Hey All,

I have a budget of roughly $1500 US (maybe a little more) to improve my production setup and I really don't know where to start. As far as computing power goes, I already have a 2.4 Ghz MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM so upgrading that isn't too much of an issue at this stage. I'm running Reason 4, Ableton and NI Komplete. Just background info. Anyway, what I really wanted to ask was this. If you were starting were starting out on that sort of budget, knowing what you now know, what would you get? I'm particularly uncertain about the following:

A Soundcard: Everyone seems to have different opinions on these and I'm not really sure where to begin. It will also be used when I'm playing live, in case that alters anything.

A Control Surface: I'll be getting an M-Audio Axiom 49 for the keys, but I was thinking about something to compliment this. The best option so far would seem to be a CME Bitstream or M-Audio Trigger Finger. Playing violin for so many years seems to have conditioned my mind to function better in the tactile realm so basically, the more knobs, faders, etc i have at my disposal, the easier it seems to become to realise ideas.

So anyway, I think that about covers it. Sorry about the rather long post. Oh, yeah, and seeing as though this is my first post, great work on the site! It's already proven an invaluable resource.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Sam

welcome to the forum

what monitors and acoustic treatment do you have?... thats the first thing I would look at! Theres no point in spending lots of money on other kit until you have a good monitoring setup!

What features do you need on a soundcard? do you need Mic Pre-amps? how many ins and outs do you need? do you need MIDI? You obviously want a firewire connection for your Macbook Pro!

as for a control surface... I like the look of the Euphonix Artist series (MC mix and MC control). I have a Mackie Universal Control already, which is ok, but I wish I had the Euphonix controllers.

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www.Lozjackson.com

Thanks!

At the moment I'm using Counterpoint 224s and a pair of Sennheiser HD 280s, which seem to be doing a pretty good job. Living at college means that it's generally difficult to get a perfect sound environment anyway.

I don't specifically need mic preamps at this stage, but in the future it's quite possible, so they'd probably be worth having. I'll probably need about 4 in and 8 or 10 out, but no MIDI. I'm trying to take into account as many things as possible to avoid having to upgrade again in a hurry. Someone mentioned the Mackie Onyx Satellite for this, and while the number of ins/outs don't quite fit, it looks pretty reasonable. Have you heard anything about them?

I really like MOTU interfaces.

I have (at work) an 828mkII, and 8PRE and an Ultralite

The 828mkII has 2 mic preamps, 10 inputs (including the MicPreamps), 10 Outputs, Adat, SPDIF and MIDI - I think this would be a good choice.

The 8PRE has 8 MicPreamps, but has only 2 outputs, so probably is not the right one for you.

neither of the above two are bus powered.

The Ultralite is bus powered and this is very handy when using with a laptop. also this is a smaller unit! This only has 8 inputs. It has two MicPreamps and another 6 analog inputs (8 altogether). unless you need the extra inputs, I think this one would be best for use with a laptop.

There are many other brands to check out also, but I have most experience with MOTU so I can't really compare with many others.

I also like Echo interfaces - I have a Echo Audiofire 2, which is very nice, but this only has two in and outs.

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www.Lozjackson.com