My New Rig

In response to questions about what I use for my digital recording studio, here’s the lowdown on my new setup. Some of the parts are not in place yet, so I make do and save up…

Hardware:

• Dell Inspiron 9300 notebook, with:
  • 60GB 7200 RPM hard drive
  • 1GB RAM
  • 256MByte Nvidia 6800 Go video
  • 17″ WUXGA (1920×1200) screen

  Total system cost: $2417. I used an $800 off coupon from Dell, though, so I saved a lot. Unfortunately, because I had a budget in mind for the unit, I couldn’t spring for the DVD burner (an extra $125.00). I have an external DVD burner, though.

• M-Audio Firewire Audiophile external sound card: $349.95 retail (picked mine up for $135.00 from eBay)
• Two OSM-800 condenser microphones: $120.00 each (picked up on sale for much less)
• Two boom stands: about $20.00 each
• 20′ mic cables: about $30.00 each
• A Phonics 4-channel mixer: $100.00
• Various mice, keyboards, headphones, and miscellania

Software:

• Cakewalk Sonar 2, 3, and 4 Producer Edition: $959 retail, but if you’re a previous Cakewalk owner it’s majorly discounted. Older versions are also dirt-cheap on eBay.
• There are a few plug-ins which are critical to the way I work in-studio:
  • Antares Auto-Tune: $349.00
  • LiveSynth Pro: $64.95
  • Clone Ensemble: $40.00
  • Various free VST plugins.
• Cool Edit 2000. $45.00 back in the day. This is called “Adobe Audition” now, and costs about $300. The reason I stick with the really ancient version is because it does the one thing it does that nothing else does well: noise reduction. I’ll generally also use this as my UI when tweaking notes using Auto-Tune. Actively looking for a replacement; I suspect I could figure out a way to do this within Sonar. Just gotta hit the manual.
• Many softsynths and sound libraries, both free and otherwise. I’ve dropped $20.00 here and $40.00 there a lot over the years to build a library of things I think sound pretty good.

Stuff I want to get to improve my sound:

• Real flat-response monitor speakers. Headphones and playing stuff on various equipment around my house just doesn’t give me really even testing of my mixes.
• A stereo condenser mic
• When I get that stereo condenser mic, I’ll need another audio interface, since 2 condensers + stereo condenser = 4 channels, and I can only record 2 at a time right now. You can play fun games with mixing, though, and do magic in 2 channels.
• Adobe Audition. It does lots more than just noise reduction now 🙂
• Building a noise-resistant enclosure for recording voice and instruments
• Sonar 4 Producer Edition. I’m still on 3 now.
• Cakewalk Project 5
• The new version of Drumkit from Hell. It’s on several DVDs now, and is an amazingly impressive, realistic-sounding drum library that’s still cheaper than paying a live drummer for one day in the studio (about $200)

There’s a bunch of other stuff, including a VST server cluster, many more microphones, a drumkit, a midi drumkit, etc. that I’d like to get “one day”, but I may be dead before that happens. Much of that would be predicated upon moving to a bigger place; our existing townhome is nice, and we like it, but there’s not enough space to build a full-fledged recording studio. However, I should be able to figure out a nook I can soundproof for vocals and guitars.

Realize I’ve accumulated this stuff over a decade and a half of recording and playing. I don’t think I’d drop several thousand dollars in one place for a recording setup myself! If I were rebuilding a studio from scratch today, needing a MIDI controller too, here’s what I’d do to try to do it all:

• $600.00 for an M-Audio Ozonic. This keyboard includes digital/analog audio interfaces, keyboard, MIDI I/O, and a whole slew of control surfaces. I just didn’t have the budget for it this go-round, but I could see with a laptop having a killer mobile studio with just this mobile audio interface and a few microphones.
• $1600 for a really nice laptop. (at $2200 so far)
• A copy of Cakewalk Sonar Producer Edition 4 from eBay for $420.00. (Now we’re at $2620).
• I’d still stick with two mics, and I like my OSM-800’s. I’d wait for a good sale (like I did) so I can get two for the price of one. With cables and boom stands, call it $250. (Now we’re at $2870.) Stereo condensers are ridiculously expensive, and response pattern is really important for these, so cheap Chinese knock-offs don’t work so well…
• Drumkit from Hell Superior, a drum sample library: $270.00. Now we’re at $3140.
• Slicy Drummer 2 with DR-008: I love both of these products, and the new version combines the two into one. It’s just a plug-in, but WHAT a plug-in! $70.00 (putting us at $3210)
• Antares Auto-Tune. $350 (Now at $3560)
• Izotope Ozone: $250 (Now we’re at $3810)
• Izotope Trash (a distortion plug-in): $200 (now $4010)
• Adobe Audition: $300 (now $4310)
• Cakewalk Project 5: $350 (now $4660)
• Buy a few loop libraries, miscellaneous cables, and a spare set of strings with the rest of the money between $4660 and $5,000.

I think that would do it. For under $5,000, you can have a really reasonable home studio recording environment that’s completely portable (two small bags) and high-quality. You can easily use it to produce nearly-pro-quality recordings of live performances at your kids’ schools (you’d need a lot more microphones and a much larger DAC with many channels to do full pro-quality), and be able to multitrack well at home. Because you’re using a small integrated midi and audio i/o controller, you don’t have much offboard gear to worry about. You will probably want to use a dedicated audio hard drive, though, that’s a external to the unit. The internal one will have to time-share with the swap file and other Windows applications, and you won’t be able to stream so many simultaneous tracks.

This is where I hope to go one day, but I’m not there yet!