Okay, just to back up for a minute:
CloseYourEyes said:
... i want the sound to be STUDIO QUALITY; I'm talking like "good-enough-to-be-make-an-album-there" quality.
I guess we've backed off that already. Good.
Although, I will note one thing that's been said about a million times already: it's not the quality of the engineering that distinguishes a good album from a bad album, it's the quality of the music. Most bands couldn't make a recording that's "good-enough-to-be-an-album" at
anystudio.
That said, if you're a band that's right on the margin between good enough and not, a bad recording will tip you to the "not" side. And -- given the nature of the bell curve, which I think applies here like everywhere else -- there are a
lot, lot more bands that are right close to the margin between good enough and not than there are way up over the line.
And
then we start to get into the commercial / business realities ...
... I do know this is feasable because i attended a recording of my friend's band at a place called Valcor studios; it's run by a guy named Hank and his gear mainly consists of a big ass mackey mixer w/ the level display, a huge rack full of compressors, preamps(?), effects, etc; and then he has like 4 or 5 Alesis ADAT recorders(dont ask me why he has that many)....
I'm not sure I follow the feasibility reasoning here. How does the fact that someone can run a studio with what sounds like $20,000 - $100,000 or so of equipment establish that it's feasible to run a studio with much less equipment?
Particularly considering ...
... he charges like 35 bucks an hour and the quality is ultra-professional. What i'm trying to do is emulate that quality....
In the adult world, $35 an hour is not a ton of money. It's not paltry, but it's not a ton of money. If he were able to book his studio with paying customers 50 weeks a year, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, he'd gross $70,000. That's
gross, before various expenses, and not considering the cost of the capital he's invested in equipment. And, do you think he's really that fully booked? Maybe he is, I've never heard of him. But I'd guess (just a guess, of course), he's lucky to gross half that.
... Does anyone make a semi cheap(used obviously) 8-track CD burner(rackmount style)? ...
I don't mean to offend, but this comes off as a bit of a strange question. From a later post, it sounds like you already have a hard-disk recorder. How, exactly, do you expect an 8-track CD burner (if there were such a thing) would be a step up?
My suggestion, I guess, would be (i) start with what you have, (ii) get a clearer idea of what you're trying to do and (iii) forget about trying to make money at this. Think of it as a hobby, not a business, because if you think of it as a business in even a slightly clear-headed way, you won't do it. You may be able to put together something where you can record yourself and friends for free, or for a paltry contribution toward the cost of the equipment. But without a lot more capital and a lot more expertise, you're not going to make money at it.
