What's your digital setup?

[LancerTheGreat]

So fiddling with Neural (and Ableton) via my new Scarlett has led me down a rabbit hole, and I'm honestly pretty lost lol. I was wondering for those of you that do any in-home studio or leisure recordings via digital interfaces and all of this fancy technology stuff... well basically;

Monitors? What kind? Why? How'd you know where to put em, and how'd you make the space for them?

Interface and midi controllers? How do you have enough USB slots? I don't have to worry about the whole midi controller thing (yet:twisted:) but I am very at capacity for usb drives. Would a powered USB hub do the trick, or should I get a pcie expansion card?

Impulse responses, is there any real metric, or do I honestly go explicitly by ear?

Re-amping in Ableton is neat, haven't figured out exactly how to trim the fat off of tracks though, and probably quite a few other things.

Drums, huh? I just don't gronk how without limiting myself to basic drum tracks or painstakingly making my own, which I'd really rather have an electronic kit for at that point.


I've mostly just dialed in a few killer tones I can use through my PC, and recorded a few things for future reference or funsies and whatnot. I've looked for decent guides but everything just feels like an ad at one point or another. I'd like to stop feeling so lost in what I'm actually doing though, but I'm not trying to be an expert lol.

[BatUtilityBelt]

I do use a USB hub. A few devices refuse to work on the hub and must have primary ports, your mileage may vary.

I'm "between" favorite DAW software packages right now. I used to use Pro Tools on a PC, but got fed up, and am currently using Cubase on a Macbook Pro. The software you choose won't make the big differences for you long-term, so I would concentrate on just getting used to one's workflow and solving for everything else (don't eat the whole elephant in one meal).

If you want good recordings, monitors are important, both quality and placement. What you want for monitors will be referred to as nearfield monitors. The idea is you sit facing them, with both roughly near ear level and equal distance from your ears. Usually they sit on either side of your mixing console or your controllers and monitors, whichever serve as your primary work surfaces. In my smaller setup with the Macbook, I use Alesis M1 Active 520USB monitors. They sound very good, but there are a ton of good choices. I would not go much cheaper than these. I don't run them USB, instead I run my interface outs to them.

That smaller setup, I use a Roland A-49 keyboard for desktoppy stuff, but use real keyboards for recording performances, so the A-49 is as much a data entry tool as anything. I prefer real drums, but for some projects will use BFD or a Yamaha DTX or Roland drum module.

Bottom line - you will acquire more gear over time, but try to make sure it's a good fit for the types of projects you want to do. Album? Wherever your muse takes you. Commercial? Figure out what your market is looking for, and try to find gear to satisfy that. You can spend as much as you have and still not end up with what you want, so plan out where you want it to go.

[rrobbone]

Decent monitors are ideal, but you can get very good results using flat response headphones. I've learned how to mix using those headphones, and I always test any mixes on various sound systems. Our household affords me no opportunities to be properly loud, and hasn't for years - hence the cans. At this point, monitors would probably throw me off. Don't get me wrong, monitors are recommended - but there are several ways to skin a cat. Fair warning: a headphones vs. desk monitors convo unfailingly turns into heated/passionate debates.

You're going to want isolation stands for those monitors either way - so if you don't have space for them on your desk, look into ones that stand on the floor. I've seen ones that mount to the wall or clamp to a desktop, so there are options. There are quite a few YT vids that will teach you about placement of the monitors (and you), and the manufacturer should have something to say about it as well.

USB hubs are hit and miss with studio equipment. A shallow wade into the support forums of whatever product you're considering will tell you of it will play nicely or not. I use a nicer Anker 4 port hub, and it works with more than the walmart el-cheapo I was using, but still not everything. I've been using my Helix as an interface as well as my normal DI box, and that helps as well.

I don't use IRs. I like what I get from my Helix and other pedals. I just use my ears. No live amps, just ones and zeros.

For drums, I used a MIDI keyboard for quite some time. Then I got MIDI keys with some drum pads on them, now I use a NI Maschine. Almost any drum software will be playable on a MIDI keyboard whether it has pads or not. Programming drums is not a meticulous thing if you don't want it to be. Start the click and tap them in. The DAW will quantize the beats perfectly - and a few DAWs will humanize them by making them a little imperfect if you wish.

It's a nice time to be a bedroom musician, there are many solutions to any single problem. Keep at it, and you'll find your preferences.

[Milkman]

For drums, try the MT Power Drumkit. You can start by selecting a “groove” that suits your song, add one of a number of fills available that suit the groove you’ve chosen and slot them into your DAW. I susally go a step further and manually edit the patterns to keep it fresh too.

[tonebender]

I am an analog man. No idea how that stuff works.

[andrewsrea]

My DAW realm:
- (2) TOA ME280 (8" woofer, 3" mid driver & 1.5" twweter) driven by Halfer SE240 240w amp, plus AMI 10" subwoofer driven by a bridged Crown D-150A 150w amp. Managed to a flat response by Sonarworks Reference 4 software.
- Headphones: for reference and some tracking, I have two sets of AKG K240s. For closed-back I have an 80's Koss HP held together with duct tape. And I have an assortment of inexpensive closed-back for multiple tracking situations. I use Sonarworks Reference 4 to manage headphones to a 'flat' response as well.
- (2) PCs. My main is a 2019 Powerspec w/ lots of memory, solid-state storage & RAM, running the Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 interface. PC#2, an old Dell 8200, I use to initially capture a lot of simultaneous inputs with an Maudio 1010 (8 in and out at 48K 24bit) using Cool Edit Pro 4. II then transfer to the main computer for further tracking and processing.
- DAW: Except for the aforementioned occasional Cool Edit Pro, my DAW is Studio One 5 Pro. To me it is like the creative musician's DAW and am so glad I chose it.
- EZ Drummer 2 using Studio One as a midi editor, is my virtual drums. If I can find a live drummer to man my 1976 Ludwig Vistalite kit, live drums are the easiest for me. EZ Drummer 2 still takes less time to map out a drum part, than me spending weeks working out on the drums to get my endurance and chops back.
- Virtual amp: Ampire in Studio One. I have made re-amp boxes with iso transformers and also reamp naked guitar parts. But in some circumstances, especially in the fleshing out an idea stage - Ampire works fine.
- Other Midi instruments: mostly Presonus. Addictive Keys for additional pianos, Redtron SE for accurate Mellotron samples
- Melodyne for tuning audio mistakes.

I have been sporadically getting back into recording and expect to release songs around the New Year. IMHO, they sound pro.

[golem]

Helix LT, Headrush powered speaker.
Yamaha THR100H.

Both can work as interfaces, but the reality is I use them like traditional amps.

[LancerTheGreat]

Been trying to reply to this all day, but I kept getting interrupted at work lmao.

But I've got my eye on a set of Mackie CR5-X or CR3-X "multimedia monitors".
And that's about as far as I'm currently looking to get as far as hardware for awhile. Not to say I don't want more, I mean I'm a "musician" after all
I've got the MT Power Drumkit downloaded, but I pulled a muscle in my side/back-ish region and I haven't really been at my computer much the last few days, so I haven't got to play with it yet and I was very curious about how the whole thing worked.
My friend's wanting to loan me his midi pad and keyboard, but I'm definitely gonna have to get an expansion card or hub before then, I've got 2 open USB and those are on the front of my case and I like to leave them open. My PC's good as far as that's concerned, it's just that now I can play games, guitar and YouTube on it


Glad to hear a lot of this stuff is only complicated if you need or want it to be, I like to tinker a lot, so fiddling with IRs and everything seems like a good outlet for that.

But thanks for all of the information, this honeypot never fails!

[aullucci]

I use Garage Band, and almost exclusively because of the drums. They have virtual drummers in various genres that you can just put into the track. There are hundreds of different styles and you can tweak them individually (more cymbals, slower tempo, etc). I have a Presonus Studio 24 interface that is great. It came with Studio One, which I don't use. Because I didn't want to mess around with making my own drum tracks...

Note: I don't make anything professional, I just like to make backing tracks to play over.