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Dave has inspired me to give one of my favourite rants in favour of progressive turn on (and off) for another reason besides power consumption. It was drilled into me 40+ years ago to always turn on your gear in the order of signal flow. In a live situation, this would normally mean, outboard...

Use balanced on any equipment that can handle it. If forced to use unbalanced, keep the runs as short as possible and avoid running alongside electrical cabling. Something I'd strongly suggest: Invest in a medium decent soldering iron, the connectors you'll need and a reel or two of cable...

It's a really useful mic--the sound isn't all that different from the SM57 but with a bit less boost on the upper mids giving it a slightly smoother sound. The side address layout makes it nicely compact for use on small stages or in small studios. There's a switch to add or remove boost...

This one would work nicely: Behringer Xenyx Q502 USB B-Stock - Thomann UK There's one cheaper one (the 302) but you'd need a mix of cable adaptors which probably almost even out the price.

The first place I'd look is the Apogee Duet. Digital interfaces CAN go wrong and it seems to be the common link in the chain. FMI, does Apogee provide specialist drivers for use with Mac or do you just use the built in Mac sound card? I ask because a few years back I had a similar sounding...

That's the beast. And I've just edited 'cause i was wrong about the Thomann price.

In a lot of cases, composers DON'T use their DAW for actually composing. It's pretty common to composed in one piece of software then render to wave files and mix on the DAQ. I know a couple of people who make their living composing. One uses Sibelius and the other uses Sonar. The two...

A big +1 to Witzendoz's post. I also have a couple of UCA202 USB interfaces which I use for similar purposes, They just sit there and work and are at a price that doesn't break even my very small bank. The only problem with Alan's post is that he's just reminded me that I loaned one to a...

For your purposes a small Behringer mixer would likely suffice...they're at the very cheap end of the range but fine for your needs. A couple of points: Both your computer and games console will be Line Level inputs--make sure you can connect two line level sources (most mixers can)...

Old time radio...which is I think what you're trying to emulate--had an excessively "warm" sound that was slightly heavy on bass and low mid tones. Large Dynamics come closest to this so I might try something like an RE20 or SM7B. Both mics turn up at not too earth shattering prices from time...

Have a look at the Alesis iO2. It seems to fit your whole spec and sells generally for just under $100. I bought one (well, actually an M-Audio M Track but they're the same box with different badges) about 3 years ago for a specific project (playback only in a theatre) but since then I've...

Meh. If it helps some people, fine. However, I don't think I'd save any time getting basic levels this way compared to just setting each track at an arbitrary level, listening then adjusting by ear. Oh, and I'd probably bus some things as appropriate. For example, early on I put each drum...

If you go the hardware route, something like this: dbx 215s | Sweetwater would probably do the job for you--it's only 15 band but that's still enough to make a big difference. On top of the box you'd need cables to come out of your TV into the box, them more to combine the two outputs into a...

You didn't mention video or the need to do it live before! If you're willing to process the film before watching it, Most video editing software would allow you to split the tracks (or just put the stereo track down twice for you to pan one left and one right. Depending on the software you buy...

Earlier on, somebody asked why DAWs work at 32 bit. There's a good reason for this--virtually every DAW operates internally at 32 bit floating point because that gives a dynamic range so big (up into 4 figures) that you can pretty well forget it. However, you are NOT storing audio at a simple...

No steps. Just samples at whatever rate you've chosen. When reproducing a digital recording, your equipment doesn't just draw a line between samples. I follows an algorithm which creates the single curve that can recreate the analogue audio wave that was sampled to take the samples. Look at...

Some lateral thinking: split your stereo track into two mono tracks, one panned hard left and the other hard right. Perform all your effects on the separate tracks then mix the two down to a single mono again.

Of course audiophiles can hear things that can't be detected or measured on even the best test equipment. Anybody want to buy a $5000 IEC mains lead? It'll really make your mixes sound more open and natural.

It's been a few months since this was posted and it appears we need it again: If you can't watch the whole thing, the executive summary is "digital recordings do not have stairsteps and, viewed on oscilloscope the output waveform of the digital (after conversion back to analogue) is...

Two words for you: Nyquist Theorem. 44.1kHz sampling handles frequencies about those audible by any normal human being. Similarly, unlike a compressed format like MP3, you can process and add effects as much as you want without "cutting" the signal. (I'll put in the caveat that this doesn't...