What gear do y'all use?

[Steve Conner]

Hi guys,

This forum looked so empty, once tboy deleted all the spam, I thought I should try filling it up a bit. So if you have a home studio, what recording gear do you use? Here's mine:

Computer: 3GHz P4 with 2GB RAM, dual 200GB SATA drives and M-Audio Delta 1010 soundcard. Based on a mini motherboard in a Cubit 5 case. I just got this new machine this summer, before that I used a 600MHz P3 with 256MB RAM, one 4GB and one 80GB drives, and a Delta 66. It was my experience with the Delta 66 that led me to buy the 1010, that and the fact that my local music store had an ex-demo 1010 cheap :-)

Software: Cubase SX and Sound Forge running on Windows XP Pro, also dual boots with Studio-To-Go

Other bits: Soundcraft Spirit M12 mixer, Dynaudio BM5 monitors driven by home-made stereo amp, and a pile of mics, mostly old junk ones (the two best ones are an AT3525 and a SM57)

[Leka]

Hi Steve!

Here is my setup:

Computer:
P4 2800Mhz / 1GB RAM with watercooling for making the box quiet. 2* ATA-100 disks 30Gb and 160Gb.
Soundcard is ST-Audio DSP2000 C-Port.

Software:
Logic Audio, Wave Lab, T-RackS 24 on Win XP

Other bits:
I have only three usable mics, Shure 58beta & SH55 and Audio Technica AT4033.
For recording with AT4033 I have a Joemeek's VC3 compressor which has proved to be an excellent equipment.
I also have a Revox B-77mk2 reel tape recorder for some smooth tape compression.
Mainly I'm using this set for recording our band project's demos.

btw. Which setup would be the best for recording a 12" combo guitar amp with the resources I have?
I have used only the Shure 58b for recording it and it sounds a bit nosy.
The mic has been straight close to grill a little of the center of the speaker which in this case is a Celestion V30.
Basicly I'm looking for rock solid overdrive sound, like many of us I think...

[Regis]

Hi Steve,

I'm still using tape, here is a link to some pics.

An inventory:

2) Tascam DA-78 8 track recorders, synced to 16 tracks
Alesis Studio 32 mixer
Alesis M1 Active Monitors
Computer for mixdowns with Soundforge Mastering and Roxio CD burning software

2) Alesis Nanoverb effects units
Art FX-1 effects unit
Art MR-1 reverb unit

Presonus Blue Tube Dual Microphone Preamp
FMR Audio RNC1773 "Real Nice Compressor"
Behringer Composer Pro compressor
Rocktron CE-1 Compressor

Groove Tube/Alesis AM-61 Large Diaphram Tube Condensor Microphone
2) Marshall MXL 2001 Large Diaphram Condensor Microphones
2) Marshall MXL 603s Small Diaphram Condensor Microphones
Octava Mk-219 Large Diaphram Condensor Microphone
2) AKG D112 Large Diaphram Dynamic Bass Microphones
2) Carvin CM90E Condensor Microphones
5) Shure SM-57 Dynamic Microphones
10) Peavey PL-38 Dynamic Microphones

Sony TC-366 Reel to Reel
Alesis SR-16 Drum Machine
Tech21 Bass Driver DI
4Behringer Ultra DI Direct Boxs
24 Channel Snake

[Sock Puppet]

I'm glad this thread's here.

While I was at work today, my daughter called in to pick up a few christmas presents...

I just checked what she took away and she's somehow managed to pick up (and wrap!) an emu 1212m I'd bought for a second system (3Gig P4) I've been putting together thinking it was a present for her bloke.

How we laughed.

Anyways, I've got a twin OS AMD 3000 with an emu 1212m and 160+320GB IDE +160GB SATA, optically linked to my hi-fi. The twin OS was originally to have the music stuff on a separate bootable partition but the computer has become my tv, radio, dvd player and jukebox as well as the rest of the stuff it gets used for..

The second system seemed like a good idea but it's turned out a big mistake as I just want to duplicate the functionality of this one and can't justify splashing out for another 24" monitor (once you've used one you can't go smaller).

More about dual boot systems here:

http://www.homerecordingconnection.c...w_story&id=151

S.

[Luijo]

btw. Which setup would be the best for recording a 12" combo guitar amp with the resources I have?
I have used only the Shure 58b for recording it and it sounds a bit nosy.
The mic has been straight close to grill a little of the center of the speaker which in this case is a Celestion V30.
Basicly I'm looking for rock solid overdrive sound, like many of us I think...

You can try mixing the 58 as you use it now with the AT as an ambient mic a few feet away from the cab and facing at it. Just beware of phase problems with the two mics so proper positioning is critical.
Some people even put their mics a little out of phase to achieve some sort of unusual EQing of the signal. Think of it like fine tuning the phase difference between mics and using it as a tone shaper. Lots of room for experimentation here.

[matndona]

I like the Christmas list idea.... a lot!

We should run a couple of good threads like this the day after Thanksgiving every year!

[Mark Lavelle]

...if you have a home studio, what recording gear do you use?

I'm not sure I'd call it a studio (it's really a pig sty), but now that my brother (who's always been more the sound man/recording engineer of the two of us) has threatened to move all the way to the other coast I've gotten a bit more serious about being able to do it all by myself.

System:
* 2.8GHz P4 with 1GB RAM and 440GB of SATA disk space (80GB + 80GB + 280GB).
* WinXP Pro & SUSE Linux dual boot, but the Linux is really just there for amusement and disaster recovery. I'll try some of the Linux recording SW eventually...
* Until a couple of months ago I was using an M-Audio Delta 66, but then a co-worker found me a mint-in-box Echo Layla (24-bit resolution; 8 ins, 10 outs) in the trash(!) at work, so now the Delta 66 is sitting idle.
* Edirol UM-2 MIDI interface.

Software:
* Sonar 6 Producer Edition. I was into MIDI in the early days and Cakewalk was the best PC sequencer SW at the time, so I've stuck with them (it's always been cheaper to upgrade then switch, too). I've also got Cakewalk's Project 5 and Dimension Pro soft synth, but I'm not sure why...
* Sound Forge XP 4.5 (very handy for quick edits of WAV files)
* Taking up the sax a couple of years ago has also pushed me towards more interest in notation SW, so I expect to be acquiring the full-feature version of Sibelius as soon as the budget will allow. I'm using the (free) Finale NotePad SW until then.

Audio gear:
* Mackie 1202 mixer.
* A couple of MXL 990 large-diaphragm condenser mics (excellent value!).
* AKG 1000E dynamic mic.
* Shure 588SB "Unisphere B" dynamic mic (i.e., a cheap SM-58).
* Speakers: relatively high-end Altec-Lansing PC 5.1 rig (6+ years old).
* Sony MDR-V6 headphones.

MIDI/synth gear:
* M-Audio Keystation 49e (4 octave keyboard controller)
* Ensoniq EPS 16+ sampler (with a huge sample library that I got when our co. was talking about co-developing a PC card synth with Ensoniq).
* Yamaha QY70 sequencer/synth.

Lots of stuff that's been living in the closet for years:
* 2(!) MIDI patch bays.
* Dual compressor/limiter
* Alesis Midiverb.
* etc.

Damn that's a lot of crap (even if it did take 20 years to acquire). Now I just have to find the time to put all this stuff to work!

[David Schwab]

Not a new system... but it's still doing its thing!

Hardware:
PowerMac G4 (Digital Audio) with a 1GHz Upgrade card running Mac OS X 10.4.8 (Tiger). 1 GB RAM, IBM/Hitachi Deskstar 120 GB System drive, Maxtor 30 GB drive for audio, M-Audio 2496 sound card. Roland VM-3100Pro digital mixer, using the S/PDIF in to the 2496. Behringer Eurorack 1604A mixer for monitoring. Alesis NanoCompressor, TubeWorks BlueTube, Korg Pandora, Monsoon speakers. Sure SM57, SM58, Oktava MK-319 mics.

Software:
Cubase SX, Spark XL 2.8, Peak Pro 5.2. Bunches of plug-ins and soft synths (most notably LinPLug LM IV, FM 7, Albino 3, Aturia Minimoog Model V, and ARP2600 V).

Instruments:
Various basses and guitars, most of which I built. Oberheim Matrix 6.

[David Schwab]

btw. Which setup would be the best for recording a 12" combo guitar amp with the resources I have?
I have used only the Shure 58b for recording it and it sounds a bit nosy.

The most common mic for rock guitar is the Sure SM57. That's what you hear on all those Van Halen recordings... You have to mess with mic placement a bit.

I record all my guitar direct though amp sims. I've never had god luck mic'ing up small amps. They always sound fizzy.

Here's an example

[Steve Conner]

Gosh, there sure is a lot of recording going on here! It's good to see that a lot of folks have home studio setups. Mark, that pig sty of yours looks kind of like my apartment I found some pictures of what my setup looked like over the years:

http://www.scopeboy.com/music/studio_pix.html

I mostly used my studio for writing electronic music, but when I got into a band, it really started to come in handy. We were able to partly record and mix our first demo CD in there, although we had to hire a local studio to track the really noisy stuff like drums and cranked electric guitars. When it came to our next CD we did it the other way, doing the tracking for the quiet songs ourselves and taking the raw track files on a DVD to another studio for mixing.

some more recording related stuff:
http://tentofiveproject.com/gallery/...s.php?cat_id=2
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...logID=73802857

[Mark Lavelle]

You're going to have to work a lot harder to qualify for full "pig sty" status, Steve!

My own usage tends toward demos of songwriting ideas, the vast majority of which are instrumental and guitar-based. I sing and play my own bass, tenor sax & (one-hand) keyboard parts, and I use samples for drums/perc.

I haven't got any talent or ear for drum parts, but I've been using a neat old ACID loop set called RADS to help out. It's got 900+ loops of the same dry kit, where each loop is 8 beats (or "1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &" if you prefer to think of it that way), and the loop names tell you which beats the hits are on. There are separate kick+snare, cymbal, hi-hat & ride loops so you can mix & match to taste. I think the disk was discontinued when Sony bought ACID, but the samples appear to be in their current "Drum Pack" set (check out the first two sample samples).

[david2]

I had a nice computer built with recording in mind. I'm not a techy so i forget the specs. After trying all sorts of recording software i found Riffworks and my search is over. The Line 6 TonePort is so easy to use even i can do it. i would recomend it to anyone.It's Fun! www.sonomawireworks.com

[Minion]

Hi , I"m new here....

My very Modest setup entails a P-4 2.6ghz PC with 512mb Ram and a 80-gb HD useing a Delta 44 sound card and I record useing Mackie Traction 2.1....

Since I am the only one in my Band and I play all Instruments i use a small Mixer and a Mixture of Cheapo Mics and simple DIY Mics to Mic my Drum kit, I use a Couple INA217 Based Mic preamps to Mic the Snare and Bass drum and use a stereo mix of the Toms and Cymbols to take up all 4 inputs of the Delta 44.....

After recording the Drum Track I will Mic up my DIY Solid state Guitar amp (that I designed and built) to record the Guitar and Bass tracks and then I do the Mixing monitoring through some cheapo Yorkville Powered monitors......

My recordings sound OK, I can"t sing so there are no Vocals but I still enjoy doing it.....

I got into DIY out of nescessity as I don"t have a Lot of money to throw arround so I figured I would try to build what I could useing whatever Parts I could scavenge or salvage from other equipment......

I have only been doing DIY for about 14 months and had absolutly no knowlege about DIY electronics before hand and actually had quite a Big Phobia of electricity but I have mostly gotten over that.....

In the Last year I have built several Mics and Mic preamps and My trusty Guitar amp which is still constantly evolving (Installing a Compressor/Sustain curcuit in the amp Tonight pluss it has 3 different Flavors of overdrive) and am in the middle of designing and building a 100w Bass amp and a 8Ch Mixer and Have a 8Ch Mic preamp in the works also.....


Thanx

[Steve Conner]

Sounds cool Minion! Got any pictures of your gear or mp3s?

[James O'Donnell]

Hello, I use a simple setup for direct recording. I have 2 inputs, left and right, and record with XLR-in to a Pinnacle DC2000 video capture environment. This is mostly using the Adobe Premiere 6.5 application for single track capturing at 48kHz. The computer is dual Xeon 2.8 with 2Gb RAM and uses U320 SCSI Raid array of 146Gb drives. The mainboard is a Supermicro X5DAE, SC833S chassis. (I have never experienced latency) Tracks (wav files) are edited and mixed with Goldwave or Audacity. I currently have no mics but look forward to getting a pair instead of recording direct. Maybe it'll work, maybe not. Direct is very clean, but the EQing is never quite the same as what I hear from the cabinets. I always film the affair, just to get an idea of what/how I did it, since they are mostly recorded spontaneously.

[Chadwick]

Black Lion Audio are really nice guys and have great ideas on all sorts of mods. Its just a matter of time before they release their own great gear on a big level.

I'm working on a preamp based on a 1980's Seck Mixer 18 channel.

[Suburbanite]

amd athlon 1.8 laptop with a lot of wires hanging out
alesis firewire 16 multimix
cubase le, fruityloops, audacity and logic
1 sm58, 2 sm57, red audio drumset mikes (actually pretty good)
and only 1 mic stand and a lot of gaffa tape
oh and some blood and tears for good mesure

[Capacitordeath]

HEY!

hi.

I'm using an HP Pavilion dv9000 with 2g of ram and a dual 1.8 processor.
ASIO4all
Temper (free MIDI/sound multitracker)
1/4 - mini plug that I bought for 2 bucks at Target
ART Tube preamp Studio
MXL big cheap condenser mic
Korg nanoPAD that I friggin love
stock sound card (very loud...I wanna get an outboard model)

For drums...
nanoPAD > Session Drummer 2. Fretted Synth came out with a really nice drum program that I plan on using, and it's free. I just need to organize it and set up the .wavs and velocities. I either use an Antress compressor or Floorfish 'fore for compression, and Roommachine844 'aft for ambience. Maybe a little Fuzzplus2 for some thick, fake sounding drums.

For Bass...
bass > ART pre > DIG. It's been a really nice guitar amp VST, on par with Amplitube. I usually use some sort of slight distortion on the bass, so I seldom need to much compression. Sometimes I'll juice it up with Racktube.

For Guitar...
guitar > ART Pre > DIG, or Dirthead80. That's such an awesome VST!

other...
Minimogue (moog VST), Arp2600 (arp VST), Spook Keys (theremin VST) Random DSK VSTs that all are pretty friggin good.

The best thing to do is go to Gersic.com and start DLing all the VSTs to your taste. You can pretty much get anything you want, built for free. It's great!

[NickH]

Here is my home setup:-

[Mic Pre's]
• Aphex 207D
• Apogee Mini-MP
• Audient ASP008

[Monitoring]
• Goldpoint SA2X
• 2 x Adam P33A's
• Grado RS-1
• 2 x Yamaha HS50M
• Yamaha HS10W

[Pro Tools HD Setup]

• Pro Tools|HD2 Accel - (PCI)
• Apogee ROSETTA 800 192 with X-HD Card
• 96 I/O Interface
• Command|8
• Digidesign Custom Keyboard (WIN/USB)

[DAW Computer]

• Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad Processor
• Asus P5WDG2 WS Professional - Motherboard
• 2 x ASUS 7600 GS - 512MB Silent Graphics Cards
• 8GB (4 x 2 GB) Corsair Dominator TwinX DDR2 PC2-8500 (TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF 4GB Matched Pairs)
• Panasonic TX-37LZD70 LCD Monitor - [37" - 1900 x 1080]
• 2 x LG L1915S TFT Flatron Monitors - [19" - 1280 x 1024]
• 750GB Seagate Barracuda ST3750640AS - 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive (System)
• 200GB Seagate Barracuda ST3200822AS - 7200.7 SATA/150 Internal Hard Drive (Backup)
• Glyph GT050Q 500GB Audio Drive
• 2 x ADS Pyro Firewire Cards
• 19" Rack Server Case

The full list is stupidly long, as I pay the bills with this type of gear, but for the sufficiently bored & with time to kill here it is:-

Full Gear List

Cheers



N

[Steve Conner]

Very nice! How long before it all pays for itself?

I'm in the process of selling off all my studio gear, I'm going down to just a good pair of monitor speakers, a mic pre, and a Macbook Pro.

Random selection of music from the scopeboy studio here: scopeblog Steve’s Music

[NickH]

Very nice! How long before it all pays for itself?

Well.. audio engineering's my day job, so it paid for its self years ago.. I work in commercial studios during the day, that's just there to pull mixes up at night & do bits of homework, nothing to serous..

I'm in the process of selling off all my studio gear, I'm going down to just a good pair of monitor speakers, a mic pre, and a Macbook Pro.

Cool, what more do you really need, especially if you are not recording simultaneous multi track stuff, sometimes lots of gear just gets in the way.. And the plug ins are getting really suburb nowadays.. especially the Waves SSL suite & Steven Massey's stuff

Random selection of music from the scopeboy studio here: scopeblog Steve’s Music

Sounds great Steve, really hypnotic! great stuff..

You can here some of my mixes here http://www.nickhemingway.com/Showree...]-Showreel.mp3

Cheers

N

[Steve Conner]

Hey Nick, thanks for the feedback on my stuff! I did most of it years ago, but I recently decided to give up and concentrate on just playing guitar and bass.

I listened to the first few tracks on your showreel, they're just plain brutal It actually reminds me of Fleming Rasmussen's production on "And Justice For All", I hope you don't take that as an insult.

[ajkStrungtheoretic]

Nice setup, Nick. Your gear and your website very much remind me of a guy with whom we used to record a few years back. Although, the one thing on which I would have to disagree with you is the Marshall Mode Four amp. IMO, that thing is a nothing more than a bloody overpriced piece of dog-crap. I've known several people who have owned own, myself included, that were monumentally unhappy with the product. I personally struggled with getting a desireable sound out of the thing, meanwhile, a couple of other unlucky bastards I knew had nothing but problem after problem with them, including everything from blown valves to multiple footswitch issues to general grab-assery itself. IMO, you're better off getting your hands on a good old JCM head. Other than that, NICE SETUP.

[NickH]

Nice setup, Nick. Your gear and your website very much remind me of a guy with whom we used to record a few years back. Although, the one thing on which I would have to disagree with you is the Marshall Mode Four amp. IMO, that thing is a nothing more than a bloody overpriced piece of dog-crap. I've known several people who have owned own, myself included, that were monumentally unhappy with the product. I personally struggled with getting a desireable sound out of the thing, meanwhile, a couple of other unlucky bastards I knew had nothing but problem after problem with them, including everything from blown valves to multiple footswitch issues to general grab-assery itself. IMO, you're better off getting your hands on a good old JCM head. Other than that, NICE SETUP.

No disagreement here

The Mode 4 is a POS... However... it's got me out of the crap more than a few times when bands bring guitars with those god awful Bare Knuckle pickups in... (or some other nasty passive) Oddly it really makes them quite usable.. (for extreme metal) Still much prefer EMG81's into a nice 6L6 amp for meat & potatoes rhythm work any day...

If I need that Marshall sound for any reason we have a Marshall Model 6100 - 30th Anniversary that I converted back to the EL34 factory spec that does the job...

Cheers

N

[ajkStrungtheoretic]

You'll have to excuse my ranting, its just that whenever I see or hear mention of the Mode Four amp I just see RED and fly into a homicidal rage, lol. Of course that could have something to do with the grand or so that I blew on the damn thing. The music that I play IS actually rather heavy, and still I struggled to get a good sound out of that amp, worthless p.o.s. it was. Believe it or not, for recording purposes I actually went back to the solid state HDFX MG100 head. The thing is unbelievable, especially on the od/2 channel. It actually has a heavier distortion than that bloody f-ing MF. (As I'm sure you can tell, I've come to refer to the thing as MotherF--er.) With MG head, even with it being a S.S. head, the DDS feature along with the emulated line-out make it the ideal head for recording purposes. After experimenting a bit, I found that a mix using sounds from both the em. line -out and a mic-ed celestion cab pays off very well for heavier-end music. I'm not going to lie though, if you're looking for a good super-clean sound, its probably not going to happen with that head, unless you don't mind your clean tracks having just a bit "thump" along for the ride.

ajk

[Tele-Cat]

Mac G4 with a Digi 001 and a Presonus Digimax Mic pre for primary recording. Macbook Pro with an MBox 1 for mixing and overdubbing.

Alesis RA150 power amp and Alesis Monitor 7s for mixing. Grado S80 phones. Pro Tools LE 8.

[tboy]

Pro Tools LE 8.

How do you get the old Digi hardware to work with that?

[Tele-Cat]

How do you get the old Digi hardware to work with that?

I don't - bad writing on my part - I use 6.4 on the G4, and then import it into 8.01 on the MBP.

Sorry about the bad writing. The G4 is a great platform for recording but it has about 1/5 the horsepower of the MBP. I can only do crude mixes on the G4.

[tboy]

I use 6.4 on the G4, and then import it into 8.01 on the MBP

That explains the 001, but I thought Digidesign had also kicked the mBox 1 over to the "unsupported" side of the road. Does it still work with PT8?

[Tele-Cat]

That explains the 001, but I thought Digidesign had also kicked the mBox 1 over to the "unsupported" side of the road. Does it still work with PT8?

To the best of my knowledge that has not happened and I recorded some guitar just yesterday with the MBox and PT8.01 so my guess is it's still supported, maybe "unofficially," I don't know. I can see I'll have to keep my eye on that.

Edit - 8.01 is the last version compatible with the Original MBox but since I don't foresee making another record any time soon, I'm not too worried about it. PT has a good record of being backward compatible in opening sessions from previous versions. I've got enough plugs in 8.01 (some damn good deals over the summer) that I should never need to upgrade the SW as long as I have a Leopard partition on my hard drive.

All is well.