$1000 Monitors,Soundcard,Treatment

[dragonxking]

Hello SW Forum,
I'm going to be coming up on approx 1000-1400 dollars to spend on equipment.
Right now my setup is basically an HP dv9700t laptop with a midi controller and a whole lot of virtual instruments.

I have no monitors at all. I'm more of a producer/composer than an engineer but I would like to do some basic mixing on my music so that it can translate well on other systems.

Should I:
A. Invest all the money on a pair of monitors and use the headphone output of my laptop with a stereo splitter to my monitors
B. Buy cheaper monitors and invest approx 300$ on usb/firewire soundcard
C. Buy cheaper monitors and invest on room treatment
D. Any variation of the above choices

Whichever choice you guys go with, can you guys also recommend what monitors/soundcard/roomtreatment to get that would fit my budget.

I'm looking at AdamA7,MackieHRSomething,Yamaha HS80m, Dynaudio BM5a, NS-10Ms at the moment but I'm def open to other suggestions.

[aitikin]

Room treatment goes very very very very far. I've heard rooms with Adams in them that sounded pretty bad and I've heard rooms with Behringer Truths (which are POS) that had really good treatment and it sounded a little bit better than the Adams. IMO, treatment is key. Also, pick up a used sound card and you'll save yourself some $.

[jpleong]

Hmmm... with a smallish budget, there's always going to be a lot of compromise. My suggestion is a B + C + books/seminars/hanging-out-with-more-established-producers hybrid.

Room treatment needs to be done with knowledge and foresight, as does gear purchases. Right now, I'd say your lack of monitors is hurting you but also your lack of good D/A conversion. Even a cheapish ($79-100) M-Audio interface is going to be leaps and bounds better than the built-in, susceptible to mouse noise headphone amplifier in your laptop.

But the best thing before you buy anything is to get a few books like "Modern Recording Techniques" by Huber and "Mastering Audio" by Katz.

JP

[Rad]

Let's be realistic. For $1000, you can't get it all.

What you need to start with is firstly, acquaint yourself with some basic possible project studio setups from the literature. Just reading about typical setups will get you to figure out what you need and what is a reasonable amount to spend on each component. Having the facts, you will be able to make a more informed choice and "cut corners" $$$-wise only for components that matter the least for your particular setup.

Then you should start looking for an interface - a laptop internal D/A conversion and amp may be good for listening mp3's, but are much behind even moderately priced interfaces in terms of quality.
For a laptop, you should look for an either FireWire or USB interface. If you plan to use Firewire and are using an HP DV-series notebook, expect to have significant problems with the inbuilt FireWire card, so I'd rule that one out immediately. This series of laptops uses some nameless firewire chipset made in El Cheapo that just don't work for audio, so you'd have to look for an external Firewire card to plug into your laptop so you can connect to the interface. With this and your budget in mind,it might actually be better to look for a USB interface, which will cost you $200-300 most likely and avoid that problem.


Regarding monitors and room treatment, it will be hard to fit both in the remaining $700. It may be wiser to go for a pair of studio headphones such as AKG K240S, or 270 and mix on headphones, because this will simultaneously eliminate the need for both monitors and room treatment.
On the downside, mixing on headphones is more difficult to get the right frequency balance, but if you're working with virtual instruments (sampled), you're not likely to be getting hard-to-spot frequency problems as you would in an acoustic recording, so headphones might actually be quite good. What I mean is that virtial instruments work with sound samples already taken in pro studios that are not likely to have huge frequency problems.


If you get something like this http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/UA25/ together with a set of K240's, you'd be spending a total of 370-400 bucks and get decent quality without having to worry about room treatment. In any case engineers I work with say they end up investing as much in room treatment as in gear, if this says anything...

[dragonxking]

Let's be realistic. For $1000, you can't get it all.

What you need to start with is firstly, acquaint yourself with some basic possible project studio setups from the literature. Just reading about typical setups will get you to figure out what you need and what is a reasonable amount to spend on each component. Having the facts, you will be able to make a more informed choice and "cut corners" $$$-wise only for components that matter the least for your particular setup.

Then you should start looking for an interface - a laptop internal D/A conversion and amp may be good for listening mp3's, but are much behind even moderately priced interfaces in terms of quality.
For a laptop, you should look for an either FireWire or USB interface. If you plan to use Firewire and are using an HP DV-series notebook, expect to have significant problems with the inbuilt FireWire card, so I'd rule that one out immediately. This series of laptops uses some nameless firewire chipset made in El Cheapo that just don't work for audio, so you'd have to look for an external Firewire card to plug into your laptop so you can connect to the interface. With this and your budget in mind,it might actually be better to look for a USB interface, which will cost you $200-300 most likely and avoid that problem.


Regarding monitors and room treatment, it will be hard to fit both in the remaining $700. It may be wiser to go for a pair of studio headphones such as AKG K240S, or 270 and mix on headphones, because this will simultaneously eliminate the need for both monitors and room treatment.
On the downside, mixing on headphones is more difficult to get the right frequency balance, but if you're working with virtual instruments (sampled), you're not likely to be getting hard-to-spot frequency problems as you would in an acoustic recording, so headphones might actually be quite good. What I mean is that virtial instruments work with sound samples already taken in pro studios that are not likely to have huge frequency problems.


If you get something like this http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/UA25/ together with a set of K240's, you'd be spending a total of 370-400 bucks and get decent quality without having to worry about room treatment. In any case engineers I work with say they end up investing as much in room treatment as in gear, if this says anything...

I don't think I want to invest in another pair of headphones so I think I'll go with either the Adam A7($900), Mackie HR824(mk1 vs mk2?, $800), HS80M($700). I'm curious. Where did you read or find out about that firewire problem in DV laptops. That really disappoints me considering I wanted to get the Yamaha GO46 Interface.
Thanks for all the replies. Very helpful:)

[Rad]

I'm curious. Where did you read or find out about that firewire problem in DV laptops. That really disappoints me considering I wanted to get the Yamaha GO46 Interface.

I know about this problem because I've had it. I spent 3 months trying to eliminate audio clicks and pops on a DV-laptop from an interface that I've always used before without a glitch, until someone in this forum finally suggested that the problem is the make of the internal Firewire card. It turns out that non-Texas Instruments cards seem to have various problems with audio, and indeed, after I bought an external card with a TI chipset, all of my problems disappeared instantly. This is also consistent with the results from my previous laptop, which also had a TI chipset and zero problems with FireWire. I have to say I am really unimpressed with the quality of computer components lately. So, if you want to use FireWire, chances are you'll have to buy an external ExpressCard for firewire.

[dpd]

Save more money so you can spend it on better equipment later