Me and my band want ro do some home recording using my new PC. I know that I will have to upgrade the sound card and software, but dont realy know what to upgrade to, could someone advise as to what to upgrade to? and also is there any websites which would guide you through the process of home recording?

It would be a longer reply if i explained it myself and then theres some things that i would forget to tell you it would go on for ages.
Here are some links that have helped me and are still helping.
Hope this all helps
Enter PUK:

http://www.deja.com/home_ps.shtml (Deja News - Power Search)

Type in the box "Forum" rec.audio.pro or alt.music.4-track
Type in the box "Keywords" a keyword from your question

There you have it:

Probably a LOT of articles on the subject.

When this doesn't work, you can try the following URL's:


The FAQ from alt.music.4-track
http://homerecording.com/4trackfaq.html

The FAQ from rec.audio.pro
http://recordist.com/rap-faq/current

Microphone FAQ (very detailed)
http://homepages.packet.net/jgm/mic-faq.txt

A whole list of faqs, gear reviews etc
http://www.harmony-central.com/Recording/faqs.html

Tips for a beginner studio (and more, e.g. drum tuning and acoustics)
http://Indiemusicsite.com/ims/multi/index.html


Tips for a more serious studio
http://members.tripod.com/~Pullpud/tips.html


Recording guitar, amps etc
http://www.cybtrans.com/guitar/


A mastering house, explaining the how/what/why
http://www.digido.com/
http://www.drtmastering.com/

All about digital audio in general: more bits, dither, etc
http://promastering.com/pages/techtalk.html

Stereo microphone specs/techniques, the Decibel, Acoustical myths
http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~martin/audio.html

Microphone techniques: Studio recording, sound reinforcement (very good)
http://www.shure.com/booklets/techpubs.html

Compression, EQ, Grounding (getting rid of hum), (un)balanced wiring
http://www.trinitysoundcompany.com/techtalk.html

Another paper on grounding:
http://www.yamaha.com/ycaservice/tec...und/ground.htm

*new*
Balanced? Unbalanced? The most detailed explanation I have ever seen
http://www.dself.demon.co.uk/balanced.htm

Good explanation about different time stretch/pitch shift techniques:
http://www.prosoniq.com/time_pitch_faq.html


Do-it-yourself tech FAQ site: MIDI spec, Grounding (again), Electronics
This site is HUGE!! Check it out!!
http://www.hut.fi/Misc/Electronics/

Site about building a good designed studio room
http://www.mcs.net/~malcolm/

About headphones, including tips for mixing on phones (when you have to)
http://headwize.com/articles

A FAQ about surround sound, 5.1, DVD-audio etc
http://www.surroundassociates.com/fqmain.html

A very large Music Shareware/Freeware site (no warez):
http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/?ng

Lots of gear reviews (tape recorders!) (you can add your own review as well) http://industrial.org/gear.html

Wireless microphone licensing FAQ http://www.rdrop.com/users/billmc/

Some webzines:

http://www.prorec.com/ <- a must see http://homerecording.com/ <- this one too http://www.crmav.com/ Composing Recording Mastering AV CRM has a good software reverb comparison article and gear reviews, and guitar tuning articles

Finally some sites for musicians rather than recordists:

Copyrights, publication, labels, distribution, promotion http://www.ram.org/music/making/tips/DiY.html

Choosing the appropriate studio to record in... save money http://www.music-tech.com/Maximizeyourbudget.html

Chord finder site, guitar as well as keyboard http://www.ws64.com/

Guitar community: tabs, lessons, style hints (MIDI required) http://itp.nyu.edu/wholenote/default.asp

English rhyming dictionary http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/dougb/rhyme-doc.html

Synthesizer/Sampler sites, gear reviews etc http://www.synthzone.com http://www.samplenet.co.uk http://www.dancetech.com

All about recording via a PC (sound card reviews and so on) http://www.pcrecording.com

Tutorial on basics of electronic music (use of LFO's, filters etc) http://nmc.uoregon.edu/emi/emp_win/main.html (Shockwave plug-in required)

All about MIDI and how to use/program it http://www.borg.com/~jglatt/

Whatever you couldn't find in all the links above, you'll probably find here: Pro Audio Directory (massive link site) http://www.audiodirectory.demon.nl/

You want a Creative Audigy 2 Platinum. Nuff said. If you've got a mixer with double outputs, you could use your male/male cords (if possible, use DIGITAL, but I havent seen any mixers with it to hook it up to your Line-In of your PC. Some recording programs are dodgy. Suprisingly, I've always gotten great sound out of MUsicmatch Box's in built recorder.

or.. you want the creative audigy platinum 2 EX. all that the previous one has, except this one does 24bit / 96khz RECORDING!! now that's having industry's professional standard recording quality in your own home. of course, there's always a catch: with having the industry's professional standard recording quality, it comes with the industry's professional standard recording filesize too... recording at the studio-quality of 24bit, will mean the wav file is gonna be 3.5 times bigger than our everyday 16bit recording wav file.

a >500gb drivespace will pretty much cover one homemade album then. heh.

Not if you record straight to MP3...... at a high bit rate, there is no noticeable drop in sound quality at all.