Looking to upgrade my set up, any advice?

[SmithC90]

Hey everyone, iv been using the same equipment and software at home for a year or so now and to be honest, its crap?

I use an Alesis Multimix16 USB 2.0 mixing desk, Behringer MS40s as monitors, and Nuendo as my production software ( im not necessarily looking to change from Nuendo but if you have any views on it or recommend a different one im all ears). I dont have a particularly good sound card as i run all this through a laptop ( your run of the mill Dell Inspiron1545) and the results i get are miserable considering the amount of money i spent originally as a student to buyy all his shiat!

I used to produce our stuff at my school - heres the kind of results we got www. myspace. com/citizen64music (honestly not a shameless plug, just want to show what sort of sound i want to achieve from my home set up!)

If anyone could advise me on where to go from here it would be much appreciated, im pretty knowledgable in the computer milarky apart from sound cards (which is most possibly my down fall )

Thanks again

[forballs]

It kind of depends on your budget!

The production on your tunes sounds good.

Are you taking an output for your monitors from your laptops headphone socket? If so, i'd heavily advise avoiding doing so! The headphone output is different impedance than the input or your monitors so you get degradation of the signal. If you are doing that then just taking the signal for your monitors from the Alesis will be a vast improvement! Might seem a tad obvious, but worth mentioning!

In terms of changing equipment I would always recommend a Mac and Logic / Pro Tools but the sequencing software is less important, a better interface and monitors would be the way to go.. The interface depends on how many inputs / outputs you want really, a MOTU 8-pre gives you straight forward 8 mic pre's and will have better converters than the Alesis for about £400.

It's really dependant on what you're looking for and how much you want to spend..

Peace

[SmithC90]

Hey forballs, thanks for the response!

I connect the monitors to the alesis desk but i think my monitors are pants to be honest and im looking to upgrade them at the next oportunity! iv heard good things about these> KRK RP8G2 Rokit G2 Powered 2-Way Active Monitors. so maybe il head in that direction!

Also after talking to others on other forums iv realised that it was probably a mistake recording the guitar by using a jack lead straight into the desk, so instead im looking to invest in a SM57 and mic up my amp and see if i cant play around with the tone abit better that way!

Hopefully i can get some better results soon!

Thanks again

[forballs]

No worries!

Yea, I didn't want to be rude, but my experience with behringer stuff has generally been pretty pants! I've heard good things about the KRK's too, I have a set of Adam A5's, which are roughly the same money, but they got ribbon tweeters in, so the high end is much crisper

It depends what you do with the guitar signal, if you'd run it through a DI box first, then into the desk, and then used an amp simulator in your sequencer you can get some really nice results. Logic 9 for example has an awesome set of amp and pedal simulators.. I quite often when recording guitar will run it through a DI box and record the output of the DI on one track and take the link from the DI box into the guitar amp and record a mic infront of that as well. Then, if your amp signal ends up not being what you're after, you have basically a blank canvas to put through the amp sims..

SM57's are good for guitar cabs, you could also look at a sennheiser e606.. I use one of those quite a lot on guitar cabs and they sound sweet, and they're about the same money as a 57..

Good luck on your tone quest!