That's got to be the toughtest question ever.

Let me get sidetracked on that - I think that THE (prounouced "Theee") most important thing (besides the room and the ears) is the monitoring chain. Without question. You can have the greatest gear in the universe, but if you can't hear it accurately, it may as well be a rack full of Berry's.

On the other hand, you could have a rack full of Berry's and be able to work around some of their shortcomings with a superior monitoring system.

After that, CONVERTERS. For the same reason.

Thanks Massive! Oh, and I didn't forget about you. I'm going to finish tracking the current project I'm working on and I'll get in touch with you to have it mastered when I have a final mix. Fortunately, the drummer triggers his whole kit (other than cymbals), they have great gear, and they play well! When I bring you the final mix hopefully it'll be something that won't be mostly fixes. Also, I hope you can handle listening to metal. They are along the lines of Fear Factory style drums with a more nu-metal'ish/swedish metal sound. Really differnet from what is currently out there, and original enough to start a new metal trend. Very interesting to listen to!

Again, thanks for the input!

What piece of outboard gear do you find to be a necessity in any studio?

Good ears!

Well, I guess I'd have say my API lunch box with it's mic pre's eq's and comps. It is all in one frame as is one piece of outboard gear in my rack.

But my most used and value added studio tool has to be my swiss army audio knife - my Eventide DSP4500. Be it sources from analog or digtal I/O, with it's custom algorthim construction capability to handle both analog and digital tasks from standard bread and butter effects, DSP tools, filters, eq's dynamics to synthasizer effects, and with the complete DSP4000 sereis preset library to choose from, max size 174-second multi-sampler with time squeeze, all make it the clear winner in my studio.

Haha, your description of that makes it sound really damn expensive, but very tempting!

therecordingart wrote: Haha, your description of that makes it sound really damn expensive, but very tempting!

Ya, and at just under $5K which was a real bargin back in 1997, Eventide released the Orville about 10-months later at just over $5k that is more than 8x the DSP power and is more akin to being equal to both a DSP7000 and DSP7500 in one box. Ouch! that hurt. But the DSP4500 is or rather was a limited edition model and I certianly have gotten my money's wrth out of it and much, much more.