Equipment and Digital Studio Setup

Hi guys! I'm gunna quickly run you through the equipment I've been gathering to make a digital home studio.  I don't have heaps of cash to blow so its a home studio on the cheap. Also, I'm still an amateur so I've avoided going for anything complex. I want to keep it simple. I'm positive that this will put me at a disadvantage in the long run, but I'm not too bothered about that for now. I just want to record! There's always the option of giving it to an engineer later to have it spruced up.

Ok, so here's a basic list of the stuff I have or bought etc:

1 - My PC. I'm gunna make a digital studio, coz I only have a tiny room to setup in. Also, digital is sooooo cheap now. I'm still avoiding Mac computers coz they cost an arm and a leg. I wont bore you with specs. Its got a mid-range dual processor, 4 gig of memory, Vista, you get the gist. Cheap. I could have just bought any PC off the shelf. They're so fast these days.
Something you might want to think about is computer noise. I did. I want to use a microphone later, in the same room, so I need my computer to be quiet. I'll also have to insulate the desk it goes in. We'll get to that later...

I just realised that I am a total nerd. How depressing.

 2 - Soundcard. Normal computer soundcards don't understand analogue signals. That's all I know. So I got a Creative X-Fi Pro. Yes, like I said, cheap. It was something like $450 (AU) when I got it a year ago. If you've got lots of cash, go ahead an shop for pro parts. A good soundcard can set you back $2k. But the thing that drew me to the X-Fi Pro, other than price, was its simplicity. I just wanna plug in and play. This does that.
It's got two line in jacks, and a headphones jack, on the console. That's all I need to begin. It has other plugs on the back, MIDI and stuff to plug in a digital keyboard, but I don't care about that right now. I have my guitar plugged straight in to the Line In 3. It doesn't get any simpler than that. Here's a pic.

The knobs don't do much. The big one is volume.  :)

So the soundcard has an analog-to-digital converter in it or something. It converts my guitars analog signal into a digital signal my computer can understand. I dunno, who gives a shit really. It works. That's it.

3 - Sequencing Software. I got Propellerhead's 'Record/Reason' bundle.
This is basically software to arrange my recorded tracks into a song. It should also come with a digital mixer console so I can mix the song. Really anal musicians and audio engineers will crap on about 'Logic' or 'Pro Tools' which they say is industry standard, blah blah. But I want cheap and easy, I'm not part of the 'industry' yet. The term 'industry standard' just sounds like a marketing gimmick to me. To be fair, I've never tried Pro Tools. It's always been too expensive, not sure what it costs now.
I said in my last post I used Cool Edit Pro 2 for a bit. Very crude software, almost too simple, and didn't have a lot of tools for working on my song. That meant it took forever to arrange and mix a song. I learnt a lot having to process everything manually though.
I also had a go at Cubase 4, but geeze it was difficult to learn. I did all their tutorials but, at the end of them, I still felt like I had no idea how it actually worked.
Anyway, so a few weeks ago I saw that Propellerhead had brought out a recording sequencer called 'Record'. They have video tutorials on their website which were easy to follow. I had previously tried a demo of 'Reason', a digital instrument sequencer, in the past. It was easy to use but lacked a good soundbank, probably due to it being a demo version. The appealing thing to me is the ease of putting analogue and digital together in the one sequencer. And the digital sound library is to use straight away. That speaks 'simplicity' to me.
So I lashed out and bought a copy of the Record/Reason duo bundle. It was $515 (AU) including postage in July 2010. And it comes with a free software upgrade when they release version 1.5 later this month I think. It has a fairly large sound library that will work with a Midi keyboard so that's awesome. I'll buy more sound banks later if I need to.
Here's a photo. Sorry, no 'unboxing' video for you weirdos out there, although I wouldn't be surprised if you found one on youtube. Yep, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pxy3ZiUOD8

Fits snug on the bookshelf too

4 - Headphones or Speakers (pros call them 'Studio monitors'). I've just got some headphones, lashed out and bought the Shure SRH440's (the peeps at my old work gave me a $150 leaving gift). They're the best headphones I've ever had. But then again, I've only ever had shit headphones. I do have some speakers, but they're just my crappy old Gateway computer speakers. They'll do for now, at least I have a separate sub-woofer. Here's a pic of my Shure SRH440's headphones.

Time to make my ears bleed

Sadly, monitor speakers are expensive. Most 'industry' people will tell you that you absolutely need studio monitors. I'm not convinced yet, and I'm also out of cash at this point. Basic pro monitor speakers cost about $1000, however there are some really good desktop size ones appearing on the market now. I've got my eye on some M-Audio BX5a's which are roughly $450 (AU) for a pair. One day maybe.

Soon my lovelies. Soon...

5 - A microphone and a microphone preamp. I want to do some vocal work. Nothing fancy. I got the Rode NT1A and to pre-amp it (to make it loud enough to hear), I got the Behringer Tube Ultragain MIC100. The microphone was $400 (AU) in 2009, and the preamp was $80 (AU) or something like that. Very basic, very cheap. The microphone plugs into the pre-amp, and then the pre-amp plugs into the Line 2 jack on my audio card console. I also have a microphone stand that I borrowed from an old mate (it was lying under his bed for years).

NT1-A. Rode, please sponsor me, I'm desperate!

There are an insane number of microphone and pre-amps out there. The sky's the limit with this crap. It's possible to get microphones that don't need a pre-amp I think. Like the Shure SM58 which is another well known microphone. I used the Shure SM58 for my early recordings, which was great then, but I'd like to step it up a notch.

6 - Instruments!!!
So I have:
- Fender (Deluxe Strat Plus II) electric guitar that my Mum and Dad got me when I was 15. Its still bloody awesome. A Classic. The sound is very mid-tone though. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I used to have a boss-ME8 digital effects board for my guitar, but it died. So I'll just be using the Record/Reason software for guitar effects. Maybe one day I'll be able to afford a Gibson so I can get some sound variety.
- Washburn XB-400 bass guitar. Don't know if I'll use this yet. I discovered that my software has some pretty cool digital bass guitars that are amazingly easy to work with. We'll see anyway.

I haven't played this thing in 7 years

- For keyboard work, I bought the M-Audio Oxygen 8 v2 (digital midi keyboard). The keyboard uses the Record/Reason software soundbank to make sounds. It has no internal sounds. There are heaps of digital Midi keyboards out there, but I got this one because it was cheap, very small (portable), and M-Audio has a good reputation. You can't go past a good rep. I discovered that this keyboard can do more than I had expected. The knobs can be 'programmed' to sync with just about anything on your mixer/sequencer. That's cool but I probably will never use that. Ha! I just want to press the keys, and have a sound play. That's all.
- I borrowed a Trace Elliot amp from one of my old mates. Sadly it has some 'buzzing' noise issues so I won't be using that for now. It probably just needs a service and I don't wanna mess with my mates things too much.

Time to make some slamming tunes

So that's everything! Like I said, very basic, very simple, pretty cheap. Let's see if I can actually make some music crammed into this tiny little back room. Or else, it will be an EPIC FAIL and I'll go get a job at the local supermarket. Fuck. Hopefully, this will be FTW ('For the win' for you non-nerds).

Note that there is no fancy multi-track mixing desk or anything in my set-up. All that stuff is in the software now. Go digital, yay! God I love the 21st century.

One final thing you might need. Musical knowledge. (or Talent). To be honest, I don't think you need talent. You just have to know what you like. That's my opinion. Music doesn't need to be complex, or difficult, people just have to like it. The fundamentals are rhythm and melody. Everyone knows a good beat or a good tune when they hear it. That's it. Well, I'll keep telling myself that...

Next post. Song 1. I'll walk you through my first song. Later peeps.