recording equipment

I have a Mac. I play acoustic and sing. I'm used to using software like Sonar and Garage Band. They work fine for mixing and manipulating, but I'm having trouble capturing the sound to my liking.

I've used the condenser mic that came with the Sonar program and the built-in mic in the Mac i've got, but using those equates to way too much background static/hiss and levels peaking. When I try to counter that by turning down the levels, it's too quiet and warped.

I love the recording quality found in "Tribute To" by Jim James from My Morning Jacket and "The Mourning, The Silver, The Bell" by Seth Avett. It's simple sound, but it's clear and balanced. What kind of recording equipment would I need to reproduce a similar sound?

Many thanks.

It all depends on how much money you want to put into it. Luckily for you, recording just acoustic and vocals is one of the easier things to record and takes less gear than recording a drum set for instance.

I recommend these things in order to have the right gear to be able to get pro quality recordings. Don't forget, once you have the gear you also need to learn how to use it, to get where you want to be sound-wise.

- Two small diaphragm condensor microphones. you can use these to stereo mic the acoustic guitar

- One microphone that sounds good on your voice. A large diaphragm condensor is often used. You can get some pretty good sounding ones for a decent price.

- A good quality sound interface into your computer. Something like the Apogee Duet will give you top quality conversion. You will only be able to record two channels at a time though. www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Duet/ RME has a new two channel device that is nice too.

- Finally, you could use two channels of mic preamp. There are some pretty good preamps you can get that are a few hundred.

Anyway, I guess the real question is what your budget looks like and how serious you are about recording.