Home studio question...

So I have my workstation (Yamaha Motif XS8) and purchased my monitor speakers today (yamaha HS-80m) so what's the next purchase I need to make. Your equipment opinions wanted! I do not have a FireWire set up yet and am clueless to setting the motif up to cubase on my laptop.

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kuzi16

if you dont have QUALITY mics... get them. i dont know too much about studios, but i am a guitarnut.

stephen_hannibal

If you don't have a decent A/D/A interface you won't get audio to and from your laptop.
Cubase is fairly simple so I'd go with something like a Presonus Firebox.
You want the highest bit rate and sample rate you can record in. To capture the most accurate audio possible.

For instance if you burned your music to CD (most CDs are 16bit 44.1khz) you'd want to convert your recording down but if you recorded at a lower bit/sample rate there is no way to add that missing information.

mrpillow

On top of that, make sure you get an interface that has MIDI I/O capabilities. No sense having a versatile master controller like the Motif if you can't control anything with it.

And beware, increasing your sample depth and bit rate give you better quality, but they drastically increase the amount of processing power required to record continually, and the amount of space the recorded files will take up on your hard drive. Unless you're in the big leagues, or planning on cutting to an analog like tape or lacquer, anything over 98kHz and 24-bit is simply overkill. The differences in quality just will not outweigh the strain on your comp.

As far as interfaces go, I've always had my best experiences, at least in the lower price range end of the spectrum, with MOTU gear. They have some great pieces available for what you'd need. not to mention their mic pre-amps are absolutely killer for the price range. Some are a little low on the gain side, so ribbon mic's might be a bit of trouble if used, but they are clean and clear and give great results.

Renaissance_Man

What do you play?

stephen_hannibal

+1 for Motu... IDk how I forgot about their stuff.
Also to add to the warning stay away from Behringer products.

Rob1110

I agree with Kuz about mics. Without good quality uni-directional and multi-directional mics, all the processing and software in the world won't make your recordings sound good. As for brands, I'm lost. A buddy of mine has a studio (guitarist in my old band) but I haven't been in there in a few years.

mrpillow

Mics are a fairly touchy subject, and are very skewed by personal opinion as to what is good and what isnt. It is also entirely subject to what you are going to be recording with them.

What exactly are you going to be using this studio for?

Cigar Sherlock

Thank you all for the responses. I will probably be getting an audio interface but want to keep the price around 200. I basically play whatever feels good for the moment. Some days that is classical others might be the eagles...with some trance there in between. I have a mic and it's not a huge part of what I'll be composing...maybe for small samples. I appreciate the discussion! Keep that knowledge coming! The hs80s sound amazing btw

kuzi16

mrpillow:
Mics are a fairly touchy subject, and are very skewed by personal opinion as to what is good and what isnt. It is also entirely subject to what you are going to be recording with them.

What exactly are you going to be using this studio for?

i agree with this. there is a huge selection of mics out there all claiming to be better than the others for X and Y reasons. they are all good mics for one reason or another. just stay away from the cheapest ones. in my opinion, this is one place where you wanna spend the extra money. there are other things that you can save on and it wond effect the quality as much.

Theedge

My friend and I did some recording a few years back. I picked up a Boss 1600 recorder and used a couple of inexpensive Marshall mics and an SM58. The recording area was just the crappy old cement basement of my old house. We took it out of the box, opened up the direction manual and away we went. It didn't turn out half bad. Not professional, but not bad. Fellows2trio