need to fill in my gear gaps

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keybuffer

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I'm having trouble deciding what to go for next. I'd like to spend about $1500 now and some more in a few months to build up a decent sequencing & recording capability.
So far I have a no-frills Korg Trinity, a Technics electric piano and a PII 200 computer (64M ram) with a defective sound card and a CDRW.

I sequence OK I think on the Trinity, but have never done it on a PC and get the feeling it would be a lot easier on the PC.

My objective is to sequence on a PC and to control the keys from there and to mix and record the keys and some vocals into something. Then from that something, master and burn a CD.

I have considered PC recording, but really like the idea of using something like the Korg D8/D16 or one of the Roland HD rec. units that I've seen. I guess my dilema is that if I go for a stand-alone recording unit, my impression is that I'll still need some expensive sequencing software to be able to sequence on the PC. And I will still need to use some software and cables and possibly some converter to get my stand-alone units stuff back to the PC to go to my PC's internal CDRW. Am I nuts in making these assumptions?

On the other hand, from reading this site, I get the impression that if I try to just do it all on my PC that I should probably upgrade my PC (it has a 3GB EIDE drive), get something like Cubase and could still be faced with PC weirdness problems.

I'm guessing that in either case, I should at least get a decent sound card for my PC and maybe a small mixer - or am I missing something or looking at this crookedly?

Confused_And_Repressed_In_DC
 
I vote you set up a simple sound reinforcing studio and beef up your PC. www.carvin.com Check out the studiomate 162 (SM162) 16 channel mixer, 9-16 of which are stereo. Pow instant mixer to get everything coming out of one place. Headphones out if you want to dump the whole mix to your PC, or each channel has this seperate 1/4 jack that you can half insert a patchcord into if you just want to record one channel. As far as getting it to your PC, there are dozens of sondcards and or breakout boxes that will do a stand up job. For that I suggest anyone of the 50 other posts these dudes have made on that topic. But a small mixer, studio monitors (event 20/20) and a decent PC is a hell of a start and do-able in the price range you mentioned
 
Thanks for the advice Even. And for the carvin link - hadn't seen them before. I'll probably concentrate on the soundcard, mixer and monitors first.
 
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