Home recording set up, your views please!

T

The Altar

New member
Hi, apologies if this should be somewhere else but looking for views/opinions/suggestions on this set up. I'm thinking of getting the following to record in a bedroom:
Apple iMac 2.7 GHz will update to 8GB ram myself
Apogee duet 2
Logic Studio 9
Rode NT2-A pack with mount & pop screen
KRK 5 monitors
Headphones for roughly £100

Should this be ample to get a half decent sound? Any thoughts or suggestions? Basically want to record guitar and vocals and use Logic to do most of the test. It comes to roughly 3 thousand pounds in total. I've heard there may be iMac and Logic updates soon though. Any help or suggestions appreciated before I take the plunge! Apologies if innapropriate post. Cheers.
 
You can check when is a good time to buy Apple computers here.

That described would be a nice setup. You should be able to get a good sound, even on much lower spec equipment. I wonder what your skill/experience level is and whether this might be less entry-level than you need? £3,000 is a lot of money for a beginner's setup.

Perhaps more important than the expensive gear is acoustic treatment for your room. This will improve recordings and make mixing easier as you'll hear your sounds better. There's info all over this forum about that.
 
jonny deep said:
Perhaps more important than the expensive gear is acoustic treatment for your room. This will improve recordings and make mixing easier.
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I agree with this.

Fibreglass panels aren't as sexy as a new computer, but you can probably get away with taking a few hundred bucks off the computer and applying it to room treatment. Of course, I don't know your situation, so you might have other reasons for wanting to spend that much on a computer, which is cool.

But room treatment is as important, if not more, than any piece of gear you'll ever buy. (ok, so I'm exaggerating, you can't record with no gear, but you can record with no room treatment...but you get my point I hope) :D
 
Jonny/Rami - skill/expertise not in abundance but did dabble a little with Cubase a few years back. I have the money to spend, want to get the best I can and put the effort in on the learning curve. On the computer front I just wanted to future proof it for as long as possible by getting the most up to date and I read that if you're using lots of effects etc in Logic you'd need the power.

What sort of room treatment would you guys reccommend? Does it really make that much difference? Also I'd be interested in if you had three grand to start from scratch what would you get? I only have an electric and acoustic guitar with a yamaha keyyboard which i'd use for midi input.

Thanks for the replys.
 
Oh, and as far as treatment goes, I think everyone would recommend starting with corner traps.
You can build 4 with wood frames, fabric, and roxul for about $200 if you're d.i.y. :o
 
I recommend against the 5" near fields. You won't get much bass response out of them. I've got a pair and supplement them with a sub-woofer.

Macs are expensive. If you got the money then cool, but if you're buying a mac for the reasons stated in your post, then you best bet would be a windows platform. Easier to upgrade over time.

In my opinion, money is better spent on the room, mics, mic pres and hardware/software processing. Computers, DAW and interfaces are secondary.

Have fun and welcome to the site.
 
Chili said:
Macs are expensive. If you got the money then cool, but if you're buying a mac for the reasons stated in your post, then you best bet would be a windows platform. Easier to upgrade over time.
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This right here.
I'm a PC guy anyway... But with Macs, you're paying more for the brand than anything (at least for the lower ends. If you're buying a fully spec'd Mac Pro, it'll probably be worth your money). Plus if you buy an iMac, you're going to be kicking yourself when you want to upgrade that to a better processor or hard drive.
If you need any help deciding, I work on computers professionally, and my friend's in IT, so if you need any help picking out a specific computer to buy, just PM me. HP PC's are a favorite of mine and my buddy's, so if you end up going the PC route, I'd go for one of them (unless you're savvy enough to build one on your own). Then spend whatever you would've spent on the Mac of the same specs on room treatment, as all the more seasoned members here are saying.

tldr; go for a Hewlett-Packard PC, spend the extra cash on acoustic treatment. :D
 
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