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You've decided to spend $40k upgrading your studio... what'cha gonna get?


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I maintain a prioritized upgrade plan to combat GAS (about $10K to $12K spread over 5+ years), but if I had $40K, I think I would do the following:

1) Hire an acoustic consultant to help measure, analyze, isolate, and treat a space ($15K)
2) Employ the same consultant to help buy a solid pair of monitors ($5K)
3) Buy a state of the art turn-key DAW (Core i7, 12 GB of RAM, new RME card, software upgrades, twin large screen LCD's) ($5K)
4) UAD-2 Quad and several new plug-ins ($3K)
5) DAW control surface(s) ($2K)
6) 88-key digital piano ($1.5K)
7) Avalon mic pre ($1.5K)
8) Drawmer gate ($1K)
9) ElectroVoice RE20, Neumann U87 ($4K)
10) Piano sample libraries, Omnisphere 1.5, Komplete, etc. ($2K)

For what I do, that's a pretty potent setup.

Todd

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I'm going to change my answer a bit...

 

I'd trim $5K from various purchases and spend a day in a studio with a top pro (e.g. Clearmountain, Kevin Killen, Swedien, Allen Sides, Bob Ludwig, etc.).

 

With what I could learn, that would more than make up for gear. Those guys could make a Portastudio casette machine sound good.

 

Todd

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Remember, anything digital loses its value the minute you open the box. Good analog generally appreciates.

 

Spend your money on your monitor chain - room, speakers, amps, etc., and mics, preamps, DIs, etc. Buy A/D and D/A, effects, etc. as you can afford because these will always be replaced and/or upgraded at some point.

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Okay, school issues aside,
;)
imagine someone just dropped $40k into your lap, with the following conditions: You have to spend it all, and it has to be spent on stuff for your studio.


What's your list?

 

The first thing would break the bank...an API 1608 configured accordingly...so we'll move on to less ambitious dreaming:

 

Hammond SK2 - $3000

Fender Bass - $750-$1500 (depends on what feels good)

Shure SM7B - $350

UA grab-bag of assorted goodies - $6000

Grab-bag of mics - $5000

Toft Audio ATB24 w/ Meter Bridge - $6750

PreSonus StudioLive 16.4.2 - $2000

Some decent near fields - $2000

Upgrade all my Sonic Foundry...I mean Sony software (Vegas, Acid, SF)

latest and greatest PC w/ Firewire that will play nice with the PreSonus - $4000 (Might as well go all out ya know?)

 

That looks like about $31K. I kept it under budget, so I figured you'd be happy. You can PM me to figure out where to send the money. :)

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