Upgrade the monitoring and room treatments. $500 isn't going to get you much in the way of monitors. Secondaries, yes. Primaries...?

Bass trapping - You can NEVER have too much - It isn't physically possible. On the cheap, try http:// - Excellent, and very inexpensive.

Other than that - *Maybe* go with dual smaller video monitors to save some cash for the intense amount of cabling... You can easily blow through $1,000 in cables, even for a fairly simple setup.

But yeah, I'm a nut for monitoring and room treatment - You can't tweak what you can't hear. Everything else is secondary.

Massive Mastering wrote: http:// - Excellent, and very inexpensive.

Nothing like a Ceiling Tile in a wood frame =]

Get a dual CPU mac. 2 gigs of RAM will do. Get a second fast internal disk. And you might as well plan your backup and recovery strategy now.
You can just as well put a UAD-1 card on the list now. That one will be one of your best investments ever.

Decent monitors will at least set you back 1000USD.

Unless you really know why you are getting Pro Tools, consider DP or Logic.

You might really want some good mic preamps.
One vocal mic? ONE? :shock:

is the dual mac with 2gb of ram necesarry can the single 1.8ghz not do the same job and pro tools is my choice because i like the digi 002 rack the way it can record 8 tracks at once unless theres another way of going about that seeing as im a total newb if i could actually record 10 tracks at once and then be able too add like 14 later or if i could get get a mixing console with 24 tracks and mix everything from there i dont really know thats why im asking for as much help as possible

pretty much im asking if u had 10000 to spend from scratch what would u get?

Youcan record up to 18 tracks at the same time with a Digi002 (you can do the same with a Digi001).

As to your list of gear, add room treatment, get a smaller LCD monitor (17" is fine), get better monitors, add a few more mics, maybe a decent preamp. Don't forget plugins (e.g., Waves Gold or similar).

bassman123 wrote: ]mac G5 single1.8ghz $1899
mac 20inc cinema display $1249

Oh my lord.
You can build a 3.2 ghz Pentium 4 with 2 gigs of ram and 2 10,000 RPM sata drives, and a 19" monitor for about $1300. You can save $1800 if you wisely stay clear of the urban legend that macs are so much better than PCs. They're both computers, they both crunch numbers, they both run Pro Tools. Why do you need a $1300 cinema display? Seems like overkill, especially for the price. You can pickup a pair of 21" crt monitors and run dual display for half the price of that mac screen. Yikes!

SuperChester wrote: You can build a 3.2 ghz Pentium 4 with 2 gigs of ram and 2 10,000 RPM sata drives, and a 19" monitor for about $1300. You can save $1800 if you wisely stay clear of the urban legend that macs are so much better than PCs. They're both computers, they both crunch numbers, they both run Pro Tools. Why do you need a $1300 cinema display? Seems like overkill, especially for the price. You can pickup a pair of 21" crt monitors and run dual display for half the price of that mac screen. Yikes!

Clients pay more if you have a Mac. Some say sad but I think it's safe to say everyone agrees it's true. (The same goes for Neumann, ProTools etc...)

Clients pay more if you have a Mac. Some say sad but I think it's safe to say everyone agrees it's true. (The same goes for Neumann, ProTools etc...)

The starvation and elimination of hundreds, maybe thousands of "professional" recording studios ( most using pro tools on Macs) due to home grown PC systems yielding great product does not support that statement.

Audio snobbery is alive and well...LOL
Which clients? If you are talking big time artists...well I doubt they would go to someones neighboorhood home studio. If you are referring to local guys who want to record a CD demo or to sell on gigs..I dont think thay will pay more for a MAC if they can get just as good a product from a less expensive studio running on a Windows based system.

Musicians who can and will pay to record in someones basment won't care about the gear as much as price and performance. Which is why many home studios use PC platforms in the first place. More bang for the buck.

Am I the only professional artist/entertainer who could care less about the gear and am more focused on the talent of the engineer who can make any gear sound good. I think not. Why? becasue in my own hungry days I used PC and Cakewalk version 1, ESQ sampler) and Alesis (digiverbs and more). Those companies brought previously unaffordable technology to the common man.

so it turns out im able to spend up to 15,000 so again if u had that much "coin" how would u spend it on a recording studio?

That's more money for good monitors and room treatments. :wink:

Don't forget to budget in a good lava lamp or 3. That can run you upwards of $300 per. Skip that crappy Behringr Lava Lamp Pro; I think Digidesign is coming out with one that will work with Pro Tools.

But seriously, if I were you I would focus first on making a decent recording space with proper treatment; next focus on some real nice nearfield monitors (Genelec or something along those lines), perhaps some mid/far field speakers if you have the space; next focus on your microphone/preamp selection; THEN see what kind of money you have to get the sound into a computer. If you have enough money left over, then by all means, get the Mac and ProTools lite and the cinema display. But don't put so much money into your computer that you have to skimp on things that actually affect the SOUND.

I don't really get this very much, maybe I'm too much of a business goob. But, if you have $10grand to spend, wouldn't you want to see what people are willing to spend before dropping an ADDITIONAL $5k?

Hell, I'd start with the barebones minimum and once you get someone in there to record you can figure out where you're short and pick up gear from there.

Just my $0.02.

Dave.

If you aren't trying to be a "professional" studio, but want to be able to make high quality recordings for artists on a budget (this is what i do) this is where i would put my money.

A PC with the software of your choice, rackmounted, extra audio drive, lots of RAM, the whole deal, and the software of your choice. Say Cubase. And a 17" flatscreen monitor. Total package:
$2500

Then get a couple octopres, or firepods, or any rackmountable preamp/interface.
$1200

Buy a couple very nice mono preamps, or at least one.
$2000

Various plug ins and outboard gear
$2000

Mics enough to mic a whole band
3 57s
3 421s
2 SM58s
1 D6
2 SM81s
a couple stereo pairs of decent but cheaper mics like NT2s
and a Neumann U87 to show off

5,000 (give or take, i didn't work it out)

Monitors (Quality ones that you enjoy the sound of)
1000

Cables
1500

Stand, Phones, Accessories
1000

Room treatment for at least your control room
1000

Okay so that went a little over, but i have a similar set up, and i just have a basic rack of stuff that allows me to do live recordings with a split snake, or track a band at their practice space (it sucks usually, but sometimes its fun to acoustically treat a room as well as you can in an hour). And you can also track at your home studio. This allows you to be pretty flexible and make some good money recording crappy bands every once in a while, but it only takes a day to do a 3 song demo and you charge $350 and if you make it sound decent you will get tons of business and this is a run on sentence. Anyways just something to think about because if you are going to have a project studio, you might as well increase your earning potential and allow it to go mobile.

K

Hi bassman,
I was in the exact position as you (except i didn't have all the cash up front you lucky bastard! I had to work a crappy kitchen job and pour all my paychecks into it for 2 years!)

For me, a G5 is the way to go, I have worked on way too many flakey pc's to trust a recording session to one. I would also suggest a dual processor because protools can be set to 99% cpu usage (it uses one processor for audio and dsp, and the other to run the system and background tasks, instead of clogging up one processor) and run at lease a gig of ram. Definitely get a fast 2nd internal hard drive, you don't want the computer to be reading and writing to the same drive when recording more than 6-8 tracks of audio.

on to gear... forget the behringer man. I have 2 behringer ultragain mic pre's and i have to grit my teeth every time i reach for the power button. they are crap. i would suggest a behringer headphone amp however cuz sound quality doesn't matter with them.

If you are looking to expand your track count I would look at the Focusrite Octopre LE (with digital card). It's a little more $$ but they are very usable preamps and you won't regret owning them. presonus also makes the digimax preamp wich is pretty good, but the focusrite is better on a wider range of sources in my opinion.

For monitors, I have carvin srs 6.5's which, believe me or not, are incredible for the money. I regularly mix in studios with $10,000 genelec's and i've also mixed on NS-10s, HD1's, mackie's, alesis, etc. and the carvin's definately hold their own against all (but the genellec's). check them out @ carvin.com but don't get the active ones, get the passive ones with a good reference amp (like hafler).

like someone else said, buy a good "flagship" preamp, also buy a good "flagship" condenser mic.

also, don't skimp out on the basics, get good cables, and I would also suggest getting a furman power conditioner to protect your gear (i'm buy one as soon as i get some cash). if you want to save some money in the long run, and you have way too much time on your hands, get a roll of good bulk mogami or canare cable and buy the connectors seperate and solder your own cables together... or not if your lazy like me.

no matter what anybody says, stick with protools if you are planning on being serious about this. not only for the brand name (which does count for alot in this industry) but also because it is industry standard for a reason. absolutely nothing comes close as far as audio is concerned, it is by far the fastest, most stable, simplest platform for audio recording. and the protools hardware is compatible with all other software if you want to run something else for midi or whatever.

also, like someone else mentioned, by god get acoustic treatment! if you don't treat your live room, your recordings will sound like shite. and if you don't treat your control room, your mixes will sound like shite. its as simple as that.

ok one last thing because i don't want to ramble on for too long here... If i were you i'd think about a control surface. presentation is a big thing no matter what anybody says. if your studio looks good, the artist will feel good, thus giving you a better performance. if the artist has mixed feelings about anything it will come out in the performance. i know it sounds like a bunch of bullocks but its true. a nice control surface (command 8, or mackie, or just a regular 002) will score major points in presentation and also will make you mix faster.

drop me a line if you want to ask me anything,
my website:
http://www.amoaudio.com