[mindnoise]

Welcome on the board

first I am NOT into hiphop making, I do lofi/noise and never got much past Cypress Hill I esp. LOVE their older stuff.

As a first advice ALWAYS try the demos before buying (so get your iLOk ready).
Onyl You can decide what´s good for you.


As you mentioned McDSP, I don´t think there is ANYTHING it can´t do, It´s one of the most beautiful and musical EQs/Filter (Filterbank) I´ve ever heard (subjective impression here). I don´t know if it´s good for HipHop but I know how many of you grave for the precise beat and tone, so that would be ideal (hyothetically). Besides their great customer support.

As another thing Isuggest taking a look at Waves RennMaxx, this is also a great allrounder but can´t comment on their sound to much but people here love it.

As a Tube emulation psp vintage warmer has a good reputation and for $129 on ebay you can´t really go wrong. I don´t have it. I prefer the REAL thing.

There is noe REAL speccial plugs for HipHop etc. ´cause: the wider varity in styles ans sounds a plug masters the better it is. So go for Quality, not quantity.

But how´s about hardware?
You know only analog gear gets REALLY deep & grungy, especially with FILTER & TUBES.

As A cheap possibility of playing back samples I suggest NI Battery, it´s a Drum sampler,
but can also play tonal samples like basses, strings fx and the likes. Only dropdown is
the RTAS limitation of one (stereo/mono) output per instance, but you can have lot´s of them.

Ever thought about Sherman Filterbank, Oberheim 6/1000 or MFB Synth, Tube compressors and MPC1000/2000 it THE standard for pricise beats? Each one not TOO expensive.
These gears kick major butt and won´t suck your CPU power

I guess you already know that the signal quality starts at the musician, so good mics and monitor are invetable. You can´t edit what you can´t hear or record.

perhaps this helpd a little,

best