I have owned a lot of equipment over the years, some items are invaluable, others only serve to distract you from the creative side of things, over the next few posts I will outline the most important items I have been using over the years.
First is my computer. The hub of my recording world. Everyone nowadays owns a personal computer and they are generally powerful enough to create perfectly good music, it is only when you get really deep into the art and science of production (and it really is 50/50 art and science!) that you may find you need a really powerful machine, modern plug-ins and effects can use a lot of RAM and system resources...my computer is a 15" Macbook Pro, a very expensive machine, but it allows me to be mobile, it is so unbelievably stable, I spent many years tweaking windows machines and trying to cobble together components to make a good reliable machine and it was always a losing battle. By the time I'd got components that were good enough to cope with the high demands of a recording setup, I would have spent a similar amount as that of a Mac like this. I don't have to worry about tweaking my Operating System to get the best performance, ten minutes setting up the machine is pretty much all you need to be ready to go and actually make some music! I'm not going to get into the Mac Vs PC debate but the day I saw a Mac laptop do what I'd never seen a PC manage to do after years of trying I was sold, and have never felt the need to look at going back, yes they are expensive but for the hours of effort they saved me I think it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
