Hi, everyone. I've recently (and over time) grown much more serious about being a musician at heart, and I'm really wanting to kick up the quality of my hole-in-the-ground home can-and-string studio. So since the big upgrade I'll be doing over a couple years will be more or less my REAL first studio, I want to know would it be viable for a well amount of use for those years?
 

Some Good Monitors (Suggestions, Please!)

An idea of budget is of paramount importance as is the size of the room you'll be monitoring in

Good advice from Bristol, but usually money is the defining factor (if not, I suggest Barefoots).

There are plenty of threads about monitors.  Ideally, you want the flattest sounding speakers.  I like the Yamaha, and I would take a mps series over the more poplular (and cheaper) HS.  If possible get an 8 inch woofer.

The mps 5 is a good candidate for a small room or near field montioring.  Several pro studios I've been in use them as secondary speakers.  Note:  you'll need some larger, even home speakers, to check the bass, but for the important mid-range sounds they are great.

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Widows Xp should not be even be on your radar at all... W7 and 64 bit or , when the smoke clears W8.
The heart of any modern DAW based studio is the stability of the Audio Interface and drivers.
Next comes the quailty going in----Pre amps, Mikes, Instruments and don't forget the cables!
Next the sound going out- Monitors, headphones and yes--the room.

A modern computer with mid to top end specs , 2 or more 7200RPM HD,
6-12 Gigs of RAM  and optimized for DAW.  

The M audio is known to have fairly pour quality pre amps so plan on adding something better. You could buy a Mike Pre amp with a SPDIF output and use that to bypass it. That's what I did. Or even a small Mackie or A& H mixer which are very handy in the studio.

If you are getting the computer new.... W7 will generally be the OS. If it is a used machine, and costs you very little.... X1 Essentials will run fine on XP.

As far as the rest of the gear... yeah... that works. You gotta do what you can with the budget you have to work with.

My studio: I built a custom machine 3 years ago and used the i5 Intel chip. I installed XP Pro and 4 GB of memory. 2 hard drives are in the machine.   

I have MC 4, 5, 6 and X1 essentials installed. 

I use a firewire (FW) Focusrite Saffire interface but would recommend a USB interface now mainly because FW can be problematic if the chipset is not the TI chipset........ M-Audio is good and they use USB & ASIO drivers. The latency will depend on the card/interface and the drivers. Most good interfaces will give you a low latency that you can work with easily. Most latency under 10ms is not noticeable to the average person or musicians either.... that's like standing 10 feet in front of a guitar amp. Several people here could write a treatise on latency but as for me, if I can't hear it, I'm good.  

A Shure SM-57 is a decent mic to use. It's pretty standard on stages all over the world and will work OK in the studio. However, a nice condenser would probably be better to use if you are doing much acoustic guitar stuff. I use a Rode Condenser for all my recording although I do have an SM-58 as well. 

For monitoring.... I use Mackie MR-5's. I used them for about a year and a half and then added a sub to the studio. Subs are good and can be added later as budgets allow. On a tight budget, I would recommend spending around $350 for a pair of monitors. Audition some in the store because while everyone says you want "flat response" monitors.... (and yeah, you do) I have found that they all claim to be flat but compare them side by side with the same exact source material and you will hear a difference. Buy the ones you like and learn their quirks. 

Fact is, while it's cool to have the latest, fastest, gear.... most computers will do a superb job as long as the interface is a good interface. Heck... I ran my studio on a factory laptop...Dell off the shelf, with that same firewire interface and recorded like that for several years using Music Creator 4 (MC4) by cakewalk. That was a Core 2 with Windows Vista. Still have it and it still works.... the memory was either 1 or 2 GB. 

That lappy ran MC4 superbly. 

Work in your budget, and upgrade as you can afford and find the need to have better gear..... right now.... just get started. 


My philosophy is this:  My system works. It is stable. If I can run it fro 10 years, and it does everything I need, who cares if it is XP/32bit? When it has a hardware failure, I will attempt to repair it at that time. If the hardware is not available, I will then worry with the upgrades needed to get back to recording.

M-Audio's FastTrack is ok in terms of interface, but the preamp isn't exactly what you'd call good. But as far as the audio interface itself, I've had one for a couple of years as part of my portable rig and had no issue w/ it. Nevertheless, if I were to buy something similar these days, I'd check out Focusrite.

If you're in the market for a budget preamp to make up for the lousy preamp in the FastTrack, I'd suggest M-Audio's DMP3. I've had one for years and it does exactly what I need it to do - provide lots of gain w/o coloring or degrading your signal.

Unless you can afford to spend a lot of money on a preamp that will actually add something desirable to your sound - something which budget preamps don't typically do - transparency is probably your best option.

As for the monitors, the size of your room will somewhat dictate which type of monitors you should be getting. In a smaller room, 8" most likely won't work to your advantage, so you'd most likely be better off w/ 5".

If you are on a budget (as it often happens when we need to get started) I second Herb's recommendation to maybe check out the little Mackie MR5's MkII. I think Guitar Center still have them for $130 per monitor - that's $260 for a pair of decent monitors (even better than some more expensive ones as far as I'm concerned). And eventually, you can throw a sub in.

Speaking of monitors - one thing that I've found to make a difference is monitor isolation, which is used to isolate your monitors from the desk or shelf you place them on. Auralex MoPad sells for $45 and can really help getting proper bass definition and, consequently, better stereo image.

Mackie MR5's

I've been using a pair of these for the past year. They do a surprisingly great job of giving you a good reference mix. 


Make sure you place something inbetween them and your desktop. On a budget, I recommend heading to the hardware store and buying foam electrical outlet gaskets. For around $5 you can buy several. 

Focusrite is indeed a fine interface and is priced affordable. They are known for superb preamps. 

When I bought my Saffire from them, I had no clue about preamps and stuff like that and figured I would need to use my mixer board for the guitars and mics.....  When I connected it all like I thought it should be, the recorded sound was highly distorted. I tried adjusting levels but nothing got me there. 

Out of desperation, I unplugged the mixer and decided to plug the mic straight in to the Saffire. The result was a breathtakingly crystal clear and clean mic. Focusrite ROCKS!

I simply mentioned M-Audio since lots of folks here do use them, and you had it on your list. But check out the Focusrite interfaces...... I think you will like what you find. 

Hm. HM! I guess the biggest problem here is that I didn't really mention my budget... Let's just say it's unlimited in the long run, but for each piece of gear I buy, I can only buy one-at-a-time, and additionally the cheaper end of the price spectrum. Just for feasible answers and stuff that I can actually purchase.
Thanks for the input so far, everyone! I'll be looking up reviews and stuff for a lot of these products to get a good scope for usability.

Hey, everyone- I'm back, and once again, wondering if this is an even more viable starter's studio. Please give me suggestions!!!
 
M-Audio Keystation mini 32 - $80
M-Audio / MXL Monitor and Mic Package (GC) - $170
M-Audio Fast Track - $100
Cakewalk X1 Essential - $50
Win7 Lappy (later) - $400
 
Grand Total - $800
 
Other possibilites:
(Audio-Technica AT2020 - $150)
 
As you can see, I'm doing what I can to keep myself within a managable budget; specifically with things like X1 Essential (rather than X2 or one of the better X1's) and that M-A/MXL pack (which I'll DEFINITELY need some recommendations on, as I'm not sure whether I really NEED monitors this early) Thanks!