My studio

This is my playground:

studio

The things in the picture above are:

Alesis Ion (image)
Virtual analog synthesizer, extremely expressive and configurable, excellent price, sounds like a real analog even though it's emulated on silicon. Sounds awesome and it's ideal for creating new sounds.

Alesis QS6.2 (image)
Classic sampler (ROMpler actually), can be expanded via Flash cards, very solid build, very reliable, simple to operate. Has a nice collection of sounds actually, and some of the expansion cards are pretty interesting.

TC Electronic M-One XL (image)
Signal processor by one of the big names in the field. Goes way beyond the "reverb box" category. Has some really good-sounding reverbs, other types of effects can be summoned as well, there are two independent processing chains that can be stacked, connected in parallel, can drive each other, etc. - there is a lot of freedom in the ways the sound processors can be connected internally.

M-Audio Delta 1010 (image)
"Sound card on steroids" - 8 input, 8 output balanced analog channels, a pair of S/PDIF digital connectors, a pair of MIDI. Solid, good performance, has all the basic features. Works very well.

Mackie Big Knob (image)
You can replace pretty much an entire classic studio with a computer, but you still need a piece of solid hardware to conveniently control the level, or to switch the monitors, or for talkback, etc. The Big Knob does all that. It also has a... um... big knob to turn the volume up or down comfortably. Makes everything much easier in a computer-only environment.

M-Audio Midisport 4x4 (image)
Quad MIDI box, USB-based. That's it. That's all that I need. :-)

Sennheiser HD600 (image)
At the moment of purchase were arguably rated the best headphones in the world (also, among the most expensive). Now they were superceded by the HD650. Extremely transparent sound. Put them on, listen to a DVD, and you can start picking up stuff that only the sound engineer was able to hear when working on the soundtrack of the movie. It is hard to explain how different the experience of listening can be when using these phones, just try them and see for yourself. I am a cheapskate with all my equipment, but not with the phones. I feed them with signal from the Big Knob.

Alesis M1 Active MkII (image)
Studio monitors. Cost-effective but fairly good sounding. A bit bass-heavy, but the treble is OK, not too harsh for the price range. For casual listening, they can fill a room with sound if you don't require extreme sound levels.

StudioProjects VTB1 (image)
Microphone preamp, it's a tube / solid state hybrid. Has all the basic stuff, sounds good, pretty cheap.

RNC1773 Really Nice Compressor (image)
Looks like something put together by a bunch of teenagers, sounds like a $2k equipment, actual price 10x less than what it sounds like. It must have been my lucky day.

Shure SM57 (image)
Multi-purpose microphone. Cheap. Sounds good. Very sturdy. A classic.

last modified: 2007/04/18