What is the MOST important piece of equiptment in your studio?

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bigwillz24

bigwillz24

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Ok, today I ran into the guy that owns the studio that recorded part of Destiny's Child first album.

He told me the most important piece of equipment in his whole studio was a Avalon preamp (he didn't explain why wish i would of asked while we were talking).

Some pretty high end shit from a high end guy.

I got to thinking ok... maybe in a full blown studio a preamp would be the MOST important piece of equipment but what about the home recorder?

I'm no pro, seeing as i've never been paid to do this yet:)

But I would have to say my computer is the most important piece of gear i own cuase without it I couldn't record.

What do you guys think is the MOST important part of your setup and why?
 
my pootah, definately.

I didn't record jack shit on my old 4-track - it was when I discovered Cool Edit that things really took of for me.

so yeah, computer for me too.
 
bigwillz24 said:
He told me the most important piece of equipment in his whole studio was a Avalon preamp (he didn't explain why wish i would of asked while we were talking).
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The only reason he thought the Avalon was the most important part of his studio was because he most likely had other extremely high quality hardware to go along with it. You can take the best Avalon preamp there is, and if you run it through a Behringer A/D converter it will most likely sound like crap.
 
Besides the obvious (the room, your ears and what's between them), I feel the most important "gear" is the monitoring chain.

You can have the greatest preamps, mics, console, outboard, etc.

If you can't hear what they're doing, they don't mean jack.

If you CAN hear everything clearly and accurately, you can make the most out of mediocre gear.
 
sile2001 said:
The only reason he thought the Avalon was the most important part of his studio was because he most likely had other extremely high quality hardware to go along with it. You can take the best Avalon preamp there is, and if you run it through a Behringer A/D converter it will most likely sound like crap.
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Yeah as soon as I walked in I got a "hard on" from all the gear. If he would have let me play around with it i probably would have nutted :p
 
bigwillz24 said:
Yeah as soon as I walked in I got a "hard on" from all the gear. If he would have let me play around with it i probably would have nutted :p
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Grrrr......those bastards with money....
 
Most important piece of gear?

Probably my Allen & Heath 24*8 mixer right now.
 
Emperical Labs distressor and a Shure SM57.

If I have those two things I can make almost any album work in almost any situation as long as the guitar amps are real and the mic pres are not made by Roland.
 
A recording studio is a chain of gear which starts with the microphone and ends with the monitor and mastering device.

Everything in that chain is important, there may be no weakest link.
 
I would say my ears and what experience I have would be my most important assets in the studio.
 
CPU for me, I know now how important it was to me...1 month without my music computer and it's been like hell so far.
 
Ralph Wiggum said:
CPU for me, I know now how important it was to me...1 month without my music computer and it's been like hell so far.
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I am currently recording an album on a 1/2 inch 8 track with only 4 mics and no digital FX or recording of any type used on the album. Its the most fun I have had making an album in a long time!! (to put this into some context, I have made a few hundred albums and did my first pro tools album a couple weeks after pro tools 1.0 was released.)
 
Ronan said:
I am currently recording an album on a 1/2 inch 8 track with only 4 mics and no digital FX or recording of any type used on the album. Its the most fun I have had making an album in a long time!! (to put this into some context, I have made a few hundred albums and did my first pro tools album a couple weeks after pro tools 1.0 was released.)
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What genre of music is this? Sounds interesting
 
I think it has to be the monitors.

The monitors will tell you exactly how cheap your behringer preamp sounds :D
 
bigwillz24 said:
What genre of music is this? Sounds interesting
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One of the strangest albums I have ever worked on (and for anyone that knows my discography that pretty damn weird). Sort of Syd barret Pink floyed meets radio head meets Stevie Ray vaughn. Since we could not get the snare sound we wanted with spring reverbs we carted the 8 track into a 12th century church and did snare overdubs. the sound is amazing. we also recorded a gospel choir in the church to.

PS My other fave piece of studio gear is O-rings or moon gel for snare drums.
 
Whats wierd is no one has said thier keyboard or thier guitar.

Maybe having that Triton or strat doesn't matter....

I think I should have kept that Casio laying around ;P
...
 
i would say my computer too. my home recording at this point is more to get fairly good quality demo tracks than it is to try to record albums. If i was without my mixer for a while, i'd be ok, but I couldnt stand a week without my computer for note taking and song sketches.
 
i'm gonna second what Track Rat said...

it's not really the equipment you have so much as your ability to use your gear to it's full potential
 
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