DO,

> what piece of equipment I should get next <

I'm biased because I moderate the Acoustics forum. But unless you already have acoustic treatment in your room, that will probably do more to improve the quality of your work than any piece of "gear."

--Ethan

I will assume you already have room treatments and a great monitoring system (you can't do anything unless you can hear it) and you are asking about hardware purchases..

I recomend that you look at better condenser mics and pre amps. Even with cheap dynamic mics, great pres can make a world of difference. But be prepared to fork out some serious cash because good pres and mics aren't cheap. Expect to spend at least $500 per channel (perhaps more) for a good mic pre unless you pick up one of the multi channel units like the [="http://www.jlmaudio.com/8packoftrans.htm"]JLM TMP 8[/]="http://www.jlmaudio…"]JLM TMP 8[/] or [[url=http://="http://www.sebatron…"]Sebatron vmp 4000e[/]="http://www.sebatron…"]Sebatron vmp 4000e[/] (both a best buy IMO).

Audio Technica, Studio Projects and Rode all offer some nice condenser mics at very affordable prices.. and have very good quality control and build quality. The same cannot be said for other mics coming out of Asia.

The most important elements in your recording chain are you transducers (mics & speakers) and mic pres. The greatest gains in quality can be achived in these areas.

I have a set up much like yours, dual 867 mac w/DP 4.12 and 828mkII- a good preamp and better conversion made a great difference for me, improved the sound considerably - I got grace 101 pre's (2ch) going through rosetta AD 2ch and I haven't looked back- If you need to record more than 2 tracks at a time you might want to get 8 ch of conversion but that is expensive (rosetta 800 is over 2k) and 8 ch of decent pre amps will set you back a bit too- One comment, I used to have one of those behringer preamps when I had a commercial studio (I sold it already) and the one I had was surprinsigly decent- many of my costumers like it for tracking vocals- one never knows with cheap gear, sometimes you get lucky :D

Anyway, I paid about $1200 for 2ch of grace preamps and for aboout 1K you can have 2 ch of sebatron which is greatly regarded in this forum (I am thinking of getting one soon, probably the 4ch for $1600) The rosetta is about 1K new but you can find them in ebay often for under $700- like I said, it made a great difference in my sound, made my better mics sound fantastic (rca 77d, u87) and my lower end mics (rode nt1) sound so much better you wouldn't believe it was the same mic!

:cool: