Total recording newb, am I on the right track?

[squarepusher]

Well, that's a bit of a relief to hear

Thanks for the help so far guys... I can tell I'm really gonna enjoy getting into music production.

 

[Armistice]

If you understand the limitations of what you're using, which takes time and an open-minded approach, then you can still achieve decent results using less than stellar gear.

I have Behringer monitors but I know them well enough to not trust them alone and to never try to seriously mix without optimising their positioning by uprooting all my gear and moving it to a better location. I also have a really good set of stereo speakers and a lot of CDs that I use to cross check balance etc.

Can be done.... takes practice. That said, I'll replace mine soon, probably...

 

[kidkage]

Yeah, to sort of expand on what armistice said, spend a good amount of time listening to music you know on the speakers so you can sort of get to know them and your listening environment as compared to your car speakers, laptop speakers, uncle's home theater, etc.

 

[grimtraveller]

I don't want to sound like I'm saying to go radically pricey (although you'll never hear me argue against it) -- I'm suggesting to avoid something I've seen far too many times. A lot of people (not everyone, but certainly "so damn many") start out on the mechanics of recording using "cheesy" speakers and spend years learning bad habits and not developing their listening skills -- Skills which dictate every single decision in the long run.

Interesting analogies though -- My first guitar was a POS that made my fingers bleed. I can only imagine how much faster I'd have progressed with a better instrument.



Just as how my listening skills developed in leaps when I finally got around to using "real" speakers. Again, had to almost start over again (with over a decade of frustration behind me).

I would've been a much better engineer much sooner had I done what my mentor at the time suggested ("Get the best speakers you possibly can and don't worry about anything else - A monkey can learn the mechanics of recording but you can't learn to listen until you have speakers that are better than you are") or something dreadfully similar to that.

And if I could turn back the clock, I would've done just that.

I believe that starting out with a $50 pair of crappy ion desktop rockers and a $10 eBay acoustic really made me appreciate stepping up in quality.

I dont know that in the beginning as a n00b I was prepared to use good monitors.
I had such a lack of recording knowledge in general that the recordings were going to be bad regardless of my monitors. Which probably would've made me unjustly hate my monitors.

Both totally legitimate views. There's a current thread in which that denizen of the deep, Wheelema, intends to set up his garage as a recording space for some of his kids. He stated right at the outset that he was going to be dropping $5000 on the project and given that budgetery limitations are meaningless in comparion to a pauper or bod struggling with college,

I can tell you a whole bunch of monitors in the "under $1k" range that I'd like to throw into a tire fire (almost all of them),
The ADAM A7's are nice -- Personally can't use 'em due to the ribbon tweeters (I'm hyper-sensitive in the high end) but at first listen, I liked them quite a bit. Any of the Dynaudio boxes are pretty nice...

I'd probably scour the used market. If you can score a set of B&W DM602's (series 3, specifically) and a decent amp (DECENT - Doesn't have to be A-A/B, but it has to be "capable"), that'll pretty much blow away anything you're going to find in the sub-$1k market with great vengeance and furious anger. There was something wonderful about that speaker... One of the best "cheap" speakers ever. And then they discontinued it for an overhyped box of questionableness.

would make abundant sense. "Buy any monitors as a start and work your way up" wouldn't. You might argue that money being the deciding factor weakens the argument. No it doesn't. It used to drive me nuts as a kid and teenager, but my Mum used to bang the drum of "live within your means". It was also good advice.