Rebuilding my Studio

Everything is finished, it just has to be done
– Andreas Pflüger

So, since some 5 years or so I did not had the time and room to make any music at all but at the end I’ve missed it so much that I finally decided to restart all over again and finally rebuild my studio. During my very last attempts in creating music I got stuck somehow inbetween all those endless digital options and just looping stuff in Ableton on my laptop but never managed to get things finished anymore – some of you might know this kind of desease? Anyhow, I decided to setup a small studio production environment like I once had before those laptop times and where I was a little bit more productive, if memory serves me right.

Not a huge setup at all but a small desktop centric approach at home with some few but well selected outboard gear which not only inspires but also invites to perform, record and collaborate whole tracks in a fun way. Luckily, some outboard gear was carefully archived here in my basement but others I do not have anymore, e.g. a real mixing desk. But hey, there is so much cool stuff out there today to consider and to choose from!

Such new setup raises a lot of questions of course concerning workflow and where to better rely on ITB or OTB plus the usual digital versus analog considerations. This time it was clear for me to have best of both worlds right from the start. Gaining advantage from DAW based sequencing, mixing and mastering – speaking in terms of precision, affordability and total recall – but also the fun and hands-on experience just real outboard gear can give you and I’m not talking about cheap plastic controllers here (don’t get me started on that one).

For the DAW itself I just reactivated my rather aged PC based workstation which complained to need some hundred or so updates but then afterwards actually performed quite smoothly again. The whole installation is much more lean now and I did not included all that sh*tload of huge sample libraries just as an example. For the time being, I can live with its constraints and can focus on other and more important stuff now. Also, there won’t be a mixing desk anymore and I just added some more converters to my old but trusty RME card via ADAT. Nice to see the old standards still working flawless. Now the fun part begins: connecting all the stuff.

To be continued.