My Home Recording Rig

Most of you probably don't care about this but I wrote it for a contest I was entering so I thought I would share it here as well:

I record acoustic-guitar-driven pop/folk/rock stuff. It's hard to describe because it doesn't fit into any one genre. I use Cakewalk Sonar HS7 on a Dell Dimension 8600 which is still super fast even though it is about 5 years old. I use an Alesis QS 8.1 mainly to trigger soft synths but I still get some organ sounds out of it that are tasty. My interface is an M-Audio Delta 44 and I use a Pre-Sonus BlueTube dual preamp with AT2020 and MXL990 mics. Guitars: Wechter Pathmaker Deluxe, Seagull CM6+, Squire Classic Vibe Strat. I record electric guitar trax either with a Digitech RP-250 or through my Line6 Gearbox USB interface. I plug the outputs of the two interfaces into a Behringer 6-channel mixer and then out to my new Alesis M1Active 520s that I have sitting on the styrofoam blocks they were shipped in, plus some Auralex foam on top of that.

I won't list all the software plug-ins I use. Here are a few, though:

• Cakewalk TTS1 - multi-timbral software sound module
• Melodyne UNO - Like Auto-Tune, only better. Every vocal you hear from my studio has been polished in Melodyne
  
• Dimension LE with Garritan Pocket Orchestra - Mostly for cymbal swells but they have some nice organs and basses
• Boost11 - Probably THE reason I upgraded to Sonar HS6 two years ago was for this plug-in, which is a final-stage limiter. It makes my mixes so much more tight and balanced. This plug-in is my magic mixing pill. It does for my mixes what steroids did for Mark McGuire, except that I'll never have to explain myself to Congress for using it.

If you read this far and didn't fall asleep, I commend you.