Recomendations On Purchases For Sound Engineering Options

[liquidh2o]

I've been spending the last couple months holding out on buying a mac with the rumors of the new g4's, so as soon as they were announced i purchased the dual 1ghz model(and went 3rd party w/ a 1.5gb ram kit).

My main reason for buying this mac is to start learning sound engineering. In short, i'm looking to make/edit music. As far as instruments go, the only one involved would be a keyboard(i'm taking piano lessons). I'm looking to get into more of the Nine Inch Nails, fatboy slim type of music, but i'm unsure as to what software/hardware i should buy to get started out. Also any literature on making this type of music would be helpful.

So this leads me to here, and hopefully some of you can help me out. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[Levon River]

You sort of just asked, "How long is a string?"

Here's my short list for you, though:

1. Multitimbral MIDI keyboard with good sounds.
2. Audio interface to computer (e.g. Edirol UA series, Tascam US-224 or US-428, MOTU 828 or 896, Event EZBus, etc.). There is a proliferation of them that use USB, firewire has more bandwidth but is more expensive. There are also some that are PCI cards, but the trend now seems to be very solidly toward USB and (hopefully more, cheaper, soon) firewire.
3. MIDI interface to computer (e.g. MOTU Fastlane and bigger, badder units, MIDIMan interfaces, etc.). Note that some of the audio interfaces (Tascam's, the EZBus, e.g.) also have MIDI interfaces built in. Others don't. Research, research, research. You'll have to see what suits your needs and your bank account. If you only have one or two MIDI units, the Fastlane is fine, or the built-ins on some of the audio interfaces.
4. Your central software sequencer/audio tracker/DAW/whateveryoucallit. The recent poll lists the most popular: Logic Audio (several flavors), MOTU Digital Performer, Cubase (several flavors), ProTools (several flavors). You need something that records and plays back both audio and MIDI. All of them have pretty steep learning curves, which can be fun, but also motivation for tearing out large clumps of hair--your own or the unfortunate person standing closest to you. ProTools has a FREE version, but so does the local pusher: their philosophy is to suck you into their way of doing things, then stick you for one of their $10,000+ proprietary hardware/software "solutions." (It is what many professional studios use, but more than a few people think ProTools sucks when it comes to handling MIDI. YMMV.) Although all of these programs set out to do essentially the same thing, they all have different routes to getting there. It's going to be a very personal decision as far as which on "feels" right to you, and the more people you ask, the more confused you're going to get, because it's a *very* opinionated area. Get demos of as many as you can and test drive them.

There. That should get you into enough trouble for now.

Don't worry: you'll have plenty more questions later...

[OptikSynth]

Noooo don't fall into that trap... seriously, start with the esentials. last year i got a g4 laptop, usb quattro (input device), reason 1.0, digital performer 3.0, peak, and a couple other things like mic's and a cheap mixer. BIG mistake. i'd start with a G4, Pro Tools free, a cheap 4-input card, and maybe a sample cd (or even for that, get a couple issues of "computer music" (www.computermusic.co.uk). then you've got a foundation to build on, or if later you find out you want to go a certian direction, you havn't wasted money so you can "start over" if you need to.

i found out with my gear, i could have got a native instraments synth and battery instead of reason, and got digital performer's midi-free version (audio desk or whatever it's called) instead of DP3 and had money left over. but it's hard to pick what you want when you havn't used something else

oh and one more thing... if you wanna go the NIN route, get a MINIDISC player that records. a sampler's best friend