Quick techie blog...

I mentioned in my last blog that I'd invested in some new equipment, so thought I'd do a quick blog about it, because I love music tech chat! There might be an element of geeky music talk coming up, so if you're the kind of person that thinks Pro Tools sounds like something for fixing up shelves, it might be worth looking away now!

I was previously working mostly in Cubase SX3 on a ropey old PC, so was very pleased to get a shiny new MacBook about a month ago (on loan from the University). I'm now running Logic Pro 9, which seems to be a great piece of software. Very intuitive, and now I'm getting to grips with it, I'm finding it very easy to get creative with. The only thing I miss about Cubase was how easy it is was to manipulate audio, but overall the advantages of Logic far outweigh the disadvantages I'd say (saying that, Cubase 5 looks pretty awesome - anyone tried it at all?)

I was a little concerned that the MacBook may struggle a little, being the lowest spec Mac on the market, and knowing that I'm a little bit plug-in crazy. However, it seems to be coping admirably so far. I've just mixed a song with about 16 tracks, each having at least 2 or 3 inserts, with loads of automation and some mastering plug-ins on the output. The CPU usage was barely registering most of the time - pretty impressive. However, I've found that it pays to save REGULARLY, because Logic has crashed on me 3 or 4 times for no apparent reason.

One area where I've compromised in the past was with microphones and hardware. Not sure why I didn't splash out previously, because good equipment makes all the difference. I still remember that eternal phrase that our studio technician at Uni used at least 5 times a day: "s**t in, s**it out - you can't polish a turd!". Never a truer word spoken.

So I've invested in a new condenser mic and a decent audio interface for the Mac. Unfortunately my budget is pretty limited, so I ended up buying an SE Electronics Titan mic and an E-MU 0404 interface. I was also going to buy a preamp, but after reading up on the subject it seems that £500+ is the ball park for a decent one. I'd be interested to hear if anyone had had good results with the budget preamps that are on the market...

So far, the results are pretty good. Check out my new recording of 'Shivers' in the music player on the right, recorded with the new kit. The Titan mic sounds great on acoustic guitar. I was hoping for a little bit more warmth on vocals - I recently tried an AKG 414 and an SE Z5600a, both of which produced much better results for vocals. However, for what I'm doing it's fine, and it seemed a steal at under £240 from Digital Village. I read some reviews which thought it was good value for money, even when it was priced at nearer £1000, so it definitely seemed a good buy!

Ok, enough geek speak for the time being. If anyone else finds this sort of thing exciting, and spends hours drooling over the Dolphin Music web site like I do, please post a comment and let me know your latest bit of kit!

Over and out.