dinosaur returns to the fold...

[shulala]

this may just be irritating. sorry if so:

i am just rebuilding a home studio after taking a decade off being "too busy". i am a keyboard player, and experienced software sequencer. sort of. 90's style. i find that things have passed me by. a lot. based on a collaborator who uses garage band and m-box on a mac system, i figured it would be as good as anything to buy the m-powered pro tools for my XP PC. i think i have enough juice with a dimension 8400 at 3.0GHz with 1.5 GB RAM. so i figured i needed an interface. i used to use cakewalk to sequence and drove everything externally with SMPTE. like I said, dinosaur, eh?

so I picked the audiophile 192. bought the m-powered pro tools software. if i got the wrong stuff, too late, don't tell me. it's not even HERE yet. since we all play some analog instruments, i also bought a little mackie mixer. i'm really not sure quite where it fits into the whole project, but i KNOW i will use it just for playing and dinking around, and suspect it will come in handy for monitoring stuff. no monitors yet, but a couple sets of headphones. besides this stuff i have purchased a decent studio condenser mic and i have an old friendly korg controller that i hope to use for entry and to play other sounds.

here is one stumble. sounds. hmmmm... seems like i sold my sound canvas and my e-mu and all i have lying about in a box is the kurzweil micro piano. duh. do i have any sounds? anything come with this m-powered version of pro tools? do i need to go buy sample CDs? i'm still pre-disposed to hardware modules, but that seems dumb with all this DAW stuff lying about. what do i use? certainly not just the lame sound card that came with my dell?

anyone care to work with the developmentally disabled? i just want to lay down some tracks of midi, add some vocals and the occasional real guitar or bass or whatever. i know the depths of my new-millenium ignorance are almost unfathomable - but i figured out voyetra and cakewalk when they still showed up as grey text on blue screens - so at least i know a part from a channel from a track...

any suggestions warmly welcomed. knowledgable admonishments accepted. rude barbs ignored.

peace,

shu

[fizbin]

If you get Native Instruments Kontakt 2 (sample player), it comes with just about all the sounds you'd need to start off. Being one of the most popular sample formats, its very easy to expand up also. I believe they just dropped the price as well. This would be my first investment. Looks like you've already got a decent amount of RAM for this sort of thing.

Since the price just dropped, don't buy it from any place where the list price is more than $449, or ask them what the real price is based on a list of $449.

fizbin

[Bastiaan]

If youi cannot afford that, you could check out sampletank free. The cost is $0 for a few sounds.

www.sampletank.com

(click on "download")

[shulala]

thanks a lot. i ordered the kontakt and it will be here saturday...

cheers.

shu

[shulala]

actually, what i ordered was KOMPAKT, and the sounds are awesome. just got it up and running.

i feel like a kid on the first day with his license who has been handed the keys to a lamborghini. i just KNOW i'm not gonna get all i can outta this thing, and i sure as hell don't want to crash. but what a kick...

shu

[fizbin]

Yes, the KOMPAKT sounds are great, especially at the price. If you need more sample control and mangling possibilities in addition to some extra fantastic samples (think piano and orchestra, plus other all-around winners) you might want to upgrade to Kontakt 2.

Good luck with it all.

fizbin