help with new gear

[funkebeatz]

Hello all. I am a DJ who wants to start producing house music as well as recording mixes from my turntables. What I want to know is what kind of gear would be good to start with. I am interested in getting a hardware sampler, software sequencer and some sort of external control of the software (cm motor mix). I am also considering the alesis masterlink to handle the recording mixes side of the house. Basically my budget is around $3000.....What can I get and how difficult will it be to use?


Thanks
Jay

[Kenny Bergle]

Jay,
Hi! Kenny Bergle here, I am the moderator of this forum (even though it says I am a jr. member).

Are you a computer user? Would you consider doing all this with a computer DAW? Are you leaning away from that towards dedicated hardware?

[funkebeatz]

Actually I'm a MAC user. I'd like to keep my sampler and use software to help out with chopping the sampler and things of that nature. I also recently used a copy of a friends Logic Audio ES-1. I really liked the features and sound. I'd like to get a break out box of some sort to record live bass, vocals and things of that nature. i was also wondering about the alesis masterlink. I just would like any help at all possible before investing 5 grand into something I'll never use.

thanks
jay

[Rishathra]

man, if I invested 5k into ANYTHING I would be DAMN sure I would be using it .. and making it pay for itself!
You mentioned using a sampler to chop things up (I would assume loops).. there's a couple ways of doing this.. one is Recycle, which will basically allow you to take a piece of audio and slice the crap out of it, and then rearrange it however you want. The other is that the EMU E4 series samplers i know have a feature that allow you to split up a loop and then swap the samples around (kind of like slip mode in pro Tools..) I forget what the function is called, but it's there!

maybe that helps?

Rish

[Kenny Bergle]

Emu's function is called "Beat Munging". I think they made that up! Anyway, it does work very well for doing ReCycle type looping.

Btw, what are you wondering about the MasterLink? It's a very cool two track recorder and CD burner, which you probably already know...

[tenebrae]

funkebeatz - Have you considered a box like Yamaha's RS7000 or Akai's MPC2000XL?

Both put sampling, sequencing (200,000 notes enough for ya?), and realtime control in one box. I think the Yamaha is much better in the realtime control department, but working with the MPC2000XL (and my now-antiquated MPC2000) is more intuitive than a quick glance would suggest.

Hope this helps.
-Tenebrae