Dear Lazywebs… I Need an Answer

This goes out to all recording artists of any sort who may have some info on this topic:

Normally, when you record, you have a bunch of analogue mics that all get shoved into a mixer. That mixer then gets fed into a computer (usually via Firewire) for direct-to-disk recording.

With the advent of USB mics, a physical mixer is no longer necessary, and I can record directly to the disk via USB. What happens when I want to record several people using several USB mics? Does the OS or mixing software differentiate between all the mics? Is it a limitation that I can only have 1 USB mic (that would suck)? Do they make physical mixers that have USB ins?

Ideally, I'd like to record the mics as separate tracks, then bounce them to a stereo mix, but I suppose I can go ghetto and just deal with a single pre-mixed vocal track. This just makes editing more difficult.


* Mind you, this is for podcasting, so latency isn't *super* critical, although I may just give it up, and go XLR if I have to. Why can't everything be low latency isochronous Firewire?!?!

Dear Lazywebs… I Need an Answer

This goes out to all recording artists of any sort who may have some info on this topic:

Normally, when you record, you have a bunch of analogue mics that all get shoved into a mixer. That mixer then gets fed into a computer (usually via Firewire) for direct-to-disk recording.

With the advent of USB mics, a physical mixer is no longer necessary, and I can record directly to the disk via USB. What happens when I want to record several people using several USB mics? Does the OS or mixing software differentiate between all the mics? Is it a limitation that I can only have 1 USB mic (that would suck)? Do they make physical mixers that have USB ins?

Ideally, I'd like to record the mics as separate tracks, then bounce them to a stereo mix, but I suppose I can go ghetto and just deal with a single pre-mixed vocal track. This just makes editing more difficult.


* Mind you, this is for podcasting, so latency isn't *super* critical, although I may just give it up, and go XLR if I have to. Why can't everything be low latency isochronous Firewire?!?!