Patch William

Classic lead synth, bass, pads, arpeggiators, all sorts of different keys, and some weird ambient things going on too. The filter is awesome and the pitch and mod wheel are always in use. I use this thing for groovy, fat bass lines like you'd find in P-Funk or for lush, electronic chords to set the mood. The leads can be so funky with the use of the mod wheel. Like all analog synths, many of the sounds are abrasive until you adjust your settings and dial in the preset to where it fits with your other sounds. The nice thing about the Mininova is how easy it is to manipulate your sounds. No confusing patching or esoteric synth stuff that only super nerds will ever understand. It's got very easy to understand controls and knobs that let you get where you want to be very quickly. The vocoder presets are just okay and I don't use it that often for vocoding.

Pretty well-balanced sound, might be a little mids heavy vs. the highs though. Lending to a slightly less "bright" sound than you might be used to with a Yamaha. That's purely subjective coming from me though, I'm not a scientist. Less bass heavy than the KRK Rokits. Classic KRK Yellow cones, black curvy bodies. These things can go LOUD too. At the end of the day, it takes time to learn your monitors - the way they reproduce sounds vs. the way you mix - and I've had these for ten years, so I know them like the back of my hand and I can get well balanced mixes out of them. Also, now that I think about it, I don't think they even make these anymore.

4 inputs - 2 mic / line in the front and 2 line in the back. I run my mic of choice and my Omnichord into the front and my Mininova into the back as a stereo pair. Clean Neve preamps that definitely have enough gain for vocals, since they'll be sitting in a mix of other audio, but fall a little short when it comes to recording, let's say, acoustic guitar if that guitar part is going to need to stand alone. You can hear the noise floor in that scenario for sure. This piece makes a great interface for a small, home studio with minimal input requirements. If you just have one or two mics and one or two instruments, like I do, this is perfect. I also like that there's no annoying digital menu screen and every control has it's own dedicated knob. Makes it very easy to use.

This mic sounds awesome. It has that classic radio broadcaster low-end and a pretty transparent high end. It can give you a clean, bright, transparent sound or a dirty, crunchy, warm tone. It all depends on how you process this thing, which is the biggest part of owning this mic. This thing absolutely requires some form of dedicated gain amplification. Running this directly into my interface is not a good call. The interface's preamps are not strong enough to boost the signal of this mic off the noise floor. I have been running it through a Cloudlifter for some years but recently added some 500 Series outboard gear to my studio and I will be running this mic through my Warm Audio WA12 500 MKII from now on to get the signal hot. You can use this mic for everything - vocals, guitars, flutes, drums, whatever - as long as you gain stage it properly.

I use this mic for rappers and singers. It's clean and bright. Overall, it sounds great although it might be just a little heavy handed in the 1-2k range. Nothing some very simple EQ work can't handle. Also, this thing is less than $250, so it's an easy purchase. Good choice as an entry-level condenser.

A vintage, Japanese synthesizer that produces 16 bit sounds like you'd find in old Nintendo games. It has a touch-sensitive bar on the right which allows it to be played similar to a harp. When played with a long sustain and added reverb and chorus, this thing becomes an amazing ambient pad. My Omnichord is the secret sauce in a lot of my beats.

Ableton literally does everything. The only limitation with this software will ever be the user. If you take the time to learn the things you need to know, you can absolutely make any type of music and implement any type of technique you would ever want to in this DAW. Ableton is definitely the heart of my entire studio. If I had to keep only one piece of music gear for the rest of my life, it would just be my laptop and Ableton.

Good sounding, affordable, comfortable headphones. What else do you need? I like their slim overall size compared to other "studio" cans and I like the look of em too.

The first piece of my outboard mic chain, I can finally get the signal up off the noise floor for my SM7b and get a truly high quality, clean recording. Depending on how hard you drive the gain, you can get results that range anywhere from mostly transparent to highly colored to full on distorted, so you have a wide array of possible tones to play with. I also like that it has a DI on the front for guitar/bass which I consider a necessity for any all-purpose, first preamp.

I use this EQ to shape the sound coming from my Shure SM7b Microphone so that it compliments the characteristics of each individual voice. Everyone's vocal frequencies are different and it's awesome to be able to correct for those differences before the signal ever even gets into Ableton. Using this EQ, along with my other 500 series outboard gear, I can track vocals into Ableton that sound the way they're supposed to without needing to do much of anything after the fact. Speeds up my workflow and just sounds better at the end of the day.

It's hard to mess up with this thing. You only have controls for Threshold and Ratio to adjust so it's dead easy to use and you won't sit there over thinking things and second guessing all your choices. Very affordable at only about $250. Definitely punches above it's class at that price. I keep this unit at the end of my signal chain to tighten up the changes that I make with my EQ and package everything back together nicely. I run it pretty gently for vocals.

The amps and condenser mics in this thing are very powerful for how small it is. It has a pair of mics that you can move from left to right to control the stereo image you want to capture. You can also run up to 2 1/4 inch lines into it to record from external mics. I've used the line input to record vinyl samples off of other people's record players at their houses. I've also recorded in some electric guitar (the guitarist can wear headphones and monitor in real-time). I use a lot of field recordings in my music so this is an essential tool for me. It's light, portable, has a hi-fi sound and it's easy to use.

2 headphone jacks with independent volume control are amazing for an engineer and an artist to be able to track audio and listen at the same time without monitors. 8 inputs is great for a more permanent studio configuration. With my old interface, I only had 4 inputs so I was constantly juggling them for new instruments. Behringer also makes a separate 8 input preamp which can connect to this one. They work together as one 16 input interface. That will be one of my next upgrades for sure! This interface has a mix knob which lets me dial in a balance between audio coming from the computer vs. audio running through the interface analog. This lets me balance the levels of my input that I'm recording (guitar, vocal, bass, etc...) with the mix that we're recording into without having to change the levels in Ableton at all. This gives much more control and flexibility to change things on the fly, mid-recording. Each input has a pad as well. The preamps are totally transparent. Only drawback is that phantom power is distributed in two groups of four. You can't send phantom power to only one channel at a time.

Turns a note into a pad. Turns a phrase into a stuttery loop. Can act as a simple reverb or delay. You can back your own playing with the micro-looping effects. This thing has two channels that feed into each other. Use the mix knob to go 100% wet and just start messing with the signal. Run anything into it and see what happens.