The RME HDSP9652 was my secret weapon as the least expensive, most reliable, kick butt interface I could fine. Now it's not a secret.

Thinking 3 Years Ahead

First off, I want to say that it does no one any favors to recommend you short-term, crappy solutions that ultimately cost you a lot more money. The only problem is this does require more cash outlay in the beginning. Not everyone wants to commit to a good car, so often times they settle for a cheaper one that works half the time. My experience has shown me that the crappy car is almost always more expensive than the good car IF you are smart about how you buy that “good” car.

The same applies to audio interfaces. So let's get on with it.

If you are to hop into home recording, the first thing you really need to think about is the audio interface. When it comes to the interfaces with 8+ channels, I believe I have found the ultimate solution, although slightly unorthodox. First, let's talk about a few issues/requirements.

Rock Solid Reliability
If you are cussing your interface, you aren't recording. If you put an experienced dude's head on the chopping block and forced him to recommend a rock solid interface that works reliably day in and day out, he's going to get nervous. Why? Because it sometimes takes a while for a person to work all the bugs out of their system. (For more info on that see Killer Home Recording: Setting Up .)

Generally speaking, a reliable interface is kinda like a hitter in baseball. If they actually function 40% of the time (batting .400) they end up in the Hall of Fame. It's not THAT bad with audio interfaces, but interfaces that work 99.99% of the time are hard to come by.

The only one company that I feel comfortable fully endorsing is RME. There are other good companies and maybe even a few great ones. However, based on my experiences they've stood out as being superior.

Low CPU Usage / Low Latency / Direct Monitoring / Extreme Routing
Not all interfaces are created equal in the latency department. There are companies out there, usually those hitting a lower price point, that have drivers that don't run so well. They won't run smoothly at 64 or 96 samples. You'll find that these interfaces that can't handle ultra-low latency tend to use more CPU power. This means less horsepower can be given to virtual instruments and plugins.

Most interfaces have direct monitoring, but not all have dedicated mixers for every channel so you can craft individual mixes for every band member (I rarely do this, btw, but when I need it I NEED it!) The ability to create very specific mixes goes much further than headphone mixes. It allows you to send specific signals to specific outputs. This is a very general description, but I'm positive it's one of the most valuable features on an interface. When you need to send a signal to X and you can't, you have a problem. It's the kind of thing that doesn't hype well in the magazine ads but is absolutely crucial to having a great interface.

Basically, I recommend an interface with a solid foundation in both the hardware and software department.

Inexpensive In The Long Run
This is the biggie. If you buy a $600 interface now and you stick with home recording (either as a serious hobby or maybe you even make a few bucks) you will outgrow it. It will have all the features to get you started and you may be lucky enough to get decent reliability and okay sound, but I can't recommend this route. If you take this approach and end up tearing your hair out, I look like a jerk.

So...I always recommend thinking three years ahead with any audio purchase. A piece of gear that's great for 3-12 months but ends up collecting dust or being tossed on Ebay is too damn expensive.

That's It!
If you can get rock-solid reliability, low cpu usage, low latency, direct monitoring, and extreme routing in your interface you are set. You are flat-out kicking butt and there are few interfaces that fit this bill, btw.

Where Is Sound Quality?

I didn't list sound quality and I'll tell you why. Sound quality in your first audio interface is kinda like speed in a car. Every new car can do 70mph. From an ultra-practicality standpoint, you never really NEED to go faster than that (although who's ultra-practical????). Every audio interface I've ever heard will do the 70mph equivalent.

What The Hell Does That Mean?
It goes like this. A college kid who needs to get to school is broke and just needs transportation. A Formula One driver is going to be pissed if his car is 1mph slower than the competition. The tolerances are dramatically different depending on where you are driving and in what context.

I think every interface I've ever heard is more than adequate for the college kid or the guy on the budget who just needs to get to work. As you transform your needs towards the cream-of-the-crop F1 driver, maybe a Honda Civic isn't going to work anymore. I remember a Top Gear episode where a Formula 1 driver took a new Ferrari out for a spin and later said it wasn't really all that fun. So perspective is HUGE here.

So, your typical 8-channel interface in the under $600 category is going to work for anyone with modest needs who isn't really expecting to sound better than the latest Mutt Lange production tomorrow. Mutt is most likely working in a room with a $300,000 console, $100,000 in outboard gear, and $200,000 in microphones. So do the math. A $1,000 8-channel interface isn't going sound anywhere near the tip-top league either, but it will be a notch in that direction.

The price of going from a Civic to an Enzo is exponential. If you are driving an Enzo on a gravel road, it's still only going to go about 30 mph...just like the Civic. If your rooms, instruments, and performances aren't kick ass, any benefits from the Enzo-caliber interface are moot.

Sound Quality / Price In The Long Run

Most interfaces suck when it comes time to upgrade your sound quality. If/when you decide you want a bit of boost, you are flat-out stuck. There is one exception. The interfaces that give you multi-channel digital I/O allow expansion without total replacement.

Even if you don't think you'll be expanding any time soon, if you are anything like me you are TERRIBLE at predicting your own future.

Taking this even further, it's my opinion that the interface with only digital I/O is the best long term solution.......

When PCI Isn't An Option

The PCI option has been great for a long time. However, I only rate it a few percentage points more reliable than Firewire and USB options. Now that PCIe is dominant, the days of PCI are numbered.

Some computers don't have any additional PCI slots. So that forces a person to look towards USB or Firewire options. Note: Laptops are never my preferred tool for the job unless I'm on an airplane or something. For you guys who bought a high priced computer with no expansion slots, it may be time to rethink your life a bit. (Har har, you know who you are!!!)

The truth is, I'm not aware of a Firewire or USB solution that meets my criteria at anywhere near the $300-400 ballpark a person can snag a RME HDSP9652. That little guy just happens to be the steal of the century in my opinion. He's an exception to the rule.

There are interfaces out there that are stripped down, totally modular ADAT in/out gadgets, but I can't think of one I feel comfortable recommending off the top of my head. (Either the company that makes them is not reputable enough for me to stake my reputation on or the company is usually reliable and I'd need to use the thing before recommending it here.)

If my life changed and I had to go with Firewire and USB I guess I'd have to ditch the main premise of this article.....going fully modular.

My Recommendations
I'd take a strong look at the RME interface that meets your needs that happens to be fairly expensive USED on Ebay. The “used” part is very important here. You MUST find an interface with a high resale value. Most of the RME interfaces do have a high resale value, which is not something I can say for many other companies. The resale value tells you almost everything you need to know.

For anyone on a budget, I can't say enough how important it is to get an interface that you get to use for free in the long run. For a greater understanding of this concept, head here: How To Waste $10,000 On Recording Gear You Don't Like

Back to PCI …..I'm Gonna Seem Like A Whack Job

It's my view that if a piece of gear can be obsolete, it needs to be avoided, when possible and when realistic. In terms of the interface, most guys are going to recommend a Firewire or USB 2.0 contraption that has all kinds of features built in.

In every interface I've owned or used, I've found some kind of limitation that made their built-in features less useful than is implied in the ads. One great example that comes to mind is the, otherwise outstanding, Yamaha MR816. It came with onboard DSP effects. Cool! You just can't use them and the S/PDIF digital inputs. YUCK! This kind of thing happens, to varying degrees, more than you think for everything from headphone signal routing to effects to having less I/O than you thought you had.

So What Is My #1 Interface Recommendation

My number one recommendation for an audio interface is the RME HDSP9652. When you look at it, you are going to be disappointed and may even scratch your head. Why? It doesn't do much. It's just damn good at what it does.

What does it do?

• It's extremely reliable
• Low latency
• Excellent drivers
• Total routing possibilities
• It doesn't use Firewire or USB2.0, which I actually consider to be a slight benefit
• About as not-obsolete as you can get

The Catch

Here's where it gets a hair tricky. For this, I apologize. Beginners are going to prefer more simplicity. BEFORE YOU DO....HANG ON! I'm 100% positive that the additional time needed to figure out your setup will be entirely outweighed by all the benefits.

You will require a headphone amp. If you want reverb during direct monitoring (and don't want to deal with potential latency issues.....see this Latency As Vocal Producing Obstacle Part 2 ) you'll want a hardware reverb. Most importantly, the RME HDSP9652 has no analog ins and outs. This means that if you buy it and nothing else, it won't do a damn thing. You must have external ADAT or S/PDIF converters. PERIOD.

Great Bang For Buck Options
I'd go with Ebay for both of these. You could definitely skip the reverb if you can live with predelay on your reverb plugins. I rarely recommend Behringer for anything, but their headphone amps have been outstanding for me.

Reverb: Kurzweil Rumour
Headphone amp: Behringer HA4700

Using Modular To Your Advantage

Are you looking for a Honda Civic, Ferrari Enzo, or F1 car equivalent? It doesn't matter with the HDSP9652. Why? Simple. You can swap out whatever external converters you wish. It's as simple as unplugging one ADAT cable and plugging it into another gadget and setting one as the Master Wordclock. Done.

For example, I used a couple of Behringer ADA8000s for coverters. (Not bad converters, not good preamps, great bang for the buck, but they aren't as good as my Apogee AD-16x and (2) DA-16x. No shit!) When I upgraded to the mentioned Apogees (that upgrade set me back $6,500) I didn't have to touch the interface. Dumping/wasting that much dough on super converters is something that took me nearly 10 years of pro recording. Before that, I was doing alright with lesser converters. (Note: I did rely on my Mytek AD96 via S/PDIF for two input channels for about five years.)

So I don't expect many of you to be upgrading to ultra converters in the quantity described this decade, it's nice to know that your good ol' rock solid interface just keeps on going. I didn't even have to think about it!

External ADAT Options

Super Tight Budget Options
The Behringer ADA8000 will get you 8ins and 8 outs. The converters stack up great against any stock interface in the under $1000 department. The pres aren't so great. For less than $200 on Ebay one of these will take care of you stereo outs, headphone outs, and have a few left over. You could add external pres to this and not be hurting a bit. (This is what I did for a while.)

Budget Options
The M-Audio Octane ain't no Neve, but at $600 new (much less on Ebay) it's a nice bang-for-the-buck 8-channel preamp with ADAT out. I do like the pres better than pres I've heard in < $600 interfaces.

The Presonus D8 isn't a bad sounding unit either. It's in the $400 ballpark new. Presonus swears these are the same pres in the Firestudio, but I'm positive the low end was dramatically cleaner they had less of the megaphone thing.

High End Options
There are many 8-channel preamp options and most of them aren't going to be ultra-high end pres. Off the top of my head, (2) Focusrite ISA482 preamps with optional AD converters would be a killer 8-channel setup for about $3000. Those are top-notch pres (although I've not used the converters). They are in the big boy league, although they are clean.

Other than that, you'll have to look around at various AD converters. I went with the Apogee AD-16x and it does sound great. It's an “alive” sound which I really dig. That's (2) ADAT channels for a total of 16 ins. I've not experimented too much with high end converters in the ADAT variety so I'm not going to say much here.

Of course, external preamps is beyond the scope of this article. Make sure you check out the 4-channel pre discussion here: Who Needs Fancy Preamps?

Conclusion

The super secrets to an effective, ultra-reliable recording rig.

#1 – Buy a used interface with high resale value.

#2 – Don't cut corners on a budget interface.

#3 – Go with an interface with as few features as possible other than your required I/O (ins and outs).

#4 – Go with modular individual components. Go cheap on the headphone amp, go with a reasonable preamp / converters combo (preferably ADAT). If you get rich, blow a ton on preamps and converters after you have awesome studio monitoring and great rooms.

#5 – Make SURE you have direct monitoring options for your vocals PERIOD. I won't ever go back to monitoring vocals from within the recording software, regardless of its convenience. EVER!

#6 – Maybe consider just watching football on your weekends and skipping this whole stupid recording thing. Har har!

It was time for something different.

I made the decision that it was worth quite a bit of coin for me to have an interface that worked day in and day out. I did the numbers on the amount of cash I was losing by fighting with an interface that was constantly giving me trouble. It ended being a whole lot more coins than I imagined!

For a guy like me who never has enough time in the day (or coins in my pocket!), this is simply unacceptable.

Is Firewire The Problem?

So, I did a little research. Okay, I did A LOT of research. A part of me wondered if the whole firewire thing was causing the problems. For whatever reason, I will often intentionally go the maybe-wrong route just to make sure it's the wrong route. "Yup, it's broke, alright" is a common phrase of mine. So, I decided to try firewire route one more time.

It was a tossup between the MR816CSX and the RME Fireface 800. Both interfaces received stellar reviews and were supposed to sound "amazing".

"Great Sounding" Interfaces

[Rant]Seriously, what a load of shit! I'm sick of people assuming that all you have to do to make an amazing sounding record is plug into to X piece of gear. If they say an interface sounds "great" it means their recordings made with them sound "great". I don't hear THAT many great recordings!

Neve preamps do not sound "amazing".

Yeah, you heard me.

They just don't suck at all, and lesser preamps do. PERIOD!....or EXCLAMATION!

When I think of an amazing experience, I imagine about 18 naked babes doing bad/good stuff to me while I catch money from the sky, watch monster trucks, and occassionally watch an IRS agent's head explode.. Switching from god's preamps back to cheapo pres is not nearly as bad of experience as using a portapody or going shopping.

So, when people tell me an interface jammed with 8 pres, 8 AD converters, 8 DA converters, and a bunch of other random features at X price point sounds "amazing", I'm more inclined to believe Oliver North........or a female. Yeah, I'm desparate!

The correct phrase would be, "This interface sounds dramatically less shitty than I thought". I'm paraphrasing here, but I seem to remember Garageband, our mean old uncle of the RecordingReview.com community, saying the pres in his Fireface 800 were "usable". Now we are talking! Are the damn pres "usable" for a guy who has better ones? That's what we want to hear.[/Rant]

Both the MR816 and Fireface800 are well known for their reliability. (Although, I know people who have dealt with the ol' firewire-blowing-up-the-gadget dilemma with the Fireface 800, this may be an issue with all Firewire devices)

In th end, The MR816CSX had this so-called "Cubase Intergration", built in DSP plugins, and was getting rave reviews. I jumped on it.

It was a very, very good interface. It just wasn't the right interface for me. When all the goodies were disabled due to me using S/PDIF, I couldn't keep based it on principal alone. Don't charge me for dessert just because I got steak. Only selling dessert to burger-eaters blows! (To clear up my vagaries, read my review of the MR816.) I needed more I/O and way better routing anyway.

Firewire Is Definitely Up To Par

I did learn that firewire can be reliable as hell with ultra-fast latency. The MR816 was like spending a month with Sophie Marceux in Braveheart when you are used to living with Kenny's mom from South Park. I'm not sure if that matters now that Steve Jobs has ditched his little persistent-connection connector in favor of the mass appeal of USB or not.

Back to the drawing board.

Over Rated Portability....For Me

A big draw of the USB and Firewire interfaces is their portability. It's a long story, but lets just say that anytime I have an excuse to turn down a gig, I should. I'm overloaded. I've given up on the idea of a portable studio for a million reasons. That'll probably be a future blog, I guess.

Are My Needs Crazy?

I had trouble finding an interface that met my needs. Really, all I needed was Firestudio features that worked as well as the MR816. That would have done the trick nicely. I just wasn't finding it no matter how much I researched. I was up for firewire, but really I was leaning on PCIe or good ol' PCI.

My (Hopefully) Final Interface

I ended up snagging a RME HDSP 9652 off of Ebay for about $350. This is just a PCI card. It's features are......well.....featureless. It has 3 ADAT I/O which means 24 ins and 24 outs, S/PDIF ins and outs, awesome routing, turbo low latency, MIDI and that's about it. Its best feature: It just freakin' works. I'm still in the honeymoon phase with it, but so far so great.

Being that it has NOTHING in the features department, I guess it's easy for nothing to go wrong with it. This I like! That's my style. I want a race car. We don't need carpet, air conditioning, or even the abilty to play Windows sounds. That's right. I couldn't play Youtube if I wanted to with the RME HDSP 9652. The manual basically says, "Grow Up! If you want to hear Windows sounds, by a NoiseBlaster card." I like that!) So far, my only gripe with the card is its name is a pain in the ass to type. I seem to type it often!

Being that it relies entirely on external converters, I had to go shopping. Before I say what I ended up getting, I want to go ahead and mention a certain thread of a certain recording forum where they did a blind comparison between a ultra-expensive Lynx 8 channel converter and a Behringer ADA8000 (converters only, for anyone "serious" I'm not advocating that these pres are up to usable in the high end setting). They tossed up a poll and NO ONE could pick the superior sounding unit. These are guys who've drank up all your kool aid and went out for another run to get more when it comes to gear hype. All of them desparately NEEDED the Lynx to smoke the Behringer. It didn't happen. You can see the results here.

I do feel obligated to explain any Behringer purchase. First off, I'm not sure if I would recommend a Behringer product to anyone (with one exception, the headphone amp I purchased in 2001 is still going strong and has been used literally every day). It's not so much that Behringer is a bad company, I'm just not willing to risk my reputation on them. Sometimes their stuff is great. Sometimes it ain't. The latter happens a little more than it should, unfortunately.

Secondly, when Behringer items suck, they usually really suck. I know based on personal usage that the ADA8000 sounds fine and if it holds up to a Lynx (which I've never used) than even better. I needed 16 ins and outs and going with the next step up from Behringer was going to get real expensive in a hurry.

So, I decided to take a chance. I found a deal on Ebay for $330 for 2 Behringer ADA8000s, 2 ADAT cables (worth $50 right there), and 2 8-channel snakes (worth 2 movies worth of soldiering to me + parts). So, for just over $700 I have a full blown RME setup with 18 in, 18 out (counting my Mytek converters via S/PDIF).

I've snagged a hardware reverb on the way that I can permanently setup in my RME routing matrix for zero latency vocal mixes so at the moment I can't think of one feature I'm missing in this setup.

I'm confident I've got an extremely reliable rig. I've got a gun on my holster in case the Behringers give me any trouble, but so far so good. (Note: My experience is that if Behringers aren't dead on arrival, they are pretty solid.) I've got zero latency monitoring when needed, ultra-flexible routing, and plenty of I/O. So far, they've sounded and performed just fine.

Future Scalability

I also love the fact that I can scale this setup as I want to. If I decide I want to go with super high end converters later, I have that option. It won't be happening anytime soon as I'm building a studio SOME TIME! However, I like having that option.

I also like the fact that if any piece of the puzzle dies on me, I don't have to throw out the interface.

I just need to make sure my future computers have 2 PCI slots. I'm not too worried about that right now.

Conclusion

It's taken some time, but it appears I finally figured out what I needed for my home recording needs. A modular setup based on a high-performance no-frills interface seems to have been the right way for me and it didn't cost me an arm and a leg.

If the Firestudio would have been more reliable, it would have been a fine interface and I probably would never have switched. The folks at Presonus who saw my review (and were THRILLED by it) believe I may have a fluke, dud interface and they will be sending me a new one. So, the Presonus will get a second chance. I don't feel that ANY product is perfect all the time so I think it is fair to give Presonus a second chance. I would have preferred the original have simply caught on fire so I wouldn't have had to dabble with intermittent problems.

Again, if you are eyeing the MR816, I do recommend it if you don't have any plans of blowing big cash on a couple little converters. It has features that are not-so-common in recording land and the thing was absolutely bulletproof in the reliability department.

I think I have shown that finding the right interface is a personal journey. No interface is perfect and all have features and limitations that may not work for your needs.

Good luck!

A recent example is my Steinberg MR816csx. The thing PROMISES..... I want to emphasize that when the features are listed for a given gadget at Musician's Friend or the manufacturer's website, it IS a PROMISE......that it has 8 channels of inputs via ADAT Lightpipe and 2 channels of ins via S/PDIF. This combined with the stock 8 analog ins SHOULD give a total of 18 inputs. (Yes, they do call the unit a MR816 and you can read that it is a 16-channel interface. However, it's never really explained how what appears to be 18 inputs is actually only 16.) Well, it turns out that you can't use all 8 of the ADAT channels and the 2 S/PDIF channels at the same time. You can use 6 ADAT inputs and 2 S/PDIF inputs. This isn't the end of the world, but it's generally accepted in recording land that this isn't an either/or situation. It should be stated how/why they arrived at the “16” number.

The Problem

The problem is there are 700 choices AFTER you've narrowed down your choices. I just took a look at my spreadsheet I created to help me with selecting a new audio interface. Yes, I had to create a spreadsheet to manage all the freakin' possibilities, features, and requirements. It's so easy to get hung up on this phase with tail chasing research, rethinking your needs, rethinking your budget, trying to speculate future problems with chipsets, operating system bit depth, etc that many of us just look at one, throw our hands up in the air, and say “That one!”. You pull out the credit card, throw a Hail Mary, and sign your life away.

The Clue

The very first thing MOST of us do when dealing with a fancy piece of gear (no, we aren't talking DVD players here) is fire up the manual. We know that audio interfaces don't fit in “asking for directions” territory. (Reading the manual is a necessity to getting things done. Asking for help while driving is immoral.) If more guys could discern the difference between reading manuals for recording gear and asking a gas station attendant where Clark St is those people would be cranking out dramatically more and dramatically better recordings.

Anyway, the first thing we SHOULD do is read the damn manual. Then, when are free from bs marketing jargon like “pristine quality” we get the real truth. This is where we find ourselves saying “Whoops!” when we have severe conflict issues. Common issues now are audio interfaces that won't run on certain operating systems due to issues with the bit depth of that operating system, incompatible chipsets, features that require you to buy more stuff, etc.

As stated above, this is where you also find out which features the unit actually has and which will work in your specific situation. The fancy DSP plugins found in the MR 816 CSX don't work if you use the S/PDIF output on the interface. The Cubase intergration is reduced to “not much” in this situation, as well. That's stuff you won't see in the ad. Guess where you do find it. The manual.

The Solution

So, after 10 years of practicing this craft, it finally occurred to me to go ahead and fire that manual (that I'm going to read anyway) just BEFORE I pull out the credit card. The manual is not going to be a literary marvel, but it will at least be honest with you. It's not going to sugar coat all the limitations of unit. It's going to explain how stuff works and that means they are going to tell you what the unit can not do. I find that all the red flags end up being in bold anyway.

You'll find that disabled features are highlighted. You'll find how many inputs the damn thing actually uses ahead of time. Basically, you'll encounter what you should have been told by the bs marketing. I guess that's why it's called “bs marketing” and not “facts” or whatever. Hell, this gives a person an excuse not to read the manual once the interface shows up! That sound pretty damn manly to me!

Secondly, it's worth noting that my rig is setup about as good as a person can get. My computer is totally optimized, dedicated for recording, and I didn't even use internet on it until a few months ago. (The amount of time needed to activate the numerous amounts of plugin and software I review became staggering so I decided to take a gamble and plug the thing into the web.) I've catered to all requirements from Presonus. I'd guess the average home recorder is not using such an ideal system.

Third, I record day in and day out for money. If my rig goes down, I lose cash. Period. I expect greater performance than most.

What Is It?

The Firestudio is an audio interface with 8 analog ins (with preamps), 8 analog outs, up to 16 total channels of ADAT ins and outs, and S/PDIF. It normally sells for a street price of $599-699, give or take.

For more details, check out the official Firestudio page.

What They Got Right

Tons of I/O
For those of you who don't get excited by military-grade acronyms, I/O stands for inputs and outputs. The Firestudio is well equipped for this task if you use ADAT ins such as the M-Audio Octane or Presonus Digimax D8 http://www.recordingreview.com/blog/mic-preamps/presonus-digimax-d8-review/ . There aren't many people who are going to need more than 26 simultaneous inputs and there aren't much more affordable solutions than the Firestudio in this department.

Sounds Alright
The preamps in the Firestudio 2626 do not compare to Neve, Great River, etc. No shit! I think this is a no brainer. Are they acceptable for a person who doesn't want to spend the price on a new car for 8 preamps? Definitely!

What you really want to know is how the preamps in the Firestudio 2626 compare to other interfaces out there. People rave and rave and rave about the sound of the Yamaha MR816. I've used that interface a ton in the past month and even made myself use it's preamps. I'd give a SLIGHT edge to the MR816, but those pres didn't blow my mind either. (For what it's worth, no preamp blows my mind! My Martech MSS-10 doesn't suck. End of story.) For a person wanting to get in at this price point, the Firestudio 2626 is not going to turn heads with it's sonics, but neither does the highest of high end systems either. So if the Firestudio's price makes sense, it's sonics are more than adequate.

I want to note that I use the S/PDIF input with my high end pres and Mytek converters for all my overdubs and the Firestudio 2626 sounds as good as anything in this situation.

If you are really worried about the sound of the Firestudio 2626, you may want to check out The Interrogator Sessions in Killer Home Recording. You'll hear it up against numerous other preamps ranging from Great River to Martech to Manley to an M-Audio Octane.

Excellent Routing
Without a doubt, the routing on the Firestudio 2626 is definitely one of its selling points. They got that right. Its DSP routing matrix (which does take a bit to get used to and does have some redundancy going on in not-so-intuitive areas) allows you to route any signal to any output you choose. I must admit that they've spoiled me in this department.

Routing the main outputs from Cubase to my 4-channel crusty/trusty Behringer headphone amp, my Mackie HR824 monitors which essentially serve as a miniature PA system, and to Focal monitors via S/PDIF out into a Mytek DA96 have made life easy. When I tried out the Yamaha MR816, it was very frustrating when I couldn't do this. In fact, I had to rethink my whole setup. I never quite got it where I wanted even with the Control Room features in Cubase 5. So I'd give the routing possibilities in the Presonus an A+.

Routing the stereo out to multiple sources is one thing, but I'd guess most people don't need this. Being able to route the individual stereo mixes for headphones is another. As a headphone mixer, this thing is extremely powerful and highly recommended. I generally don't need a bunch of specific mixes for individuals in live band situations, but when I have, the Firestudio has pulled it off extremely well. If they added reverb and maybe compression to their features list, I'd say they had this perfected.

What They Screwed Up

Again, these are my own experiences, for whatever they are worth. I'm not sugar coating this. If you can't handle the truth, YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! (Sorry, I'm not good at typing good Jack Nicholson impressions.)

After using the Presonus Firestudio for 2.5 years, I can say that, without a doubt, my Firestudio has been totally unreliable. If it were a woman, the cops would have found her dead in a ditch a long time ago. (Don't ask me why I have a higher tolerance for audio interface problems than woman problems.) My most reliable era required me to leave my recording computer and Firestudio on indefinitely. Simply turning the computer off could cause problems. We'll get to that.

Loses Sync
I may have great luck with the Firestudio for a month. The, for no apparent reason, and with no obvious change in my system, the Firestudio would lose sync with the computer and the little red light would begin to flash. This phase of random working and not working would last between 3 days and 3 weeks and then the unit would work flawless for a while. For this period, I would be hijacked from my recording computer indefinitely. The solution?

This is where it gets interesting. There is no solution because there is no clear, obvious problem other than the damn thing simply going on strike. I wish I could have fed it $5 bills to work. I would have gladly done so on many occasions. It would be the extortion scam of the century, but maybe then Presonus could afford to build a product I can freakin' count on.

The solution is to restart the computer and see if that fixes it. When it failed, I'd turn off the Firestudio and restart the computer. I'd try turning the computer and Firestudio off for 30 seconds and firing them both up. I'd try turning the Firestudio on and then the computer. I'd try turning on the computer and then the Firestudio. Nothing.

Hell, just last night I had to end a session 2 hours early (lost time and lost money!) because the stupid thing wouldn't sync up. 4 hours later, nothing changed. NOTHING! I fired up a mix with no trouble.

A person may want to blame this on user error. Luckily, I've been doing this long enough to KNOW it's probably user error. That's why I've became pretty damn good at tracking down my screw ups. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I'm awesome at finding my screw ups. To this day, I can find no pattern and no trend. When the Firestudio 2626 wants to be a damn woman, it becomes a damn woman. (Note: A “damn woman” is opposed to a “nice woman” who deserves bunnies and chocolate.......and a bunch of wild screwing.)

I have noticed that if the power button gets pressed somehow (you'd be surprised how many times this has happened accidentally even though it's recessed in my rack) with Cubase running, all hell breaks lose. Trying to get it to sync up after that, even with 15 restarts is nearly impossible. The best solution I've found is not to care. Turn everything off, make a sandwich, and see if there is a Star Trek rerun on.

Just for the hell o f it, I killed the Yamaha MR816 with Cubase open. Cubase immediately says, “Hey! Where'd the interface go?” When I turned it back on and told Cubase to calm down (by re-selecting the Yamaha driver) all was well. This is clearly a Firestudio-specific situation. No doubt about it. I award Presonus minus a billion points for this one.

Chews Up CPU Power
I remember when my M-Audio Delta 1010s went to the audio interface dumpster in the sky and I switched to the Firestudio 2626. The first thing I noticed was the fact that I was suddenly out of CPU power on mixes that had plenty of headroom before. I got used to it, upgraded to a Quad Core, and never thought about it much. Now that I had a chance to use the Yamaha MR816 for a month, once again, I'm finding that the CPU meter FLYING up on mixes where it really shouldn't. The Presonus Firestudio is definitely a CPU hog.

Actually, not only is it a CPU hog, it's a ram hog as well. Okay, maybe not a HOG. Maybe I'm too geared towards 2001 RAM standards, but I can't accept an audio interface requiring 40MB of RAM. I can't figure out what it's doing that would require such RAM usage. While 40MB is not the end of the world in the an era when most of us have 4GB, the designers of the Firestudio clearly knew that audio a zero-tolerance, high performance kind of ballgame. The fact they pissed away 40MB of RAM when other interface companies do not says something and I don't think it's a good something.

Multiple Control Panels
This one ain't the end of the world, but it's always bugged me. I never understood why they chose to use two control panels. One control panel allows you to change latency, clock source, etc. Then if you make a few clicks in that control panel, you'll get to a new control panel that allows you to control routing, individual mixes, etc.

What I never understood was why they broke this up. They all should have been under one control panel with maybe a few tabs added. It's entirely unintuitive and I always feel like I waste 4 seconds every time I need to make a change.

I always mix at 2048 samples (high latency) and track and much lower latencies. I usually have 8 projects going on so it seems like I need to change the latency for every session. Pushing a bunch of buttons and going through a bunch of menus to do something super simple is annoying.

I'm shocked that this has not been addressed as they have released updated drivers. End of the world? No. Annoying? Definitely!

Okay Latency Settings
While maybe this one isn't a “screw up”, the Firestudio's latency is a bit slow compared to other Firewire interfaces on the market. On a good day I can get 128 samples without too many pops and clicks. I usually have to resort to 192 samples however. For vocals, this is flat out unusable. Latency As Vocal Producing A person can switch to direct monitoring, but then when you need reverb, you need an outboard reverb unit and you'll need to get a bit clever with your sends / returns. It can be done, and is probably worth the trouble. However, on most days it would be cheaper and easier if you could just turn the latency down low enough to make this a non-issue.

I had no problems getting the Yamaha MR816 reliably down to 64 samples as long as I wasn't pushing my rig too hard. The Firestudio was never able to get down lower than 128 samples even with zero CPU load on a Quad core, XP 32-bit rig. It was clear with my hardware and operating system that we had pushed the limits of the Firestudio.

Random Latency Permissions
On some days, I'll start mixing and realize that I still have my latency set to a super low setting and need to crank it up. When I open the menu, the latency may be grayed out, which is a nice way of Presonus to say, “Go F yourself, San Diego.” I then have to stop what I'm doing, kill Cubase to get my permissions back, and then restart the mix. I lose 45 seconds because of some Presonus error.

It wouldn't bother me if this was how it was all the time. I could live with being forced to set my latency before opening Cubase. The problem is half the time I CAN change the latency whenever I want with Cubase running. This glitch bugs the hell out of me.

Random Wordclock Changes
This won't affect you guys with simple setups, but it drives me nuts. I use my Mytek AD96 as a master clock. I run that clock into my M-Audio Octane and that feeds my Presonus Firestudio 2626. This is a very common setup. For no particular reason, the Firestudio will switch its inputs to the second ADAT input (which I'm not using). This causes it to lose sync. As long as they menu isn't grayed out I can quickly change this back to ADAT #1. Unfortunately, it is often grayed out. Why? Either way, this is another damn thing I have to think about when I have a billion other things on my plate.

Why Is That Light Blinking?
As a dude who has dabbled in web programming, I know that it's fairly straight forward to develop error codes. If something screws up, a window should pop up and say “Error #554”. Then I can look online and see what that means and actually fix it. I don't have to guess and I don't have to look like an idiot restarting a computer 15 times.

I don't know anything about interface drivers, but I suspect that displaying error codes would require one programmer to work one extra week. The fact that they haven't done this means that Presonus is willing to compromise in areas that I flat-out do not believe should be compromised.

It's clear I'm willing to pay more for an interface that makes my life easier. I've certainly paid by going with the Firestudio.

Is It My Fault?
I've really grown to like the eastern philosophy that says, “Everything is your own fault”. In this particular case, I've went round and round about what I (I want to emphasize “I” here) could be doing to make the Firestudio work better for me. Simply put, I've got nothing! Nada. Zip. The only thing I know to try is a Windows 7 rig with 8GB of RAM even though it's generally considered a much better idea to stick with the trusty ol' operating system. XP should be more stable than Windows 7 right now.

The fact that the MR816 never had a single issue with syncing up (or any other session stoppers) illustrates that my rig is stable.

As An Investment

For hobbyists, the purchase of an interface is rarely looked at as the kind of thing that can pay for itself. However, for those of us who are charging by the hour, when we lose 2 billable hours due to a shitty interface design, that's easily quantifiable cash that we'll never get back. In my opinion, it adds to the cost of the piece of gear causing the trouble. I wish I had only lost 2 billable hours per month. I'd say I've lost dramatically more than that. At 2.5 years, I could have have bought an interface that costs 3x as much as still came out ahead.......Or I could have went on a cruise or tw.

Conclusion

For anyone who is counting on an interface to work day in and day out, there is no way I can recommend the Firestudio 2626. When it works, it's a fine interface at a very good price. Maybe you'll have better luck with the reliability end. However, for me, I wish I would have had the balls to slap a fancy interface on the credit card long ago. 25% interest would have been cheaper than the hell it has put me through and the time it has wasted.

I also want to point out that I paid $700 for mine in early 2008. On Ebay these things are going for a fraction of the price. This poor resale value is semi-common with computer recording gear, but it's definitely common with gear that people want to get rid of. If you are looking for a “nice” interface, at this point, I'd recommend the MR816. It's not perfect, either, but it's a product that I would and have taken to battle.

Brandon

Latency
Latency is the time it takes for your computer to process stuff. In our case, this is usually associated with the amount of delay it takes for sound to go in and out of your computer's soundcard.

Let's assume we are going to play a MIDI Controller / MIDI keyboard by running MIDI into the computer. This MIDI will trigger a synth or sample. In this example, let's say we fire up some piano samples. When we strike a key, there should be no noticeable lag in time. In other words, we should hear the note immediately just like we are playing it through a standard keyboard. Your stock soundcard is probably going to take a while to process this note. It is slow and cheap by design and will have to sit around and think about the note that needs to be played. I've seen stock soundcards take as long as 250ms to play a note. This means every note you strike will be behind 250ms. At 60 beats per minute, this is a full quarter note! The solution is to use a low latency audio interface that can process this piano note in just a few milliseconds where the delay is not even audible by the person playing.

The issue of low latency isn't limited to the playback of virtual instruments (synths and samples) on your computer. It becomes an issue anytime you want to monitor from within your recording software. I monitor through my recording software every step of the way from the drummer to the vocalist, all headphone or studio monitor mixes are done through the recording software (The exception to this is when I need more than one mix for individual players. In that case my audio interface uses a DSP mixer to give individual mixes to each player.) I prefer to use the recording software for monitoring because it gives me ready access to compression and reverb. I couldn't imagine going back to the days when my vocal headphone mixes did not have compression. This would be impossible without a low latency audio interface.

When I fire up an electric guitar, the first thing I do is move the amp to an isolated area so I don't have to listen to it. Then I slap up a mic and start listening to the guitar through the studio monitors. This allows me to hear exactly what the mic is picking up and make adjustments as necessary. This would not be possible without a low latency audio interface.

From what I hear, stock Mac soundcards tend to be a little better in terms of latency, but I do not know this from my own personal experience. I know of very few Mac users who are using the stock soundcard as their recording audio interface simple because there are other desirable features that the stock soundcard simply won't have.

You may get lucky and find that your current soundcard is adequate for low latency recording. Go ahead and try cranking the latency down to the point that latency is acceptable for monitoring. If you can reduce the latency low enough without static, clicks, pops, and the infamous “blue screen of death” you may actually be able to get away with using your computers stock soundcard.

Analog To Digital (A/D) Conversion –
The device that converts an analog wave to a bunch of numbers is known as an AD converter. We have to convert signal from analog to digital so that computers and other digital devices can store and manipulate the “data”. AD converters are not created equal. The higher the quality of conversion, the more accurate the sound. Generally speaking, A/D converters are usually not as prone to subjectivity as other links in the recording chain. In other words, there really isn't a case I know of where a person wanted poor A/D conversion as a cool “effect”. I'm guessing that the guy singing through guitar pickups on a major label recording is still being routed through high end AD converters. Poor A/D converters tend to sound harsh and not as smooth as high end analog to digital converters. If you are using an audio interface specifically designed for music recording, you probably won't notice much of a difference between the converters in your audio interface and the ultra high end converters made by Mytek, Lavry, Lucid, or Apogee. (I've never had a client notice when I switched from my Myteks to my stock Delta 1010 converters). However, it's possible that the converters in your stock soundcard are so bad that the difference should be quite noticeable between your stock soundcard and a real audio interface. The converters in the stock soundcard that came with your computer were simply not designed for audio recording. They may sound okay at first, but I'm confident that you will notice a difference when you switch to a real audio interface.

Features
Audio recording has it's own unique demands that few other people outside the recording realm face. I'll break down all possible audio interface features in the Home Recording Soundcard Wizard.

What Is The Home Recording Soundcard Wizard?
The Home Recording Soundcard Wizard was designed to take job that normally takes hours and hours and hours of frustration and guessing take a matter of minutes. A laymen with little or no prior knowledge or experience of recording can hop on the Home Recording Soundcard Wizard and find exactly the right audio interface for their needs in a matter of minutes. For advanced users who already know exactly the features they are looking for, finding the right audio interface will only take seconds.

As I mentioned in the previous M-Audio Delta 1010 article, I need the following features:

• Stereo headphone mixes
• Portability
• Less cables
• More simultaneous inputs

On top of that I want to add:

• Don't want to spend a zillion dollars

Finding The Right Audio Interfaces
I put quite a bit of research into finding the right audio interface for me. It was very important that I had the ability to fire up as many headphone mixes as necessary. I'm not big on giving out headphone mixes to each and every band member, but in the end the customer / client is always right. If they want fancy headphone mixes, I'm all for it. If I can make them feel more comfortable when they play, they will probably play better. They will probably end up coming out of my studio feeling happier about the entire experience. As outlined in my previous blog, it was very important for me to setup a stereo headphone mix(s) as I think it makes it easier to hear what is really going on. So my first goal was to find an audio interface that had a powerful headphone mixing system with zero latency. (That's another thing. I feel very strange sending drummers a mix from Cubase even if it is only 2ms behind. Then again, no one seems to complain.)

I was delighted to see that many manufacturers have powerful solutions for the headphone mixing thing. RME, MOTU, Presonus, M-Audio, and probably many others all had solutions.

After that, I had to make sure I found a Firewire unit. This really didn't knock the selection down too much. Most of the audio interfaces that had the headphone routing system also had Firewire. I'm not exactly sure why. I guess Firewire is more popular than PCI these days. (Forgive me, while I've helped a million trillion people select audio interfaces on the recording forum, I haven't bought one for myself in almost 7 years. Most of the people I help are usually going for simpler setups than I require.)

So from there, it was just an issue of price. I immediately ruled out any sound quality differences. When it comes to the sound quality of an audio interface, the main factors are the built in preamps (if applicable), the analog to digital conversion when sending signal into the audio interface, and the digital to analog conversion when sending signal out of the audio interface. That's pretty much it. There are guys who are big on modding power supplies and things of that sort, but I usually don't dig that far. I'm more worried about the plywood I have nailed up all over the place in my live room. I have my Mytek converters which are extremely expensive and the difference between them and my M-Audio Delta 1010s was very subtle. I'm positive that dumping the extra cash on RME wouldn't result in an improvement that would justify it's expense to my clients and therefor it doesn't justify it's expense to me either. Maybe the RME would last longer and be more durable, but you never really know with this stuff. The way my luck has been, anything I use is going to break!

I ended up selecting the Presonus Firestudio. It has just about everything I need for $700. I really wish it had dual S/PDIF inputs so I could use all four channels of Mytek conversion. I guess my second Mytek AD96 is going to be taking a break for a while.

I like the fact that I can add 16 additional channels via ADAT Lightpipe. I really don't have any need for 26 simultaneous inputs today, you never know what the future will hold. I like the idea that I can borrow an 8 channel preamp with ADAT outputs and immediately expand my rig when necessary.

Now the hard part: Finding an 8 channel ADAT converter.
Brandon

I can go a zillion routes. First I want to talk about what I didn't like about the Delta 1010s.

Delta 1010 Is Not Portable
First of all, they were very unportable due to them being PCI cards instead of Firewire, which I would prefer. I have had to turn down a few “on location” gigs because it took such an outstanding amount of time to move my rig around. So, it's worth a few extra bucks for the ability to grab a laptop, a 6 space rack, and a few mics for a live recording.

No Fancy Headphone Monitoring Matrix
The Delta 1010s offered no headphone mixing matrix. I used my Mackie 1604 for the longest time for monitoring in a live band situation. I could get 4 mono and 1 stereo mix out of the Mackie, but I really hate mono headphone mixes. I think it's much more difficult to hear with a mono headphone mix and I think this effects recordings in a negative way. So, this time around I really want the ability to setup stereo headphone mixes.

I always felt a little weird when I knew the guitar players in the band really couldn't hear what was going on. While I could continue to wing it with the current mono setup, it would be preferred to have the ability to do anything I wanted in terms of headphone mixes.

Note: I will still be monitoring through Cubase when doing any overdubs. All of this headphone monitoring matrix stuff is there exclusively for the recording of live bands. I like adding compression, adding reverb, and controlling levels real time through Cubase in almost all cases. However, I'm limited to a single mix in Cubase. While theoretically, I could use aux sends within Cubase, these add significant latency to the signal.

It seems silly to pay $600 for an audio interface that does not have extensive headphone options.

No Built In Mic Preamps
The Delta 1010s had no mic preamps built in. This led me to buy external mic preamps and a mixer. I really don't need built in mic preamps these days, but I do have to admit that I like the idea of simplicity with the built in mic preamps. While I do have a few high end and middle of the road mic pres which always get used first, there were times when I would end up resorting to my Mackie pres if I ran out of channels. I would use built in mic pres in the the audio interface as a last resort as well. Going back to live recording and such, I like the idea of being able to plug in one single cable into an audio interface and being done with it.

TONS of Cables
I've had hell with cables since I started recording. I think this is common. When I have 16 mics in use, I have 16 mic cables that go to my preamps, 16 cables that go from my preamps, cables that go to the mixer for headphone mixes, cables that go from the preamps to my Mytek converters, cables that go from my Mytek converters to my audio interfaces. This may not sound too complicated, but my floor ends up looking like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I just happen to hate snakes, too! The problem is most of my cables are 8 feet long for various reasons and this means I have 8 feet of cable whether I need 1ft or 20ft. This really makes a huge mess, makes it hard to troubleshoot bad cables, and causes big problems with cables getting accidentally yanked out. I would much rather forgo this complexity, if possible.

If I'm recording 16 mics, there is no way of getting around those initial 16 XLR cables. However, I've got a feeling that if I can take the Mackie out of the equation entirely for monitoring, I will not only have a cleaner looking rack that is MUCH easier to deal with and troubleshoot, I'll also totally reduce the number of problems that occur in the first place. I can't think of a live session (or even a session where we were just recording drums) where every cable and connection worked perfectly. I'm always playing around with my rack. Note: Some of that is do to the fact that I have to hook/unhook my snake on my Neve preamps when I switch from tracking in the control room vs the live room. Way too much of this is due to some random cable causing problems. The fact that I have wasted the bands time dealing with my issues so much usually compels me to knock time off the recording bill. These hours add up!

It may seem like I'm putting too much emphasis on simplicity, but I find that when I'm trying to get great tones for a live band, I usually have anxiety x 2,000. Everything goes wrong. There are cables everywhere. The band is tripping over them. The guys in the band will start telling jokes and yelling and hollering. (This isn't a bad thing except when I'm trying to find a bad cable in a stack of 4 billion wires and cables). In the end, every little incremental improvement I could make for this sort of thing is an enormous blessing!

Not Enough Simultaneous Inputs With One Card
The M-Audio Delta 1010s allowed 8 analog inputs and then 2 more inputs via S/PDIF. This is a fairly normal configuration for a multi-channel audio interface. At least, it was a fairly normal configuration. I used 2 Delta 1010s to get enough inputs. While this wasn't a bad way of handling the situation, when you double the amount of components in a rig, you double the changes of something going wrong. So here I sit with a dead PCI card, but 2 breakout boxes that work fine. If the Delta 1010 had ADAT Lightpipe inputs, I could continued using my one audio interface and simply run a single cable into the back of the Delta 1010 for an additional 8 inputs.

Required features:

• Stereo headphone mixes
• Portability
• Less cables
• More simultaneous inputs

So, I'm looking for an audio interface that can take care of all these requirements. I have to admit. The Delta 1010s were very reliable. I got over 6 very reliable years out of the Delta 1010s and I even squeezed a few great recordings out of them here and there. However, the Delta 1010s were just little short on features. At $600, I'm of the opinion that the Delta 1010s can not compete with other model audio interfaces. I had thought at one time that the price was dropped down to $400. This seemed a bit more reasonable.

Some may wonder about the sound quality of the M-Audio Delta 1010. I'd say it's as good as anything else out there in home recording land. Of course, I upgraded my converters to the very expensive Mytek converters, but no client has been able to tell the difference.

Conclusion
This article isn't really meant to deter or encourage anyone to use a Delta 1010. I'm simply describing my own personal experiences and thoughts. If your needs are similar, you may save yourself a little bit a of trouble by learning from my mistakes when choosing an audio interface.

Why aren't you already recording music?

Why haven't you gotten a job, bought a $200 audio interface, a $100 mic, and maybe EZ Drummer?
How will you know if you even like recording music if you aren't already doing it?

Starving Actors and Starving Engineers / Producers
If you haven't recorded music in your own time, you should consider if this is really a “career” you want to go for. Music recording is not like being an accountant or something. I'm sure there are plenty of guys who decide they want to be accountant one day, go to school, and then become a CPA down the road. Music recording requires a HUGE dedication. It's a lot more like being an actor. Ever heard of the phrase “starving actor”?

Starving actor is a well known phrase because there are so many people who are just dying to hop into the lead role on the next Jerry Bruckheimer production that they are willing to starve for the chance of snagging that big role. (I can think of higher movie aspirations, by the way).

Imagine if the world was just crawling with people who dreamed of being garbage men or lawyers and would starve at the chance just to get one of those gigs. (By the way, there is nothing wrong with being a garbage man. If you are a lawyer, I'll probably see you in hell! Ha ha). So, audio recording falls under the “dream job” label.

The High Road
This path is the path to recording major label stars. You MUST make huge contacts somewhere along the line. If you don't have an “in” with someone, you will never succeed in this genre. It requires that you know people. No one cares about the music degree you have or audio engineering phd you may have hanging on the wall of your extremely small apartment! You need to know people AND you need to know what you are doing. I'd argue that the first is more important.

The music industry is all about networking. It's about getting jobs the same way that any other non-yell pages type of business makes their money. Before I switched to producing only, my studio was always overbooked and I never put my # in the phone book. I never saw a point in it. It was all word of mouth. The same is true in big boy land. You get to record Keith Urban when you party with his bass player or whatever. (Of course, you record the bass player's little sister first and if that goes well you move on to bigger and better things).

The high road is what Puffy Daddy and every other big guy did. I said Puff Daddy because someone was watching his life story on TV in the background recently. He was the usual kid from a poor neighborhood, but he took or a bus or something 1 hour into the city so he could volunteer to work for some big producer. He was like 15 or something stupid. (Okay, I didn't pay too much attention to the show!) Anyway, the producer dude told Puff Daddy to wash his car. Puff Daddy did and did a hell of a job. This sort of thing continued for a long time. Somewhere in there one guy called in sick and Puff Daddy was wrapping cables and things of that sort. He worked his way up and before you know it he's good buddies with Mr. Huge Producer and making Notorious BIG and Mary J Blige records. The rest is annoying history.

Is recording school a part of the high road? It depends. Recording school gets you an audition. In other words, you go to recording school and spend $20k on the school and another $5-10k on living expenses while you learn stuff about audio that any big producer would teach you if you could be in the same room. (This is why I highly recommend the Micheal Wagener Workshop for anyone who is really serious about learning the craft of recording.)

I don't mean to undermine how great of an experience recording school can be. In fact, I'd probably put it close to the top of “Funnest ways to waste $25,000”. I'd rather blow $25k on recording school than blow $25k on strippers or on blackjack.

The Flaws of the High Road
The industry is not what it used to be. I recently heard that Capital Records (known for being the “rock” label) cut its roster from 250 bands to 50 bands. (This was like 2 years ago when I heard this). Ouch! As you know, the labels are focusing more and more attention on 2 bands / artists per year. They are promoting 3 songs per year. This means that there is dramatically smaller amounts of major label work to choose from.

There are thousands of recording school graduates from each year (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and now 2007) who are competing to be involved with the recording of these 50 bands from Capital. You must be willing to go through prison and back to be picked as the guy who gets the coffee

What would you do if a producer wanted you to pick up an 8 ball of cocaine for him @ 1am on a Tuesday night? If you say no, you probably won't be asked to be the coffee maker on the next session. If you say yes, maybe you'll be fine. Maybe you'll get a felony possession. Maybe you'll go down the path to destruction. (There are a lot of burned out engineers out there. It's sickening and sad!)

How long can you go on practically zero dollars, insane hours, and no appreciation with about a 0% chance of making it to superstar land? This is why just about every recording school graduate ends up back in Missouri or Indiana or whatever.

Would you miss your mother's funeral? There's a popular story of a studio owner who needed a coffee maker to work. The coffee maker / recording school graduate had just heard that his mother had died. The studio owner said “I don't give a shit. Get your ass down to the studio, now! I need you to work today”. Of course, the coffee maker / recording school grad didn't go to work. (No one worth a damn would ever ditch their mom's funeral unless she was an abusive piece of garbage or something). Anyway, the coffee maker was immediately fired and a new coffee maker stepped up in his place. It's nothing personal. Of course, this sounds maybe a little more harsh than it really is. I mean, the studio owner probably respected the coffee maker / recording school grad more because he picked his mother over his job. However, the studio owner has a business to run and the recording The Wall or Thriller isn't going to stop just because the coffee maker couldn't show up. Of course, the recording industry needs sickeningly dedicated individuals to cater to the stars. This is just a small part of it.

The Low Road
The low road is the path I've taken. I wonder how my life would have taken at the high road. I'm convinced I would have done well. Would I be happy? How should I know? I'm confident I would have succeeded.

The low road consists of doing everything yourself. I mean EVERYTHING...even making the coffee! I started out by maxing out a loan and 2 credit cards. I bought about $15k worth of recording gear (didn't go as far in 2001 as it does now). I did this all in my bedroom of my mom's house. After I got the hang of it, I went to a few live shows and offered to record a band for free. They jumped on it. I had a little room I could use that was 8' x 12' x 8'. (Look up “boxy” in the audio engineering dictionary and you'll see a picture of this room. Ha ha).

Anyway, Mom got a new house, I bought the old one and used it almost entirely for recording. My old dining room became my control room. My old living room became my live room for drums and stuff. I started recording more and more bands. I got quite active in the local scene. Before I knew it, I was booked solid.

In between recording bands, I'm reading about acoustic principals, the effects of gear, etc. I'm pumping almost all the cash I made right back into my studio and getting experience FAST. It was normal to put in 30 hours in a Saturday or Sunday. We had to get finished because I wouldn't be able to get the band in again for another month.

It continued like this for a long time, but my recording quality was so random. Some albums sounded pretty damn good. Others were terrible! I thought it was me. It turned out it was the bands. So, I started to pickier about the bands that I worked with. I started charging more money. Of course, more bands began to stand me up. Immediately after returning from the Michael Wagener Workshop where I'm meeting my music recording heroes, I come back to Missouri. I'm low on cash and NEED the work. The band doesn't show up.

Something in me clicked. I said I was wasting my time with 90% of all local bands. I wasn't ever going to make enough money for a real career and recording local bands was always done on nights and weekends so I was never going to be much of a dad or whatever. I saw a dead end.

I decided to get into producing. Meaning, I'd take on one or two projects at a time and I'd produce the hell out of them. I'd try to make the best recording I could with the best songs. Of course, my quality shot WAY up and my income shot WAY down.

The idea is to record better and better bands, songs, etc and work my way up the ladder.

The Flaws On The Low Road
You have to do everything. This includes everything from pulling out the Algebra 2 books to design the Helmholtz Resonators to pulling in the clients to squeezing out a great vocal take from a singer.

Typically, the quality of musicians is not nearly as high as you'd get in the High Road. Therefor, you'll be making recordings of bands that simply don't sound good sometimes. Of course, your name is on that project whether you like it or not. You'll lose some business by recording the crappy bands.

As proof by this forum, there are A LOT of people recording at home. Can they compete with a dedicated studio guy? In most cases, the answer is no. Of course, it depends no what “compete” means. If they are only going to print 100 cds for friends and family, what difference does it make? They don't need ultra mega quality. In fact, a lot of home recording people who have no idea what a Helmholtz Resonator is (and barely know what a compressor is) can crank out decent sounding stuff if they are good enough songwriters and musicians.

In a smaller market (like what I live in), the amount of people that aren't willing to pay for decent recording is small. Doctors and rich guys will just pay $60 per hour at a studio that has recorded some bigger regional stuff. Poor people will record as cheaply as possible. You never really know and it's really tough to figure out where you stand. I saw a backlash when I increased my rates.

The pay is usually not that good. This is a given. If you want to make any real money, you need to work your way up the ladder of bands.

The hours suck if you want to be anywhere near “normal”. I didn't see a lot of my friends for like 2 years. Why? Because I was recording every weekend very late. You may be able to setup different hours depending on your clients.

Be Happy
I'd focus on what is going to make you happy. Some people plan on living in New York City, driving a Ferrari, paying $5k a month in rent, never getting married, and will be happy with that life. Some people want a wife, a couple of kids, a $200k house (Missouri land values are WAY lower than California or any other “desirable” place to live), and a 3 year old Honda Civic. Other people would be happy with a $50k house and a 15 year old Ford Escort in LA while they dedicate their life to their art.

All are fine choices. Most of the big boy producers and engineers have been taken to the cleaners multiple times with divorce and aren't always the most happy people. Be aware that the higher you ambitions, the more you are going to have to sacrifice to get there.

There is nothing wrong with just recording for fun. This could mean a HUGE $50k investment that you can never recoup or it may mean getting a $200 audio interface and a $100 microphone. In the end it's the music that matters. So do whatever is going to make you happy.

These days, I've been focusing much more time than ever before on my internet businesses. The idea is to get cash coming in so I can get back to recording full time again without having to worry about money while I record. Of course, I'm still in my control room quite a bit.

Conclusion
There is no easy path here. You can invest $20k in education or you can put $10k in gear. You still have to work really hard to actually get some dollars coming in. The local scene is usually less competitive, but it may be just as difficult to make a name for itself. There is no way easy way out....to quote the incredible Rocky 4 song.

In the end, there is nothing wrong with being a garbage man who records a lot in your free time. Just don't be a lawyer!!!!