from newb to newb...

[KonradG]

I've been recording (officially) for about a week and a half now that i received an mbox that came with a free mxl condenser (80 retail) with bomb factory plugins (joemeek eq and compressor, moogerfooger analog delay and some other stuff i dont use) all for 400 bucks.
all i have to say is, ive learned alot here, but the most important thing is to make due with what youre willing to spend. me, being a college student, cannot spend much, but i sat down and have rough drafts of two songs (www.myspace.com/conradgray), and i have to say (and this is only my opinion) that the stuff that ive heard come out of my speakers sounds better than alot of the stuff ive heard here.
In my opinion this is what makes a final product sound professional:
60%-The idea
30%-How well you play that idea
10%-Everything after that (the part i cant do yet)

its just my opinion, but i thought id see what other peoples views on this is.

[mikemorgan]

Save your money, quit college, you've figured it out. Gear Aquisition Syndrome is a disease with ties to other compulsive disorders. Only a man who is happy with what he already has can be truly happy.

[Blue Bear Sound]

That's kind of a strange split to me.... for one, the idea and the performance of "the idea" are really the same thing, because "the idea" on its own means absolutely nothing (since you need to perform "the idea" to implement it abnd make it meaningful)...

So for me, I'd say the breakdown for "pro sound" is:

Idea/performance of idea: 50%
Recording/Engineering skills: 40%
Gear: 10%

[dwillis45]

Here's my two cents. It makes more sense to look at this philosophical issue through a "necessary but not sufficient" framework. Whatever your percentages are, the performance, the engineering, and the gear are each necessary but not sufficient on their own to produce a quality recording. You really need all three. Talented artists will always shine with talenting engineering and gear. George Massenburg does not record with a fourtrack cassette. And if gear were the final solution, we wouldn't be here. We would be lurking over at Mercenary or Atlas Pro Audio. Now, if I had to pick one of the three "pillars" of great recording, I would vote for artistic talent. You can pay engineers and buy gear but talent is not really a commodity. Of course, engineering is part art and part science, but I firmly believe that it can be mastered with time and focus. And gear? Well gear is just plain fun provided you don't develop some type of fetish for buying or selling it and you're not concerned with the implications of wholesale materialism. Gear has another advantage: You can drool over it unlike some artists and engineers!