Looking for a recording/mixing workstation

Question

There's thousands of recorders, mixers, DAW, multitracks (digital or analogical), interfaces, XLR... I am confused as a newcomer to the field. I see too much buttons and stuff on this gisms. I am looking for something targeted to a medium/high-end home recording musician that does not want to become an audio engineer. So my ideal device is a single piece of hardware such as:

• It contains an excelent build-in microphone where you can record voices, acoustic guitars or even drums (no necessarily portable). Ideally with a good warmth analog sound.
• It allows to connect external microphones, but above all, the plug of an instrument to record from line-in
• It stores everything in an sd card or local hard disk, at high quality WAV/mp3
• It possibly has effects to add to this tracks (reverb, distorsion, flanger)
• It has usual audio input functions limiting, compression.., preferrably in the analog domain, on the internal recorders
• You can listen to the tracks because it has an audio jack
• It helps with multitrack recording in two ways:
  • You can listen to any previous recording while record a new track
  • The same but allowing that the recording is an on-the-fly mix of the track you are listeneing to and the input of what you are recording (overdubbing?)
• It has a supporting metronome and tuning functions
• It provides an easy way to re-record a part of a track by selecting a marker and rerecording
• It provides a way to selectively playback some tracks altogehter or merge them in a new file
• I might be interested on having a physical column/monitor for each of this previously selected tracks to play with thousand buttons and tunnings individually, like an analog mixer, to see the effect of combining them
• A built-in speaker would be very useful for this
• It may be big, expensive or not portable
• It will have a nice screen, possibly tactile, for manipulating all of this. If the screen has some kind of firmware that is a DAW like nuendo/pro tools, in itself, I'm in the sky.

Does this idreamy integrated home studio exist?

Answer 1

You could do most of that list with an iPad & a USB/Lightning interface, these days... or any computer.

GearRank - The Best iPad Audio Interfaces has a list of current offerings, with reviews.

There is also software, free & paid, for recording. Just as an example, see http://www.ikmultimedia.com & look at the drop-menu links for Products > Interfaces & Products > Apps.

The things in your list most difficult to achieve might be -

• It contains an excelent build-in microphone where you can record voices, acoustic guitars or even drums (no necessarily portable). Ideally with a good warmth analog sound.

Unlikely with any built-in mic. They're meant for phone calls & Skype, not high quality field recording.

• It has usual audio input functions limiting, compression.., preferrably in the analog domain, on the internal recorders

In the analog domain - not without spending several hundreds or even thousands pounds/dollars/euros. This stuff is so easy to model these days it's not worth it unless you are talking studio grade right the way through.

• A built-in speaker would be very useful for this

Same as the mic, the speakers are not of sufficient quality.

• It may be big, expensive or not portable

That would be exactly the same set of recommendations, but you start with the most powerful desktop computer you can afford.