Opening up shop with a budget............

Okay heres the story..........

My homeboy and i are planning on making and operating a studio, for the local mixtape cats and for pumping out our own mixtapes......

My homeboy is actually the one who is gonna operate the gear(recording/mixing/mastering) but im the one who is gonna buy the property, fund the studio being built up, do the accounting, find the talent, and do beats from time to time........

After i get the property i plan on having around 20 stacks to buy the equipment, take care of the acoustics stuff like that..............


Heres what we was planing to get:

Mixer: Digidesign Control 24 5,000

Interface: Digi 003 rack 1,199

Monitors: Dynaudio Acoustics BM6A 1700


Mic: SE Electronics Z5600A 750


Computer: Custom Mac Pro (Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, 2GB RAM, 250GB, TWO 20 INCH APPLE CINEMA DISPLAY) 4000

10 Target Pioneer cd/dvd duplicator 700

Cd Label Printer 250

Now i was planning on either getting one of those Versipanels for recording vocals.....Or i can take a trip down to the Home Depot and put together a Vocal booth....Maybe big enough for 2 people...


A recording desk for the Digidesign control 24


And the rest goes to acoustic foam, cables for the equipment and misc....

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Plus the other music equipment we bringing in that we already have......

Axiom 61 midi controller

Triton Rack

MPC 2000XL

Yamaha Motif XS8

Roland X8

Reason 3.0

Macbook



The reason were not using hardware processors and stuff is my homeboy already got a grip of high quality plugins but if the budget allows we can get into that.......


And before afew get and start going off on WHAT ABOUT MODIFYING YOUR ROOM.....We in it to make a environment to make quality mixtapes for locals in our area and ourselves, and afew indie projects here and there and dont plan on mixing sounds for the next 50 cent album or Steven Spielberg films......Dont get us wrong we in it for quality but we got 20 gs more less to spend on this studio AFTER i bought the property for it .....And over time we gonna upgrade........

BTW i would like people to contribute on any equipment changes/adds you would make.....
And the room we working with is around 23X14........

WHAT ABOUT MODIFYING YOUR ROOM?

Spending money on monitors is useless without room treatment, doesnt have to be expensive if you diy.

Good looking so far, i would get some smaller mics as well for instruments.

I used to have a a studio in my garage it was an actual room inside my garage two seperate rooms one for mixing and the other one for recording.. the recording room is where i had all my instruments . Tama starclassic maple with 6 sure sm 57's a beta kick/bass mic ect. with all mic cables routed to the mixing room where i had my korg dx 32 multitrack and some cheap but nice rokit 8's. and thats it. we recorded a few bands and started making a little money.. we were not a big fancy pro studio so we started off cheap.. 20$ an hour

I think you should build that booth yourself, 2x4's and sheetrock is not expensive and you got full control of the looks and functionality of the booth.

good luck on the project.

If you have the funds, I'd try out a Shure Sm7b...It's a great mic that is used for hip hop tracks all over the globe.

Since you're going this far with it, why not up the anty on the 003. You'll be using the control 24 so why not go bassline TDM. IMO, it's not that much more compared to what you plan on getting anyway. Plus there are other benefits to going TDM...others (studios) can come to you if you decide to go that route.

buy some comfy chairs...

and lava lamps

not sure why your getting a control 24 and doing mixtapes? Why not just get the 003 mixer do you think you need all those inputs for a mic and a few instruments? Also hd packages are not far above what you are looking to spend if you leave out the control 24 and get a command 8 or mackie control surface or something like that. As well you should have a decent mic locker if your main focus is going to be recording vocals, i would get at least 5- 8 mics if they are all just medium price ranged and some kind of better mic pre than the digi pre's. I think theres a much better way of spending your manoey than on the setup you are currently looking at. If going mac the apogee ensamble has some of the best converters and clock in the game for its budget might want to check that out.

U wanna think about a few more mics to that list, as diff mics will suit diff emcees / voices better... and some mics are real shit for some voices, etc

Also for the price of ur cd label printer, u could get a ink jet cd printer that actually prints onto cds full colour.. and can print onto silver top cd's etc.. allowin u to have the silver txt on cd's etc etc, or flat colour images / txt with silver outlines etc etc etc, or colour txt onto silver cd's etc etc.. plus u could then laquore them either with a handheld spray or with a machine (or a laminate machine).

U should also get some rack samplers in there as well, couple of the akai s series and maybe some others, (asr rack? emu rack? etc). Also u should get at least a couple of hardware processors, maybe mainly orientated around the vocal recordin if not anything else.. but if u got a couple of real good channel strips they could be versitile to be used with whatever (durin the recordin and / or the mixin and masterin stage).

what would you use a chan strip for in mastering? I know the essential part they play during the recording process but i would never run say my final stereo track into a avalon , or summit audio chan strip. -- Just asking maybe you have some tips or experience on this you could share?