Now for the rest of the questions.
Fitz - I love the MDR. It has been rock solid and the only problem I've ever had with it was while recording a lengthy worship service at church and the hard drive filled up and caused the unit to lock up. One of those lessons learned (make sure you have plenty of available disk space for the project at hand). When I purchased the MDR I was really looking at either the Alesis HD24 or
the Fostex D2424LV, but I happened to walk into a Guitar Center while on a business trip and they had this MDR which was their demo unit tagged for $900, so I couldn't pass it up. One thing I really like is the removable hard drive. I can just pop out the drive, put it into my firewire caddy, and voila, I have another hard drive on my PC, ready to use.
As you can see, I'm the king of cheap, DIY stuff. The furniture for the studio was mostly resurrected computer desks, fitted out to mate with the console desk. The pop filter for my mic was an experiment just to see how cheap I could make one (I think it cost me a total of just under $4, most of which was a pair of black pantyhose). Someday, as money permits, I'll try to go back and get real solutions for some of these things so it won't look quite so low budget, but it all works and that is the key.
Casenpoint - I don't think Bob Vila would be jealous if he looked closely, but I do make it functional. Woodworking is one of my other hobbies, but right now all I use those skills for are stuff for the studio. My wife has filled up my shop space with junk so to do any serious work would require a week just to un-bury my shop.
Jake-owa - Cozy is right!! The overall box that contains my mixing room is 8x8 ft. Cut off one corner at 5 ft to install the door on a slant (and make it a non-square room), add a corner bass trap the extends 2 ft down each wall, stuff it with gear, shelves, and a bookcase, and there is just enough room to close the door and sit down. I have fine tuned the acoustical treatment over the last several months with the application of some rigid fiberglass panels in certain spots (covered by the burlap for which I learned that I don't have a clue how to install fabric!). I also have 3 fibergalss panels I have leaned against the walls in the vocal area to break up acoustical affects of the drywall. In the process I've learned a ton about mixing and am getting fairly confident that I can make a translatable mix here.
Well, thats enough of my diatribe.
Cheers,
Darryl.....
Not quite the same as where you came from is it? Ha!
hahahahaha! I thought my shop was the only one, I mean, men don't let their wives take over their shops do they?
ARGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRR!!!!