Making My Demo

[andrewfoshee]

The time has come for me to bequeath my music onto this glorious world, and I need some advice from the Tape Op Crew, for these times are indeed of the upmost tightness, and money is a girl that never returns my call. In otherwords, I'm ready to make my demo, and although I want a G5, Digi 002, UA 6176, AKG 414, and a lot of other shit I can't afford, I'm stuck with a:

Compaq (901 Mhz Athlon w/ 384 MB RAM) which I'm running XP and Sonar 1
AKG C2000B
DBX Mini Pre
FMR Audio RNC 1773 (the coolest thing I own so far)

I need to get a new soundcard and I need some cheap, honest near-field monitors so my budget-rig can be completed. So far I've checked out the Aardvark DP LX6 and the M-Audio BX5's. Any suggestions/opinions on these products or other cost-efficient ways to complete my set up?

Thanks,

AF

[ryan_c]

My brother has a set of M-Audio monitors. I'm not sure if they're the same model, but I know that they're in that price range so my guess is even if they're not the same thing, they're at least comparable. That's a lot of "they're's." Anyways, he seems to really like them quite a bit, and from what I've heard of them they seem pretty boss.

[stillafool]

I'd get a bit more ram. For a soundcard, I'd take a close look at the new emu-creative M series cards. They use the same AKM converters that are in the high-end digi and motu interfaces. I think the 2 channel version goes for about 200, the one with more i/o goes for around 5 or 6 hundred. I haven't heard any reviews, except a guy on the sonar forum says he likes the new, I think it's a 12/12m or something, better than the aardvark. I don't know much about monitors -- I'm pretty happy with my events.

[drliebs]

I was always happy with my Echo Audio GINA, which is pretty cheap these days. I now own a tascam US428, a little more money but it is pretty clean, it's little sister US228(I think) is 200 bucks I believe.

Everyone will have some oppinion on monitors and in the low range nothing is going to be without it's drawbacks. So no matter what oppinnions you hear, go and take a listen to them and get what YOU like. One of the important things about monitors is knowing them for all of their nuances (good and bad). People always tell me they like NS10's mainly because they were consistent from one pair to the next. So you could go anywhere and listen to NS10's and be confident they sounded the way you expected. Buy em' and learn em'.