Getting the basic equipment for your recording project

To make a professional recording by yourself will require certain amount of equipment and other tools to have available. For myself to be able to take the recording process as far as possible without assistance or a need to borrow equipment has been mandatory. That has given us a total freedom to proceed at our own pace, and ultimately have a good sounding demo before needing any outside help.

I've basicly had the same equipment from the time we made the first STUD album "Out Of The Darkness". So, we've used the stuff already on three albums, which I consider a pretty good investment. One key requirement was that the recording gear must be portable, so that I can work both at home and at our rehearsal room, and where ever else we decide to work.

Before starting to work on our first album in 2012 I got myself a MacBook Pro with enough power to run the software needed for the work. I've got Pro Tools 10 as a DAW, which really has been a wonderful platform to grow with, as I've learned more and more with each project we've made. As a sound card I've got a pretty basic Avid Mbox. For the earphones I used to have AKG K 240, but after years of  solid operation, they lost the other channel, so I got myself Audio Technica ATH-M50x, which have been a very good update.

I've used the same microphone and a preamp on all the vocals of STUD's three albums. AKG C214 has worked very well for us, together with Golden Age Project Pre-73 preamp. For the basic keyboards I've got a Samson midi keyboard controller, as well as a smaller more portable controller for travelling.

This, in addition to a set of plugins, which I'll be covering later on in this blog, is the gear we used for the demos, and even beond that. As for the future projects, there would propably be some upgrades like newer version of Pro Tools. I'm also still running OS X Lion on my Mac, so that is already giving me some headaches with some newer plugins.

-Mika

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