Well, I was thinking today, and I decided to try and become active again in semi-every-so-often blogging on this thing. It is our blog, after all…

I have actually started construction (destruction) in my basement this week on what I hope will quickly become my project studio (equipped for both music and freelance design purposes). I have had to “undo” some nasties that the previous owners left for me. Most notably are moldy sheet rock and literally NO electrical run for the room.

So why not post a preliminary plan on the blog and let some others comment on what my set-up should be? I could actually use the help. Here are my initial thoughts / factors / constraints / plans:

The initial set-up should accommodate the actual project I want to work on, but with flexibility in mind, since I may decide to change up or perhaps explore other directions along the way. What I want to accommodate right off is:

DAW: – 2 G4 Mac Titanium Laptops (already have) – Audio interface / MIDI IO (please help)

*Mixer / Monitoring: – Mixer? (please help) – Phones for monitoring (for now)

MIDI: – M-Audio MK-449C MIDI Controller Keys (already have) – Secondary control (TBD)

Instruments: – ESP LTD MH50 Electric Guitar (already have) – Udu (TBD) – Frame drums (TBD) – Various hand percussion (TBD) – Flute / didge (TBD) – Various VST / AU

*External Effects? (have not yet decided on this - comments welcome): I have tossed this idea around a bit, looking to offload some of the CPU load from effects to external units. Comments welcome on external DSP (powercore) vs. Hardware… – Small Rack (please help) – Reverb (please help) – Multi FX unit (please help)

Mics: (please help)

So I obviously need suggestions for Mics as well as the best way to tie it all together, vis a vis audio/MIDI IO interface. I am aiming to sync the midi clocks on both laptops. The items with * are kind of “what ifs?” In other words, if I go the way of external effects, etc, I would need to more carefully consider these. So I am hoping to generate some discussion here as I move towards an initial set up. Also, keeping in mind that the budget is tight (I have to figure that out yet), and this is a certainly a novice set-up, I want to sensitive to cost where possible without compromising too much those items that are important.

So it may be bare bones at first, but I would like comments on all this stuff.

  • dp