Setting Up A Studio, Questions, please help Options

[DannyMac]

Hello to everybody on the forum at first. I'm very glad that I found this site.

I'm currently working as a Dj and want to set up a private recording studio for myself to produce mainly electronical music (UK Garage/ 2 Step, House, Downbeat...a little bit of Bhangra).

I haven't had any experiences with a mac but definalely want to get one for producing because I've heard from many sides that mac's the only choice for proper media- quality.

So what do I exactely need for a good private studio?

- Mac (which one?) Is the 1,8 GH enough?
- Logic? Or is Garageband enough?
- Do I need something else? Like Keyboard, Mixer, Interfaces...

I would be very thankful if someone could help me because I've currently no idea because there are so many opportunities if you're getting started.

Cheers
Dan

[opiepac]

I've been meaning to reply for a while, but had to search for my login/password to the forums. You've gotten some pretty good experienced advice, but I'm somewhat of a newb (at least in the mac/music world) so I thought my perspective might be of assistance.

I have slightly different musical needs - mostly real instrument recording is what I'll do, so I'm less into the loops/midi/audio instrument stuff, but here's what I've done:

I bought one of the new Dual 2.0 GHz powermac's stock config (yes I know I don't have pci-x and it maxes out at 4 gigs of RAM, but I still thought it was a good buy) from an apple retail store (so I could get it the day Tiger came out, yes I'm impatient). Apple charges too much for RAM, as most will tell you. I took the stock 512MB, and then added two 512 sticks from Crucial, to give me a total of 1.5 GB RAM. On a PC the most I've ever had was 1 GB and they don't even use it as well as OSX does. Ram is definitely a good thing to have. An expensive computer, that I'll be paying for for quite a while, but I don't mind.

I bought an M-audio Firewire Solo interface for $200. I know M-audio has had driver problems in the past. I also am aware that this unit can totally destroy your firewire port if you hotplug it. If I had it all to do again, I might buy a different interface, but ... I really wanted something with firewire over usb, and this was half the price of the presonous firebox. I like the unit a lot, and it fits my needs. It only has two inputs, but for me, I'll usually have 1 mic and 1 instrument (guitar mostly). But if you will need more inputs in the future (recording a 4 piece rock band or something like that) you can never add inputs to the unit, so you'd have to upgrade to a new interface. Me - I'm okay with two.

By the way, since mine was one of the new Power Macs, it came with Tiger installed. There wasn't much "do I upgrade?" choice for me. I wanted Tiger a lot. And I'm not as concerned with stability because I am not depending on this machine to make me money currently. I am using the M-audio drivers for 10.3. They haven't given me any problems, though I've heard other units by M-audio haven't worked right with Tiger.

I am looking at getting a decent Mic - probably a Rode NT1-a.

I use Logic Express. I wish I could afford Logic Pro, but I can't, and I probably am just fine with Express. I played around with Garageband, and liked it, but I wanted to just jump in to Logic. For me it was the sooner the better (as I knew this was the sequencer I wanted to use) and I need to get over the learning curve and start being productive.

I guess I forgot to mention, I mainly set up my DAW for writing music and recording demos. Also, I have an ambition to one day become a recording engineer on the side, so I want to slowly learn at home, in addition to learning from friends of mine who run studios.

You will be happy if you decide on what you're talking about. I sure am. I might have to check out that keyboard you mention, as I do want to mess around with the audio instruments a bit. Maybe add some cool synth textures to my music.