hi. ive been recording vocals for years simply plugging in my microphone to the back of my sound cards input. crude perhaps but it has worked mostly fine. I'm somewhat aware that having a mixer/preamp is supposed to enhance your signal or clear it up somewhat (i think, right?) so recently i picked up one of these xenyx 502s. it hisses. it sucks.

First off i'm not a pro, but i love to read about sound and inform myself by various information i can get. I really love the world of sound engineering, but i have some question since i need to know others opinion or other knowledge. I write this to know what you guys THINK about it and also to know if there is a way if i'm on the wrong path to hear it.

But it's wracking my brain...
I'm music conducting a musical called Next To Normal (great score, by the way) and I have a violin part that calls for doubling on a synthesizer. I found all the patches that the score calls for on a Roland Fantom XR. I've got the rack mounted equipment set up to be triggered by a M-Audio Ozone keyboard. Very simple.

When you close a programs in Win 7 is it totally closed or is it still occupying the OS or cache, like Firefox or a mail app? I ask this because I notice the first time I open a program it takes a while to load but once a program is opened, even though you close it, it loads up really fast the next time like its sitting in the background or cache.

I'm running an Audiobox 1818vsl 8 channel mixer through Cubase 5, I have a Head Amp Pro 6 channel headphone amp, a MXL 3000 microphone, and M-Audio Studio Pro 8 speakers. My speakers are connected by connecting an audio cable from the main speaker (right), to the other speaker(left). I have to use the Audiobox as the driver in Cubase in order for me to record through it.

Where have I been, check this out: Is there anything else out there like this? This is limited, unable to cascade it but pretty cool for studios only using a small amount of outboard gear. This along side the Liaison would be pretty awesome for my setup.

Have you seen this in action?

SSL X-Patch

This is home-studio-ish, so I'll ask here.

I'm looking at this:

hello,
First, I wanted to buy a midi keyboard, but I decided that I will buy synth to $ 400:) My choice is a Korg MS2000. Recommend me some other synths for that price. I making electronic music (Ableton): experimental, ambient, witch house, minimal synth, minimal wave, synth.

Thanks for any suggestion!

What is the best interface I can buy for around $200 dollars that has a midi input/output? I originally bought the M-Audio Fast Track USB ($100) which has worked well, but I'm going to want to make my own beats so having a midi input would be ideal. (Unless I can somehow plug my keyboard into the Guitar input on the device) Please help. I only have a few more days left to return this.