Thinking about setting up your own digital recording system or project/home studio? Thinking about upgrading your existing system? The marketing and sales hype would have you believe that putting together a great digital recording system is "plug and play" simple. The reality is that it's more often "FLOG AND PRAY"!
While any PC can do simple audio recording, a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is a completely different animal. I've read hundreds of tech forum post's in which people with machines (both Mac's and PC's) with specs that sound like they should be able to record 500 tracks while simultaneously calculating a moon shot orbital trajectory can't run 8 tracks without getting pop's, clicks, audio dropouts or a whole range of other problems.
A well designed DAW system is an amazing piece of gear with an amazing level of complexity under the covers. Putting together a system requiers that you have an understanding of a broad range of issues. From questions on Firewire chipsets to MOBO bus architectures, preferred hard drive architectures, system backup and restore considerations...It's not impossible but it isn't simple either. At least not if you want to have a solid, reliable, good performing system.
I have several years of experience as a technical support instructor for one of the worlds largest computer companies and I've built every PC and DAW system I've owned over the last 15 years. From this experience I can provide technical consulting that will help you build a solid, reliable, great performing system and save you time, headaches and wasted money on gear that just wont work well together.
My approach to consulting of this sort is not to come to you and talk abstract theoreticals, instead, you can come to my studio and I will explain concepts, demonstrate them in action and show you real world systems. Advice on issues ranging from basic system architecture to audio interface's, power issues, how to eliminate hum, monitoring systems, patch bay's, audio routing and mixer architecture for both DAW's and hardware mixers and much more. If you already have a system and need advice specific to that, I can come to you.
My technical consultation rate is reasonably priced at $20 p/hour and most consultation can be accomplished in one to two hours. More extensive training (ie...you want to put together your first recording system and have little or no experience) is best done in 1 to 2 hour blocks to avoid information overload.
I like to help people and enjoy talking shop. Call me and lets discuss what you need. I may be able to help you quickly, right over the phone.
