Two Good, One Bad

[apl]

If you had to choose, which would be more important:

Soundcard
Mic
Monitors

 

[Middleman]

Rule of thumb....work from hardrive out when building a chain.

Convertors come first, you want the best conversion you can afford
Monitors next, so you can hear those great convertors
Preamp
Mic

You can alway work with a marginal mic but an expensive one does you no good if you can't really hear what it is doing.

 

[joro]

what is the budget here man?

Perhaps there is a better solution?

 

[Massive Master]

I have to go with montiors first - You can have the greatest gear on the planet, but it's all worthless if you can't hear it accurately.

With good monitoring, workarounds for less-than-stellar gear can happen.

 

[distortedrumble]

i second massive's answer...i got the mixer then the soundcard then the mic but i couldn't hear how it actually sounded until i got the monitors. if i had to do it all over again (which i will starting soon) I would get the monitors first.

 

[noiseportrait]

For the outrageous prices of a neumann mic and genelec monitors you could get something equally as good and still have money for a decent soundcard and pre. I don't like genelecs much, and I'd rather have a soudelux at half the price of a neumann, but if I'm only allowed those three options then I guess I'd end up with the radio shack mic. It would be utterly pointless to use such expensive gear without a good set of monitors and in my experience a cheap computer soundcard hurts a recording a lot more than a cheap mic. At least you have a good setup that you could then build on and make very decent for only a few more clams, and you wouldn't have to feel stupid plugging your neumann into the 1/8''mic jack on the back of your computer.