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My setup (and I'll make this quick, 'cause I gotta go set it up now, at, of all places, the venerable Moosewood Restaurant here in upstate NY) is as follows: PA: Kustom Profile One ($300), and yes, I do my own mixing. This is a great cheap PA for small rooms. Two guitars: a Gibson acoustic either mi...

This should definitely happen, but it ought to focus on the stuff Harmony doesn't do, especially MICROPHONES. WHY WHY WHY is there no Microphone review database that's any good? Nobody seems to use the Sonic State one. Also DAWs, desks, and tape machines. I promise I will sign right on and promptly ...

Absolutely go for the Ross Garfield Drums. They sound great, click on that Big Fish Audio link above! I'd advise against the Alesis machine--I often use a drum machine and I like the samples on the little Zoom machine--they sound very natural to me, for a drum machine, and it's half the price of the...

I think the terrific Pavement EP "Perfect Sound Forever," which you will recall was filled with lo-fi distortion and charismatic shouting, was named after that old digital media catchphrase.

Try Mark Glinsky's Manual Manor, he seems to have everything. I don't know the URL but you can type that into Google and he'll come up.

I recorded six or seven tracks of myself clapping once and bounced them down to two. I stood in a different place in the room each time & used an Oktava MK319. Sometimes I clapped with the hands cupped, sometimes I did just the tips, sometimes I hit them flat together. It sounded great! Did you know...

Does this sucker even exist? Who knows! But if you have one, I want it! Let me know--feel free to send email. Best, John.

Hey cassembler, I'm just talking regular white noise, not 60-cycle hum. I usually record guitars direct through a Tech 21 PSA1 & they are nice and quiet. In fact I am beginning to feel from these responses that I'm complaining too much about a very tolerable thing. I'm not set up for software though...

Yeah, my room IS pretty damned small. Like, upper-middle-class-McMansion-closet size. I'm 5'10" and have to duck under the heating duct. But it's a project studio, I'm the only one in it. You could lay the 2x4's on their sides on the floor, staple plastic over them, screw down plywood (gotta check v...

Here's what I do, with some help from previous posts on this site: 1) Built a room-within-the-room with the floor about four inches off the cement, and the whole thing wrapped in a plastic tarp (several actually) underneath the plywood. Walls are made of moisture resistant (MR) sheetrock. 2) Sealed ...

All good ideas, and I'm doing them all already! The power conditioner worked well, and the DPS16 is much quieter than the Boss unit. But perhaps my problem is one of expectations. If my Porta One had sounded half this good I would have whooped with joy. And I am pretty much whooping with joy, it's j...

Well, the DPS16 is a DAW, not a tape machine, but I could give that a try--how does it work--I just track through an EQ with the hiss frequencies boosted, and then turn them down in the final mix? I'm sure this is engineering 101 stuff, but I am a lowly dabbler...I gotta consult a book or something.

I recently switched over my home studio from an 8-track (the trusty Boss BR-8) to a 16-track (Akai DPS16). I have good budget equipment (Studio Prjcts mics, TC Electronic M300, RNC, etc.) but run it all unbalanced. Noise was never much of a problem with 8 tracks, but with 16 it begins to add up, and...

At an open mic I occasionally play at, I recently heard a woman do a version of Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" in the style of the Indigo Girls. It was brilliant.

I've occasionally had trouble with people on eBay--one guy who bought a Mexican Telecaster from me delved deeply into my personal life in an effort to establish that I wasn't a shyster, to the point of calling up my friends at the local music store and interrogating them about me! And of course he i...