I have decided to plan my new musical platform in advance this time, rather than the usual method of buy something, expand on it, realise its not up to the job and then replace it. This essentially means that I am going to spend a great deal of time on google deciding something, then finding a better version of something and so one, until I eventually bite the bullet and invest.
What I have at this stage is a premise and an outline set of requirements. The premise is simple, go fully digital, but retain analogue controls. The outline components are as follows:
- A powerful PC/MAC + Essential Apps such as Ableton Live
- A High Quality Multi-channel sound card
- A midi trigger device
- A Good quality Mixer
- A Sampler/Effects Unit
Now, its actually possible to have all of the above in a single box, and in fact, many solutions exist for sub ยฃ250, but to be honest, its just not going to give me the flexibility and expandability that I desire. What I want is complete fluidity in the solution so that I can expand upon for many years, giving me not only multi-channel mixing, but the real-time remix capability that I desire
So where next?
Well, I already have a decent mixer (DJM600), a powerful PC (Multi-Xeon Monster) and Ableton, so the most important piece and crux of the system is what I need to acquire first. This would be the multi-channel sound card! I have had a look around and found many options, but this one seems to be the best by a mile:
This unit has all the features I could need, from 192Khz sample rates, through to 6 channels of input and 10 channels of output to give me as many feeds as I could possibly deal with! The spec list goes on forever on this thing, which is why it can command a ยฃ500+ price tag. But if I am going to invest, this is the way forward.