The equipment

Every recording studio today has hardware and software. Here is my list

The hardware:  I operate on the PC platform using an ANTEC Take 3 ultra silent rackmount case. Here are the components inside:

INTEL Q 6600 quad core processor on an INTEL P35 chipset motherboard
Zalman ultra silent /cpu fan
Two SEAGATE liquid bearing 400 Gb SATA hard drives (one for the system and one for audio)
One SEAGATE liquid bearing 300 Gb SATA hard drive for video and sound data

One XFX dual DVI video adapter. This adapter has the Geforce 7600 chipset on it and no cooling fan. This makes for an ultra silent video adapter.

I have a TC POWERCORE Element DSP accelerator with included plugins. I mainly use the 1176 compressor and the two fantastic reverbs

My audio card is the PRESONUS 26i/o Firestudio firewire audio interface with monitor station remote.

My nearfield monitors are the very excellent M-AUDIO EX 66 bi-amplified monitors and a pair of passive EVENT 20/20s

I do not use many microphones in my studio. When I have to tape drums I rent the mics I need. For m vocals, however, I use an ALESIS AM11 (the same mic as the GROOVE TUBES GT 55). I also own a Behringer pencil mic to do stereo guitar takes

Other cool pieces of gear I have and use on a less regular basis is:

BOSS VF-1 guitar effects processor and multi effects engine
I still use my YAMAHA MU50 sound module
LINE6 UX22 guitar computer interface
Original AMPEG rocket reverb guitar amplifier
M-AUDIO firewire interface for mobile recording.

The software

The main software I use is CUASE 4 which is now so complete that I do not need very much more. Plugins for this software include:

WAVES SSL bundle
ELEMENTAL ASUDIO Neodynium compressor plugins
WAVES platinum bundle which I now use less and less.

ABLETON live 3, FLSTUDIO 7 and SONY ACID 6.0.

I also do some video editing and song placement with SONY VEGAS 7.0

These are the main software. I had a great deal more but decided that it was better to stick to learning a few well instead of learning lots of software poorly.

Here is my studio. I had a carpenter come and do a bit of acxcoustic baffling work for me. So far I am superpleased with the results and what I hear. The goal in a home studio is to record everything as dead as possible and make sure playback is as true as possible.

A little footnote on music and computers

These days everyone can own a home studio. With the help of powerful computers and excellent software one can do miracles and fool even the most professional ears. Being a songwriter we often feel at the mercy of the arranger that we have to hire to tape our music. Because of this fact I have been working with the latest computer software and hardware for the past fourteen years in an attempt to empower myself at my craft. Since I have made this decision I have developed other skills through the years. It still amazes me, however, how little this has affected the quality of music in general. That is to say that with all this technology we still manage to produce pretty poor songs. We just seem to do it quicker