Long term equitment goals

[onlydude]

Hey guys I am wondering what would be some studio equitment worth saving up for and getting to help me with my beats. Post anything because I plan on saving some of my income to but new equitment.

[chalin27]

What you got right now?

[onlydude]

Oops, I guess that would be helpful I have fruity loops, cakewalk home studio 2004, shure sm 58, shure sm 57, a yamaha keyboard (nothing special just one with keys and effects), and an Alesis sr-16. And a bass guitar and a regular guitar :P

[chalin27]

Well seeing that you have Fruity loops you must like to use samples. One thing that would work well with your CPU and Cakewalk sequencer would be a MPC. If your just making a beats an MPC would allow you to take your music to any studio for tracking. It's does sequencing and you can easily sync it up to any software or to most recording equipment thru midi. There are plent MPC's out there just have to find the one that meets your needs getting one with at least 8 out puts. I dont know the ins and outs of the MPC because I dont have one myself. the only reason I dont have one is I dont have the need to go to a studio. I do all my tracking of beats and vocals at home.

Now if your gonna track vocals as well as beats you could still use cakewalk home studio but you would be limited to only 8 audio tracks. I would think about upgrading to Sonar maybe. Also now you are getting into the home studio realm pretty deep. So you will have to get some decent monitor to monitor your mixes. Getting a good sound card would be need too to track your vocals. You will have to invest into pre amp as well as a condensor Mic to get vocals to your Sound card. This is if your gonna track vocals at home. The last thing I would get is a CD recorder not the Computer kind. The kind that records in realtime this will give you some good mixes on mix down. When I first started using Homestudio I allways felt my mixes sounded better before I bounced them to wav. So I bought a CD recorder and hadnt had that issue since. I got a consumer because I dont master my mixes to CD I just mix down to it. There are some cheap ones you can buy.

On a side note there are plenty of keyboard sequencers that are great out there if you like to play instrutments as well as sample them then there's the triton LE. Roland and Yamaha have simlar keyboards in the same price range as the LE.

Now if you want to know what the future is I would invest in a MAC. Get the mac and Logic, a Protools Interface with protools LE and you will have everything you need to create professional stuff. I'm a Music Media major at NSU (Norfolk St) and that's what we have in our labs man the G5's come with a powerful program called Garageband standard. It is Like Fruityloops and acid put together it's the little brother of Logic which has capabilities that rivals reason. We also have the Digi 002's and protools running on those things. The Mac got the media market on lock. When I get the money that's where I'm investing it. These are just some suggestions hope they help.

[Hi_D_Ho_Man]

I would say get studio monitors and maybe a dope sound module Motif ES rack is $1100 XV2020 is $600.If you are pretty good with Home Studio maybe upgrade to Sonar I don't don't know how similar they are to each other..

[SPINSTERWUN]

Onlydude. What's your budget?

Also.... before you buy let me know what you want. I have a working relationship with some of the manufacturers and distributors.

[onlydude]

Thanks for letting me know man. THe budget isnt really an issue because these are "long term" equitment goals and I would be saving up and buying stuff over a period of time

[R-J-X]

My advice is to put in as much money, if not more towards high quality cables and converters. Don't skimp when it comes time for and EQ, compressor, effects, etc. People spend lots of money on workstations, samplers, synths and drum machines cause they love the sounds they can get from them, yet they skimp on the most important elements of a studio. High quality rack gear is what takes you're average sounds and turns them into something fantastic! This is something that you won't know until you experience it for urself. Its like be a kid and your parents are telling you how its gonna be when ur older and the kid is like , yeah right, whatever. The kid won't understand the the grown ups were saying until the kid turns into an adult.

By all means get gear and be happy with it, and most importantly, MAKE MUSIC and have FUN. But once you know what you're doing in the studio, make sure you put just as much time, effort, and money into selecting the proper pro audio equipment.

Remember this...
Instead of getting whatever you can afford right now with the budget you have, its better to save and take longer to get the high quality gear. Might take a lot longer, but good things come to those who wait hehe

[onlydude]

Originally Posted by SPINSTERWUN

Onlydude. What's your budget?

Also.... before you buy let me know what you want. I have a working relationship with some of the manufacturers and distributors.

Who do you have a relationship with? I am looking into a lot of different things at this point because I have a medium size money amount (for me at least which is probably nothing compared to anyone else. Right now I am trying to decide if I should get a fw-1082 and build off of that or get an mpc-1000 to work midi and work off of my mixer that I have now which is a spirit notepad (which i use to hook up my drum machine, mics, guitars via direct boxes and keyboards. I bought it for 200$ but now I have seen the value of it drop dramitacally (ebay lol). I am still learning a lot about equitment (considering I do not have much income to spend on a studio) and i started building it with 50$ behringer mixer, a shure sm 57 (that i used for vocals, I now have a sm58 that I use). I love music and I love looking at equitment and I think you guys are the best to go to for help because some of you have been doing this thing for years. I know you guys will steer me in the right direction.

I have about 600$ but i can make things stretch and find some extra money under the couch .

A few questions...

I have a windows xp computer and if I get the fw-1082, will I be able to use the firewire capabliltites? (I experience a slight latency in my vocals etc when running through my mixer to my audio in)

With MIDI what cable do I need, where do I hook my devices up, and can I work with MIDI on Fruity loops or Cakewalk at all? If so what things will I be able to do?

Thank you so much for your patience and willingness to help, I am sorry if this seems like spam cus theres another person with a thread called 500-600 but hes starting a new studio, im expanding and I started my thread first

[onlydude]

If there is any equitment that you guys recommend that I should look into, please tell me because I am still very much open to new suggestions.