Just laid down the first tracks for our new album tonight...
Apple Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 2x160 GB SATA HDDs, 2x 250GB LaCie d2 extreme FW800 HDDs, ATI Radeon 9600XT, LaCie electron Blue 19" monitor (1900x1200), Mac OS X 10.3.x, Microsoft Optical Mouse
Apple Logic Pro 7 (for tracking/mixing/mastering), GarageBand 1 (for goofing around), iTunes 6 (for ripping to AAC/MP3), Roxio Toast 6 Platinum w/ Jam (for CD compilation)
M-Audio Delta 1010 PCI-X 24/96 A/D interface, M-Audio Octane multichannel preamp (not using the DAC parts, just the pre's), JoeMeek VC1Qcs mic pre/comp/eq/etc (swiped from my bass rig for the vocals), Monster 500 interconnects (yeah, yeah, I know...for totally superstitious reasons)
2x M-Audio Solaris multipattern condenser mics (overheads, room mics, vocals), 3x Shure Beta 57A dynamic mics (drums and guitar cabs), Shure Beta 52A dynamic mic (kick drum and bass cab), Mogami Gold mic cables, Electro-Voice ND757 dynamic mic (scratch vocals, swiped from our PA system)
Countryman Type 85 DI, H&K Red Box Pro, DMC Cab-Tone, 2x Groove Tubes Speaker Emulator II (swiped from my guitar rig), THD Hot Plate 8 Ohm (also swiped from guitar stash), ReAmp, Peterson VS-II tuner (essential)
Rane RaneGain, Rat Shack SPL meter (you know the one)
Presonus Central Station, M-Audio Studiophile BX8 monitors, Sennheiser HD280 headphones (plus a few other crappy pairs), PreSonus HD4 headphone dist. amp.
I'd like to add a Focusrite TwinTrak Pro with the DAC card so I can use the coaxial digital ins on the Delta 1010. Eventually, I may replace the Solaris mics with Shure KSM44's. And the VC1Qcs was supposed to be a twinQcs with the DAC card, but I couldn't find one. Still need the DAC card for the VC1Qcs, though.
Doing all the comp, eq, and 'verbs in Logic because I can't be bothered with even more outboard gear. Not that I can afford more stuff at this point! All tracks are being recorded without any inserts for the time being. If we run out of processing power, we'll swipe the drummer's G5 (illustrator by day) and add it as a Logic node.
Mixing will be done referenced to -20dBFS = 83 dB SPL. Raw tracks are peaking in the area of -3 dBFS. Have only clipped one hit on the bass guitar, so far (oops, will fix later).
No pics, because the whole works is on location at the guitarist's house for tracking...
Oh, and so far, the bass is going direct through the Countryman DI into a phase-reversed (because Mr. Countryman likes Pin 3 Hot for some reason) preamp channel on the Octane. Sounds great. I was going to use the VC1Qcs, but I got lazy. The drum overheads are being done as Mid-Side stereo thanks to the Solaris mics and Octane preamp (which has M-S encoding built-in). We're tracking the drums and bass DI together with a scratch guitar track direct from the guitarist's preamp, all monitored in the cans. Tonight we got five good sets of tracks (well, except for the one first one, where I forgot to arm the floor tom mic...but it came through OK in all the other mics, so we may or may not dub in the tom later).
Almost forgot, the recording gear lives on/in one of those $99 Studio RTA desks I got from GC, plus a pair of $99 speaker stands from the same place. When on location, the rack mount stuff lives in a 6-space SKB US Roto rack.
(Not actually owned by myself but I use this studio most of the week heh).
