Knowing what you know now, what would you get if:

[Drumstruck]

.... you walked into your studio and ..... all you had left was your DAW, your outboard amd your monitoring setup....

What would you put in the middle:

- new desk?
and/or
- new control surface?
and/or
- new convertors?

Let's assume you had enough money in your pocket to fund something similar or slightly better than what you had......

[Wiz]

I can't believe I am gonna say this....


not really anything.


It would be just pissing money away.


Till I find a way to get more coin out of this, I think I am pretty much at an impasse...


oh wait, I know


airline tickets to the USA

[wez]

A space to put it in.

[Drumstruck]

Wow - no desk, no convertors suggested..... so I guess everyone will just work ITB and use inbuilt sound ? Audio must be dead

[Chris H]

......yep, I'd just get a well paid job that hopefully has some relevance to my passion for music.

[Ausrock]

I don't own a DAW as such, I have eight channels of converters serving channels 9-16 of my Fostex D160, there's 16 tracks of 1" analogue that can be synched to the D160. If I was utilising my gear more I would only want to upgrade my console but more importantly, I'd be replacing/upgrading my meagre skillset.

[Kurt]

I guess either people see their interface as part of the DAW and are happy with what they have, or they are not doing much recording. I remember Ethan Winer writing about the humble Soundblaster 16, arguing that it's conversion was more than adequate for recording purposes (with tests and figures to back it up).

Gear doesn't make records, people do

Wow - no desk, no convertors suggested..... so I guess everyone will just work ITB and use inbuilt sound ? Audio must be dead

[Linear]

i reckon you've got to look at it from your potential customers point of view.

in other words, why do they want to give you money? if you're a great producer then it doesn't matter what you have, they'll be paying for your experience.

if you're selling the studio, then it'd better have things in there that they can't get at home. don't forget too that for many bands it's as much about the experience as the end result, so it should look like a studio (not an office with a computer sitting on the desk).

best (bad?) advice I give people is to buy things that you can use for 10 years to make money, then hopefully sell for what you paid for it - and if you're lucky, more than what you paid.

so buying stuff new, or buying crap, or buying esoteric, or buying bad quality (ie more expensive to repair than is worth it) is the quickest way to lose money.

so rather than buy 10 crap microphones that will make your records sound bad and be worth nothing down the track, buy 1 great microphone.

buy a console if it'll make your studio look better and give bands the studio experience.

buy converters if it's the weakest link in your chain (but expect them to be worth nothing in 10 years).

As for ethan winer - i read all that bullsh!t he wrote. thing is, i also listened to some records he'd done. worst sounding garbage ever, which really makes his analysis worthless. i often wondered if he had shares in soundblaster.

Chris

[Kurt]

Haha, touche I always thought he was pretty widely respected.

As for ethan winer - i read all that bullsh!t he wrote. thing is, i also listened to some records he'd done. worst sounding garbage ever, which really makes his analysis worthless. i often wondered if he had shares in soundblaster.

Chris

[Drumstruck]

So far you all still have a DAW (Mac or PC or a 1" analog and a D160) and some mics and outboard in your racks and some monitors - in your current studio space....... all totally useless without the "bits in the middle"

- you still have no convertors, no desk, no control surface, no sound card .....

And no, you can't just step into T'rock and use Rick's Neve!


Would you set up again? High quality? Just acceptable? Cheap and crappy?

Or perhaps sell your remaining gear and go and lean on a council shovel?

[Kurt]

As Wez said earlier, I'd be looking for a better space first, I think it would make a far bigger difference to the look and feel, workflow, sound and output.

So far you all still have a DAW (Mac or PC or a 1" analog and a D160) and some mics and outboard in your racks and some monitors - in your current studio space....... all totally useless without the "bits in the middle"

- you still have no convertors, no desk, no control surface, no sound card .....

And no, you can't just step into T'rock and use Rick's Neve!


Would you set up again? High quality? Just acceptable? Cheap and crappy?

Or perhaps sell your remaining gear and go and lean on a council shovel?

[Text_Edifice]

I wouldn't really want a control surface.

I would probably go for 32ch ad/da of some form, ideally that I can run off a lappie. Don't really care what they are to be honest, most things are pretty good. Portability is important; would like a couple of headphone amps

I'd be inclined towards a small-ish console (32 channel) if I had the space and cash, otherwise a really good, easily reconfigurable, patchbay and monitoring controller / headphone amps.

[Paul Maybury]

I would go with cheap but good converters and the best console I can find.
Again!

[wez]

Seriously, if I was starting from scratch, I would take the advice that I ignored first time around... find/build/sort out the room before anything else.

And I would sit in my big, empty, gear-less room visualising how little equipment I actually really needed to do what I wanted to do.

And from there I would proceed.

[Drumstruck]

Now we're cooking - I like the idea of the room and the implication that there is more gear to come