Recording equipment help! (singer, guitarist, microphone, tracks, Guitars)

[1ib.]

I'm an amateur guitarist/pianist/singer in need, somebody help!

This is my issue, I had a pretty old PC with some ram issues, it would freeze for a couple seconds every 2 mins or so, I've always wanted to be able to use my PC for multitrack, so I downloaded this free software Audacity and tried what common sense told me, record, then put some headphones and record on top of it, and it should be synchronized, but for some reasons there was always this horrific delay and I figured it was because of the PC.

So I decided to invest on a new one (for other reasons too) and eventually bought it, runs super smoothly, well I decided to try again (now that there was no freezing), and so I downloaded Audacity again and still used the same mic, but the lag issues were still there! My PC couldn't be the problem anymore, and so upon research and talks with some clerks in a few music stores they told me the problem lays on the fact that I dont have an audio interface, and so I've decided to get one, upon more research I've gotten relatively nice comments on the POD Studio UX2 which fits my price range at the moment, and then get a condenser microphone (something I had never heard of before) to get nice sound quality.

What I want to do is multitrack at least 10 different sounds, namely different tones of voices, electric and acoustic guitars and keyboard without synchronization problems, the PC was something I truly needed but I just want to make sure my pick of the POD Studio UX2 makes sense for what I want, or if there's any other hardware that might be better for about the same price.

Also any condenser microphone of under $50 recommendation?

Thanks in advance!

[Yukon Cornelius]

You need pro tools 8 ...

[Yukon Cornelius]

le

[Yukon Cornelius]

Your problem sounds like latency. And you can adjust buffer sizes so on and so forth. Just make sure your pc is compatible before you buy. vista 32 or less is cool. Also you should get a mbox2, not the mini, you'd be wasting your time. I just got one and put together some stuff you can listen to it if you would like but im not telling you to for my gain, just as an idea of what you can make and or do. Check out pt 8 le it has everything you will need for a long time.

[1ib.]

Thanks for the info! I have just recently heard about the mbox2, a little pricier but supposedly much much better, I would have to wait a lot longer but apparently is a superior buy.

Can you explain a little bit more about the buffer sizes and adjusting anyways?

[jdm11b]

buffer size/latency is the time between you do something and when you actually hear the sound. If you set it too low and your soundcard can't handle it, the sound will be distorted or drop out. If you set it too high, they dela will make it difficult to record.

I had the Mbox 2 and it was easy to lower the buffer size when recording one instrument, then raise it back up when mixing/editing many tracks together. Having a fast computer isn't enough if your sound card has high latency- and most do.