Soundcard about a year ago, I startet comparing consumer soundcard products. After a while I opted for the X-Fi Champion from Creative. Having never heard of ASIO-drivers, Latency nor S/N-Ratios at that time, I had not much other ideas (too bad)
Nevertheless, as you might feel, I am not quite happy all the time with the X-Fi, although it's ASIO-driver is working fine for 5.1 Surround output from Cubase.
Second, I lost my main machine's mainboard 3 weeks ago. Today getting a message from the dealer stating "unknown delivery time" for my replacement board.... Hughff!
That time I remembered my old Hackintosh standing below the table. Giving it a try and then started to have a great feeling while realizing that all of my recently bought software (Reason4, Kontakt3, Halion3, Cubase5) is running fine on Macintosh too

Now I am deep in the learning curve of Kontakt and Reason and Cubase at the moment. But at least I was able to record one small song with my 4yrs girl with some orchestral (VST) accompaniment, which sounds like having trained her since birth for singing in a perfect timing


Ok, finally, let me say a **** nice-to-be-here to all of you reading this post, and I hope to get some thoughts or hints about my equipement and, if I should finally get the new mainboard for my main machine once, to learn improvements about the "real work", recording, editing, producing...

Thanks.