Setting up my first home studio.......what do I need?

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rally

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First off I'd like to say that after stumbling accross this stie today it has been a wealth of information.


I'm currently running CEP with an AMD K6 II 500 and 64M of Ram (PC100), a 6.4G Quantum Bigfoot IDE drive and (don't slay me) an old SB16.

I've been using Fruty Loops for drums and exporting each track in seperately to CEP, then adding bass, Guitars & vox through a ZOOM 9050 plugged into my SB16. We use this for putting new song ideas down before booking pro studio time to record. We now want to cut studio fees out of the equation and spend on our own recording gear.

I was thinking on the WavPro 8/24 from Gadgetlabs as a starting point (or something similar in the same price range), in hope of adding another card later. As far as desks go I really don't have a clue but guess it should have seperate tape send/returns for each channel, probably 16 channels and preferably 2nd hand to match our budget. I also need monitors (and power amp?) as current monitoring goes out the SB16 to an old Aiwa stacking system.

If anyone can offer ANY advice before we go splashing out some serious money I'd be very gratefull.

Thanks in advance,

ALEC....RALLY
 
I was going to say money and lots of it but you allready know that. My advice is just dont go overboard and only get what you need and add all the bells and whistles as you go.
The costs seem to grow exponetially. Hang in there and you
should receive some good advice here allthough I am not the
one to give it.
 
Dump that bigfoot.
I am a Network Admin for a large company and every single bigfoot that came in our PC's has had to be replaced. It seemed like as soon as they were out of warranty they corrupted and we had to trash them. I literally can see a stack of bigfoots from my desk right now....counting...7..8..9..there are 12 of them! So be careful to back up or get rid of that thing.
 
Ok, computer stuff aside, I need to know about the soundgear. What kind of desk should I be looking for; I plan on buying the 8/24 and hopefully adding another at a later date so I'm looking at 16 tracks. I take it I need a desk with 16 (or 8 minimum) tape send/returns? Any suggestions on something not to pricey....say about £750-£1000, or a good second hand one.
 
the Aark 20/20 its $325!!!!
in the oficial site.

I just buy one, 8 ins, 8 outs, spdif (rca)

also check the 20/20+ with midi an adat for $499.
 
rally said:
Ok, computer stuff aside, I need to know about the soundgear. What kind of desk should I be looking for; I plan on buying the 8/24 and hopefully adding another at a later date so I'm looking at 16 tracks. I take it I need a desk with 16 (or 8 minimum) tape send/returns? Any suggestions on something not to pricey....say about £750-£1000, or a good second hand one.
Click to expand...

Hi Rally,

I don't know if you need a "multi-bus" mixer, but take a look at The following mixers:

The last time I checked, these were going for around $1,000.00 US; not sure about UK prices, or the exchange rate...

A&H "Mixwizard" (16x2x1); it's a stereo mixer, but it's got one hell of an EQ setion (4 band, with two sweepable midbands, and 6 aux/effect sends)-May be in your price range-I'm not sure what they go for in the U.K. This one doesn't get mention much because it's a stereo mixer-but it's a powerful board man!

A&H also has a 10/14 input mixer(10 mics with 4 line levels) that is similar, but is a multi-bus mixer (it's either 4 or 8, I can't remember offhand)

Mackie 1604vlz Pro (16x4x2x1); 3 band EQ with sweepable mid, 6 effect sends on 4 pots (switchable for the last two pairs).

This is what I am using, and I plan on buying two more of them, and essentially "building" a large mixer out of them. I like it myself. It's a good little mixer, I just need more channels....

The Mackie stuff is good, but The A&H stuff is better.
also take a serious look at the A&H GL2000 series mixers.
If given the choice at the time of buying what I have-I would have jumped at the GL2000; it was twice the price-but I couldn't wait for the delivery time on it...I had already waited for a Behringer mixer that I had ordered-and cancelled it, and walked into a local music store and walked out with the Mackie for $1000 cash.


Tim
 
I paid 809.00 US for my Mackie 1604VLZ with tax included so
take a good look around. You should do a search here at the
site on mixers, there were some pretty good threads recently. Spirit seemed to be more esteemed than Mackie.
 
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