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Right, moved into a new job and before I go part time I'm looking to use some of this extra cash. I'm looking for something that's going to improve my productions somewhat but only have a couple of ideas so far and wondering if anybody has any of their own. So first a look at my setup

I'm happy with the processing power of my computer, seems pretty quick and have no issues with it.
Monitors are spot on, again no issues here.
Soundcard could be better (Focusrite saffire le) but seems okay for monitoring and don't really do that much recording.
I'm using an oxygen 49 midi keyboard which isn't too bad. Action could be better but I don't really do a lot of knob twiddling so don't need the extra modifiers.
Also using Komplete 7 and quite a few nice sample packs.

Now a couple of thoughts I've had so far are as follows:-
Eastwest complete composers - I have a soft spot for strings and atmosphere (As you can probably tell from my sig track) and everytime I hear these I feel I am lacking something in my life by not having them
UAD 2 solo/duo - This one I've been giving a lot of thought to. I do some mastering as well and this would not only give me more versatility on that side but improve my mixdowns.
Some form of synth (Virus TI?) - I like the idea of this because I could get better rawer sounds synth wise which I have been struggling with.

As you can guess from those ideas I'm probably shooting for £5-700 or so and hate the idea of buying anything without thinking it over for 100's of hours and considering all options.

If anybody could lend some input I would be most grateful!

Bump

Id go for UAD or a hardware synth personally

Have a look on ebay at some UAD cards, you get some made deals on there and most of them come with a shit load of plugins



edit: or you could get some vintage gear

What do you feel your current setup is missing?

AND

Do you think that you're pushing your skills to the very limits and beyond with what you already have available?

What about your DAW? You didn't mention anything so I guess you must be happy with it. Those East West instruments are dope across the board pretty much. They are top notch as far as orchestral stuff goes. I have a buddy that uses them for video game and film scoring and they sound unreal... or so real that its unreal. haha

if you're gonna get a synth, you could do w/ a better I/O than the saffire.

it's worth heading to a good music shop and playing around with things, seeing what you like, what you don't like, etc. some folks vibe on using gain structure via hardware to get tones, others really vibe on oddball synths like the dave smith boxes, others are totally software based and are always looking for a new trick w/a controller for abelton. or some combination thereof-- go and try out different ways of working and see what methods inspire you.

Sharmaji wrote:if you're gonna get a synth, you could do w/ a better I/O than the saffire.

whats wrong with the saffire? i'd thought about getting one of those.

if you cant get an interface with lots of ins/outs, have you considered getting a control surface?

the older versions of this is logic exclusive (used to be called Emagic Logic Control before Mackie bought them out and changed the name to Mackie Control Universal, and opened it up to all daws.)

They are a pleasure to work with, really intuitive. Every plugin you open,the most 'common' controls pop up on that top strip, its very hands on and will def improve your workflow. Its mixing ITB (in the box)
You can pick these up second hand for around £250-£300


You can alternatively get the Maudio Projectmix IO which has something like 8 ins as a soundcard as well as in interface.

i'd skip uad and go for a hardware synth. even though i love using vst instruments, i find that they offer too much freedom sometimes - with hardware synths, i record stuff in audio (no midi) and then resample it to death without retweaking the actual synth patch for ages (as i do with vsts). it's also way more fun to program a hardware synth.

I also have a soft spot for strings, so I'd probably go for that or a Virus TI.

Id love a hardware synth

Depone wrote:if you cant get an interface with lots of ins/outs, have you considered getting a control surface?

the older versions of this is logic exclusive (used to be called Emagic Logic Control before Mackie bought them out and changed the name to Mackie Control Universal, and opened it up to all daws.)

They are a pleasure to work with, really intuitive. Every plugin you open,the most 'common' controls pop up on that top strip, its very hands on and will def improve your workflow. Its mixing ITB (in the box)
You can pick these up second hand for around £250-£300


You can alternatively get the Maudio Projectmix IO which has something like 8 ins as a soundcard as well as in interface.

Those look sweeet!

if your doing a bit of mastering i would suggest

Room Treatment
better DA converter. some good ones to look at are the Apogee Duet 2, RME Babyface, Avid M Box Pro (not M Box Pro 2 but the new one) and Steinberg MR816 X. TC electronics and Echo also do good stuff but i don't have any experiance with them.

I would get a Virus if I were you...I've been dreaming about getting one for a while. Super nice synth, clean interface, everything. Makes some nasty sounds.

i had a Virus C for a year and didn't see what all the fuss is about from a sound point of view. it's easy to program with all those knobs but i never got the kind of warm tones i crave. it's not analogue sounding at all and there are better synths for dark twisted digital weirdness.

What are your computer specs?
Do you have monitors of any kind?

@Invictus - Computer wise its a quad with 16gb of ram
Monitorwise I'm running K&H o300's

@AJGR - It really isn't as good as you imagined?

2nd set of monitors

£10 Bag wrote:2nd set of monitors

mmmm I have always wanted a set of NS10's may be worth looking into

If you're getting a second set of monitors, consider a Mackie Big Knob for switching between them easily/controlling volume.