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Home Recording Studio Starter Bundle

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Focurite-Solo-Home-Recording-Starter-Kit
Home Recording Starter Kit

In partnership with B&H Photo-Video-Audio, we have put together a home recording equipment bundle – Home Recording Starter Kit.
[Update: Since Avid discontinued the Fast Track, we replaced the interface in this kit with the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2].
I designed this bundle with the primary goal of containing the bare minimum needed, at the lowest cost, to produce professional quality audio from just a regular computer in your home.  There are a number of benefits to purchasing gear like this in bundles.  It is convenient to not have to hunt and peck for each item when shopping – you just have to buy the one product.  Also, you save money buying bundles.
The home recording starter kit – is primarily for people who want to record voice-overs, such as video narrations, podcasts, radio and TV ads, audio books, etc.  It comes with a large-diaphragm condenser mic, great for voice recording but also a terrific all-around microphone.  You then also get a pop-screen (to avoid “p-pops” when recording vocals), an XLR mic cable, a boom mic stand, closed-back headphones, and an audio interface (which comes with Ableton Live Lite 8 software).  This type of set-up – a standard (not USB) condenser microphone plugged into an audio interface box which is plugged into the computer – is the foundation for high-end professional audio recording.  I call it home studio configuration 2.  Configuration 1 is a microphone (pc mic or USB) plugged directly into a computer.  This home recording starter kit is $234.95.  If you were to purchase each item individually it would cost you$282.88. So you save about $47 by purchasing the bundle!
If you find Ableton Live Lite 8 software isn’t right for you (it tends to be more for musicians than voice-over or basic recording), I highly recommend upgrading to Reaper software, which I find much more intuitive and powerful.
Here are the details of the package:

The Home Recording Starter Bundle ($259.95)

  • Focusrite Scarlett Solo – Portable USB Audio Interface
  • Pearstone 3-Pin XLR Male to 3-Pin XLR Female Audio Cable (10′)
  • Auray MS-5230F Tripod Microphone Stand with Fixed Boom
  • Audio-TechnicaAT2020 Condenser Microphone
  • Polsen HPC-A30 Closed-Back Studio Monitor Headphones

Reaper 4.5 Has Awesome MIDI Improvements

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Reaper DAW music recording software
Reaper

Reaper, the incredibly awesome recording software (DAW – digital audio workstation), just released a major update in version 4.5 yesterday, Sep 2nd. If you are not aware already, you don’t pay for for this update if you already have Reaper. This is one of the unique and awesome features of Reaper ownership. By the way, I have no affiliation with Reaper other than how much I like it.
Despite the incredible features and community of Reaper – totally unique honor-based pricing system, uncrippled 60-day trial that never actually stops working, lightweight code (and hence, download), same basic professional features you find on DAWs costing 3 times more, etc., etc., (read our post about Reaper for more detail here – Why Reaper Rocks as a DAW ), one common complaint has always been its weakness in MIDI features and capability. This update has changed that!
Make no mistake, this update is huge across the board. But the MIDI changes are the coolest. Here are just a few of the improvements:

  • See all the midi tracks/items in the editor
  • Draw CC events on multiple tracks at once
  • See the next/all items in the track
  • New Track List (in MIDI Editor) that allows you to not only see, but also edit (!) multiple tracks and items ath the same time

One person in the Reaper forum said he used to dread getting up in the morning knowing he had to face the Reaper MIDI Editor, and now he looks forward to it. Of course, it’s only been 2 days;).
But that brings up another point. Reaper has ALREADY pushed an update to 4.5 (4.51) with even more improvements! That’s 24 hours between updates. Short of some iOS apps, can you think of any other software companies that do this?
To see the complete list of the new stuff in the new version of Reaper, see it here – http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=127648 . Be sure to read through the entire thread for some explanations and pics of some of these updates.
To download Reaper, and/or find out everything about it, go here: http://www.cockos.com/reaper/

Arpeggionome Pro Is A MIDI Instrument And Controller Designed For The iPad

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Arpeggionome (the name is a mashup of the terms “arpeggio” and “metronome”) was released as a cool music-making device for the iPad. It could not only make cool music by itself, but it could act as a MIDI controller for other iOS MIDI devices, external devices and instruments, as well as computer recoding software. In December of 2012, Arpeggionome Pro was released, which had additional features and capability in the MIDI department. It also has a redesigned interface from the original Arpeggionome. It was updated to version 1.1 yesterday (June 23rd, 2013). Recently, Arpeggionome was released for the iPhone as well.
Arpeggionome Pro is $19.99 in the iTunes store. Arpeggionome for iPhone is $2.99.
See all the details and capabilities at this link: http://www.idesignsound.com/arpeggionome-pro-ipad/
Check out the video below for a demo of the music-making awesomeness of this cool iOS app.

MIDI Basics

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MIDI is short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. This standardized format has many benefits, but their tiny file size is high on the list. Instead of recording audio tracks, which take up a significant amount of space, MIDI files use existing audio tracks and arrange them. Because the MIDI files don’t have any actual audio, they are slightly less portable.
I’ve written several articles on MIDI – what it is, what it can do, etc. You can see all of my articles that have anything to do with MIDI at the MIDI tag page here: https://www.homebrewaudio.com/tag/midi/
For a different take on it, check out the post at AudioTuts below.
You can read more here: http://audio.tutsplus.com/articles/general/whats-this-midi-all-about-then/

New Version Of G-Player Gigastudio Sample Player

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G-Player Gigastudio File PlayerSeveral years ago I invested in an awesome software synthesizer program called Gigasampler, which later became Gigastudio. The program played sampled instruments via MIDI (see our article What is MIDI? A Big Help in Home Music Recording, That’s What for a review of what MIDI is). These virtual instruments (yup, see our article Home Recording Awesomeness – Virtual Instruments) sound extremely authentic because they are, in fact, recorded samples from the actual instruments. They are not synthesized. I had dozens of instrument samples for Gigastudio and used them often in my recordings. Other folks had hundreds or thousands of samples made to be compatible with Gigastudio (the files had the .gig extention). And then Gigastudio went away – Poof! Their parent company, Tascam, decided not to support or update or sell the program any longer. Gah! That meant that thousands of people were stuck with huge libraries of sounds and no player.
A few companies came along and offered a player capable of playing these Gigastudio instruments, and one of them is G-Player by soundLib. They now have a new version, G-Player version 2, which offers a free upgrade if you own the first version. If you buy it new, the cost is $149.
I’m going to grab my copy today.