Upgrade Gear Advice, Gear Advice Options

[MASNYDER]

Okay...here is your chance pass on the wisdom so painfully earned to the newbie recording artist who will really listen. Here's the deal: I want to make a big investment in gear to upgrade my pitiful mbox protools setup to a Digi 002 portable mini studio. I have found a couple of bands that like the work I have done and have committed to doing projects with me pending my upgrade. What follows is the tentative list of gear that I plan to buy. I am open to any suggestions and my budget is around $8500 and the bands I plan to work with are hard rock outfits.

Tentative Gear List:

Computer:

Dual Mac G5: $3600

Recording Rack Gear:

Digi 002 USD. Rack: $1,200
Focusrite OctoPre LE 8-Channel Microphone Preamp $600
Furman Power Conditioner: $50
6 Space Rack Case: $100

Microphones:

1 Sennheiser E609 Silver Dynamic Guitar Mic: $110
4 Shure SM57s: $90
AKG D112 Large Diaphragm Microphone $200
MXL 993 Condenser Mics Stereo Pair: $180
MXL 990/993 Studio Package $130

Misc. Hardware and Cable:

10 boom mic stands: $100
2 low profile mic stands: $25 each
4 AKG M 70 Headphones $30
10 xlr cables: $50
Behringer B2031A Truth Active Monitors $340

Plug ins:

ATR1 Pitch corrector: $320
Factory Plug in Bundle: $350


Total: $7760.00 thus far

Does anyone you see any holes, redundancies, or unnecessary gear? Any suggestions at all would be appreciated.

Andy

[dangt]

Looks like a comprehensive list of gear.

I would spend more on monitors. If you plan to mix accurately then get good ones. if not, and you only need to hear your signals while recording then the beringer monitors will do.

Also, If you want your band to hear playback through headphones, look at getting a headphone amp or splitter. beringer make 4 channel headphone amp decent enough. take your main stereo out off 002 into it. set your latency to low latency monitoring.

another way to save money is to hire a set of mic's and stand's from and audio outlet. But still buy a few to have as extras.

good luck

Dangt

[FastEddy]

Okay... I want to make a big investment in gear ... to a Digi 002 portable mini studio. I have found a couple of bands that like the work I have done and have committed ... I am open to any suggestions and my budget is around $8500 and the bands I plan to work with are hard rock outfits.

Computer: Dual Mac G5: $3600 [Overkill ? see below]

Recording Rack Gear:

Digi 002 USD. Rack: $1,200
Focusrite OctoPre LE 8-Channel Microphone Preamp $600 [?? see below]
Furman Power Conditioner: $50 [get more plug strips with surge protectors for the studio area.]
6 Space Rack Case: $100 [Cool! ... where did you find this? New? I need several myself.]

Microphones:

1 Sennheiser E609 Silver Dynamic Guitar Mic: $110
4 Shure SM57s: $90
AKG D112 Large Diaphragm Microphone $200
MXL 993 Condenser Mics Stereo Pair: $180
MXL 990/993 Studio Package $130
.....
Total: $7760.00 thus far
Does anyone you see any holes, redundancies, or unnecessary gear? Any suggestions at all would be appreciated.

I never understood the logic of a high end computer for audio. IMOP, you would do just as well with a couple of Apple Mini-Macs, one as main and the other as backup, network 'em together. ... They have FireWire ports and USB, plus all the other ports on the Dual G5 ... this gives you extra funds for the important things, like a big screen monitor.

I would say that to really impress and show a significant improvement in sound recording quality, get vacuum tube preamps for the microphones ... no kidding, replace the OctoPre with vacuum tube preamps for the mics = IMOP.

IMOP: The most important items in any studio are: the microphones, the mixer and the monitor speakers. The computer can be as slow as 1 GigHtz and have as little as 1 Gigabyte of RAM, as long as the operating system supports the software you want to use and the hardware is expandable to FireWire I/O ... To really impress the band members and song writers, the size of the monitor is important ... Size matters with speaker monitors too.

Consider your customers, first: If they are impressed by sound quality, get good microphones and good speakers ... if they are technologically challenged (it can happen with musicians, but this does not make them inferior or dumb.), then big display monitors are important = a fact of life. I have never met a musician / song writer that was impressed by a CPU's clock rate or RAM size. I have met many who were impressed by a giant screen display and really great sounding playback equipment ...

This post has been edited by FastEddy: Thu 7 Aug 2008, 21:07