Blimey.......I'm overwhelmed! On the fishing forum I moderate you're lucky to get one response a week! Many thanks for making me feel so welcome!
So.....
@Paul P: I do use headphones most of the time but I will be upgrading the monitors at some point in the near future. The ones I have now are going back in the lounge running off a second pair of V-Studio outputs so I can listen to what I've done in comfort lying on the sofa. Have you any recommendations for monitors for me? I assume you have them on stands?
@miguelito: I had a dalliance with CuBase before but that was years ago. I much preferred Cakewalk and have well over 200 songs recorded in it so I don't see any need to change what I do now.
@garrigus: You are correct, the small screen is an iPad. In the pictures you'll see it on a goose-neck stand on the right of the main screen, further away on my kitchen breakfast-bar (yes the whole lot is at the back of the kitchen) and finally on the goose-neck to the left of the main screen. The pictures with it the right of the screen and further away show the V-Control Pro app that I use to control Sonar for stuff that's a pain with the V-Studio 100. It's useful for "Save" and skipping between markers, as well as being able to do all the slider and pot functions. With it's remote ability I've actually recorded stuff out in the garden using the iPad as the control surface for carriage as the connection to the PC is wireless.
In the dark picture with it mounted to the left of the screen it's featuring the Omni TR app which I use to control the Omnisphere VST. It can do some pretty amazing things which would be difficult to explain so look at this link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsBQVgW6cLo for a demo (it's long but very interesting). I moved the stand to the left so I can use my left hand to control the Orb and Ribbon functions whilst playing the keyboard.
@Zonno: I do use the GR-55 quite a bit as I'm pretty crap with a keyboard to be honest! I have a GK-3 pick-up on a Squier Strat (which you can see in the picture) and this sends the Hex pick-up and the main pick-up sounds to the GR-55 and then guitar out to the Line 6 Pod with the synth and guitar modelling sounds into the V-Studio. I think it's a great bonus particularly the guitar modelling side. The synth sounds are pretty good as well although understandably, for the price they're never gonna bring the house down.
Another big advantage for me is that I can simultaneously trigger and record a stereo guitar via the Pod, the GR-55 synth in stereo, the Roland JV-1010 synth module in stereo (a bit old but still brilliant) and the Omnisphere. I've got one song where the Omnisphere is outputting 8 different synth voices (all stereo) plus the above so that's 11 stereo voices live from one guitar. Obviously you have to be a bit sparing when mixing it all down but the sound is unbelievable when playing it originally.
One thing to note if thinking of buying a GR-55 is that it
DOES NOT accept incoming MIDI from the DAW to trigger the sounds. The incoming MIDI channels are purely for patch changes etc. Personally that doesn't bother me too much as I tend to record as much as I can live, leaving things like drums and messing about for consideration in MIDI tracks. Latency is pretty good considering it's an added on pick-up but you do need to do a bit of pruning to get rid of MIDI farts in the DAW. Nothing that bothers me unduly though. One day when I've robbed a bank I'll buy one of those guitars with the hex pick-up built in but that can wait for now!
@SilverfoxUK: The printer's crap. I want an AirPrint one...........
