Quote:
Originally Posted by JFreak
Welcome to the community.
The general rule is the closer to the source you are, the greater are the benefits when you fix anything.
Meaning if you have a better song, it sounds great with crappy equipment. If you have a crappy song, it sounds crappy with better equipment.
But assuming you have a great song and great artist, I would put my money into one great mic and one great preamp. Southsidemusic could tell you how much it means, but having a great mic connected to a great preamp does the trick.
After AD conversion everything is on the same line and whether you do good or bad decisions in mixing only depends on your room and monitoring.
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All true! But wait! There's MORE
. Things to consider:
1-Monitoring. Even the best speakers can sound like crap in a poorly treated(or untreated) room. Decent speakers can work well in a properly treated room(if you are not able to hear accurately, you can't make good mix choices).
2-I second the need for 1 or 2 premium inputs and highly recommend a pair of API 312 clones, or Neve 1073 clones. Extra points for adding a good compressor(I love my Warm Audio WA2A comps).
3-A perfect recording of crap will always be crap.
4-The skill of the engineer makes a bigger difference than the gear(no song ever became a hit because of a mic, preamp, or converter).
5-The best way to improve(once you have accurate monitoring) is to compare your work to the pro's in your chosen genre(and remember that mp3 format files will NOT give you the truth about your work, or the pro's work).