Due to an over enthusiastic French manicure leaving me with white tipped nails that would be the envy of the female cast of Hollyoaks, I’m not going to be typing too much this month. Instead, I have found lots of lovely pictures to fill in the gaps along with a rough overview of the essentials of a basic recording setup.

COMPUTER

Mac or PC?  This is the most arse numbingly tedious debate since time immemorial and is one that I’ve treated with supreme indifference, but I suppose I should say a little on this.

PCs are fine for general use and will do pretty much anything you want your home or office computer to do.  However, they do at times come up short when you ask them to do the more demanding tasks.  You can get PCs custom built that will do a far better job, but I’ve yet to find anything better for running audio software than a Mac.  Simply buy the best Mac you can afford, stack it to the eyeballs with RAM and away you go.

SEQUENCERS

Logic
All singing and dancing sequencer with enough synths, sounds and FX to keep you busy for a long time.

Ableton
Now at version 7, with a revamped sound engine and some tasty new drum racks, Ableton is the best sequencer for getting your ideas sketched out quickly.  It’s very easy to use and great fun to work with and is still the only serious option for live performance.

Cubase
V4 has left Steinberg flailing about in pigshit like an epileptic being tortured with a cattle prod under strobe lighting.  Many users are angry that they can’t use the DX plugins they paid good money for and there are lots of reports of instability. In fairness, previous versions of Cubase have been superb and have many happy users.

SOUNDCARD

As a soundcard is a pivotal part of a modern studio set up, it makes sense to buy the best you can afford and the good news is you don’t have to put a kidney on eBay to get something that sounds respectable.  Here’s a few to bear in mind.

M-Audio Firewire 410
This is not a bad place to start for an entry level sound card.  OK-ish mic preamps, four inputs, 10 outputs and two headphone outputs.  This will handle any sample rate you can throw at it and will sound pretty good whilst doing it.

MOTU Ultralight
For £350 you’re getting a very good sounding unit that’s got pretty much everything you need.  Good mic preamps, plenty of inputs and outputs and its own mixing and monitoring options.  It’s also very small, making it great for taking on the road.

RME FF400
At £549 this better be good…and it is.  Superb sound quality and reliability is what the Fireface range is about.  It’s not got as many inputs and outputs as the other two, but it does have two very good preamps, rock solid software and is also small enough to fit in a laptop bag. 

MONITORS

Choosing monitors is a tricky business and can have a fairly drastic effect on how your music ends up sounding on other sound systems.  It’s also very much a preference issue.  Again, you get what you pay for.  If you buy a set of cheap speakers form Argos and expect to sound like Quincy Jones you’ve fucked up.  But as before, a good set of monitors can be had at a decent price, especially second hand, and they will last you a long time.

KRK Rokkit Series
KRK monitors are well worth a listen & users often find that they prefer them to much pricier competitors.  With good bass response & clear tops & mids, they can put out a decent volume.  They’re not the most refined monitors in the world, but they give you enough detail to know what’s going on in your mix.

Dynaudio BM Series
The BM series are great for mixing any tracks that you are intending to be played in clubs.  Very punchy for their size, they have a great bass response and are as tough as a Glaswegian prison warden.

Genelec
Genelec makes monitors of all shapes and sizes and they are used in many top studios worldwide.  They can be extremely expensive and are absolutely shit hot.  Thankfully for those who don’t have a spare £50,000 lying about, they do make the 802As which match up with a sub to give you full range monitoring.  The bass from this set up is unreal and the tops and mids are smooth and detailed, allowing you to mix anything from drum and bass to an orchestral piece.  At this price level, also look at ADAM, ATC and my personal faves, PMC.

Soundcraft  Absolute 2s
If Soundcraft had been honest, they would have named these Absolute Shite.  To me they sound like a 40 year old dog with cystitis, groaning as he passes a bladder stone on a rusty tin roof.  The most pleasant sound these could make would be the noise the rocket made as it launched them in to space.

SOFTWARE

Reaktor 5
Although the New School sound engine has been used to death by less imaginative minimal producers, Reaktor is capable of producing a seemingly infinite palette of electronic sounds.  A vast library of synths, FX, step sequencers and drum machines are available and if you have time to spare you can make your own applications.  Pretty cool.

Sonic Charge Micro Tonic
Great sounding drums with an intuitive step sequencer.  Building drum patterns with this is quick and easy. Try out the demo.

Arturia
Arturia have been committing to software many of the best loved 70s synth behemoths for some time now and they have done a fine job.  They have captured amongst others, the Minimoog, ARP 2600, Moog Modular and CS80, which is a boon for those who have a Rick Wakeman fetish and don’t live in a house the size of an aircraft hanger.

ADDING HARDWARE

If you want to add a fair bit of hardware to your setup, such as synths, samplers and outboard FX, you will need a mixing desk.  As this subject could easily take up an article on its own, I shall exercise some degree of brevity by saying avoid Behringer like you would a Robbie Williams’ album.  Allen and Heath and the newer Mackie desks are not too bad at all, but it’s the second hand market where you can really pick up a bargain.  Desks that would have cost the price of a family home 15 years ago can now be picked up for not much more than the cost of your girlfriend’s trip to Vidal Sassoon and a pair of Ugg boots.  Look out for DDA, Soundtracs, Soundcraft and Amek.  These to my ears sound far better than the smaller desks that are made today.