Greetings from Freeport GB, The Bahamas, brothas and sistaz.
MusiQSoul here, Lovin' what i'm reading off the site about recording. So Here's my take on few things:
First, i've been saved since 1990 at the age of 19, been our church's keyboardist and music director since I was 25, i'm 34 now. Married with a son 11, and a daughter 3, and I love the Lord. I also write, produce and do a little home engineering.
I've started recently MusiQSoul Productions. I'm writing an album for a singer on our Praise Team, also I have a good bit of other work to get done for clients, basically demos, beats, laying keybords for tracks, etc, enough work to keep me paid and busy while holdin' down my job as an Accounts Clerk / Computer Operator/ Network Maintenance Manager at a trading firm here for 9 years. Right now, i'm laying and composing the tracks on my Korg Triton, feeding them into my IBM Netvista (2gig processor / 256mb memory ) running FLStudio 5, Reason 2.5 not perfect but it gets the job done for now.
Here's my recording setup I plan to upgrade to soon like this month hopefully.
First My Computer: A hybrid Dell Precision sweetly built to my specs, 3.2ghz processor, 4 gigs of memory, dual hard drives at 200gigs a piece, totally dedicated to MUSIC ONLY!!! Why. The computer won't have any Office suite, or all that other stuff. Why a Dell? Well I've worked on one in a friend of mine's studio and it work pretty well. But, if any here builds music production oriented systems, hey, i'm willing to give 'em a shout, lets keep that dough in the Kingdom.
Then I'll go with E-mu 1820m PCI Audio interface. Here's why: I've red just about every review and website on interfaces, firewire, USB, and PCI, red up on Mbox, M-Audio 18/14, 410, Layla, Focusrite Saffire, I named these because I had the previlege of using them and test driving them in music stores in America and studios here, my thing is, when I went to someone running 1820m and man the card is sweeeeeeet sounding! For real! Clean as a whistle. Overall, It sounded the best. Also it has the the same AD converters (24bit/192khz) that are in the Protools HD 192 systems, hmmm, how's that for the picking. Then, with the DSP chip, it takes the load completely off your comp cpu to do other things, nice aint it? It also comes with Cakewalk Sonar LE, Cubase LE, Ableton 5 lite, Wave lab lite and other software. Then i'll upgrade my Reason 2.5 to 3, and my FLStudio 5 to Flstudio 6 XXL. Get Sonar or Cakewalk for my main sequencer (maybe someone can help me out on that) and then either Cubase Wavelab 5 or A few Waves software (cheapest for my money), and a few other choice plugins for Mastering, add to that some Event TR8 monitors, two Audio Technica AT4040 mics, and two Sony stuidio headphones and bang!
Now, lets jive on software, hardware, more for the money, and the Hoo Haa on Protools: My five and half on it.
Let me first say that Protools is good to work on, but I feel it's geared towards the big studios that can afford it or any one if you have 10-20 thousand to spare. But for the majority, sometimes what will happen is that the people who have a limited budget go out and spend most of it on a Digi 002, or other wise to take for a home studio because they hear it's the new fad in recording and then choke the rest of their home studio with cheaper, less efficient equipment, which won't intergrate properly. Even if you go with cheaper M - powered systems, I feel you still sacrifce a bit of quality. Not my cup of tea when you can get better for the same price of an M-Powered. For me still, there is no substitute for having good mics and monitors, after all, that's where the rubber hits the proverbial road, hard. My AT4040s will cost me $299 a piece, and my Event TR8s will cost $499 for the pair and I'll go even cheaper if I get to test drive some other brands for quality once I get in the stores, i'll be equiped with my brother's laptop and some reference CDs of my own recordins for this task.
Sure, Protools seems to be industry standard, so everyone wants to use it or get the system for that matter but those prices, when it's all said and done will suck the life out of a budget when its tight. Me, I downloaded the free version a while a go (2004) and tore it apart, really squeezed it good, and man I aint impress at all. Then, you find out that you need a lot of other stuff from them only or else you are pretty much in the Whales belly like Jonah, that's where the the MONEY comes in, sure, the bundles are nice and I give them props but... you get the picture. If I had my way still, I'd buy a hybrid MAC and run Digital Perfomer and master my stuff with Wave Platinum Bundle, but the money aint there at least not yet, so I'm doing other wise. (eventually that's where i'll end up though)
What i'm saying is that if the funds is there for Protools fine it has it's advantages, but disavantages as well, but if you really want to get more bang for your buck, go with FLstudio and Reason, and then Sonar 4 or Cubase for your main programs, or even Ableton live, which i plan to do, I've seemlessly worked my FLstudio 5 and my Reason 2.5 together with the sounds from my Korg like MAGIC!!! man i've been getting killer drum tracks, synths, loops, bass from them and together, OOOOHWEEEE!!!, they are rocking, especially when I import some of the FLStudio drum samples into Reason, just leaves me Gasping. I'll tell you a story: In Reason, with a few FLStudio drum samples, I simulated Isreals "Who is like the Lord" and Rejoice, also Kurt Carr's "Sanctuary" And it was so indentical it was SCAAARRRY! I listened to each of them side by side.
Get the Picture?
So here I am, getting better recordings from my cheap system than some here get from there huge expensive Protools HDs (ha, my God is a good God) don't be fooled people, Cubase, Sonar, Digital Performer, and Reason, are well beyond Protools, for the money that is, but that's just my opinion.
So, It's Feb. and I'm getting the funds together to hit Sam Ash in Miami Florida, then use my credit card to buy and download my carefully, handpicked extra plugins.
In closing, I say, work your software, strip it bare, know it inside out and push it to it's very end to get what it's worth, it suppose to do what it says. GET EDUCATED. Knowlege is the key and wisdom opens the door, you don't have to go "industry standard" perse to get great home recording masters ready for duplication. Do your research. It helped me ALOT! Find whats best for the budget. I'll give pointers to anyone who needs it and i'll take pointers from anyone who can give it. Me not being a novice has alowed me to get fairly priced equipment and software that I know I can tweak, manipulate, and fine tune just enough to get the quality I need, but at the same time not taking away from the integrity of the software, but for a first timer, this isn't easy, I'll be sharing more soon.
Let me know what you think people.
MusiQSoul