This is my list of recording gear that absolutely stands out in terms of sound quality, reliability, and performance.
Superior Drummer 2.0 
When it comes to the world of drum recording, things have changed in a big way in recent years. There's no excuse for lame drum sounds at home. In fact, I'm hearing many, many flat out pro sounding recordings of drums that were done in ridiculously unideal conditions.
There are many great drum samples out there. The Steven Slate stuff is absolutely brutal. The Ocean Way Drums stuff is cool. However, when it comes to absolute flexibility, reliability, ease of use, and speed of use, nothing I've used beats Superior Drummer 2.0.
I've never had the program crash on me even once....and I'm REALLY great at getting programs to crash! Their proprietary method of sample loading is the fastest I've ever seen. Interfacing with electronic drums is a breeze. The included MIDI loops rock. Basically, this company has their crap together. Period. Hell, they are descendents of vikings. What do you expect!
As for sounds, I've found Superior Drummer 2.0 to be excellent for everything from metal to country. If the stock sounds aren't enough, their add on packages offer a wide variety of tones at very reasonable prices. Even their Electronic EZX is awesome!
I use Superior Drummer 2.0 by MIDI programming, electronic drums, and sample layering. Superior Drummer 2.0 is AWESOME for sample layering. When a real drum kit is almost there, using something like KtTrigger to get MIDI data out of a human performance and triggering Superior Drummer, is about as powerful as it gets. The less-comprehensive sample packages work well when you need simple, but when something is missing in your real drum sound, it's hard to find a one-size-fits-all sample that will always solve the problem. Superior Drummer 2.0 gives access to all mics. Let me explain.
Let's say are snare has plenty of meat, but is a little lifeless. By layering in a snare via Superior Drummer 2.0, we can pull down the snare close mic (with all the chunk) because we already have it and use more snare bottom to add the high end sizzle. We can forget the close mics entirely and use just the overheads and room mics. We can ditch the overheads and use just the close mics and the room mics. We can compress each portion of this individually to get exactly what we are missing in are drum sound. This is one of the best features of Superior Drummer 2.0, but one I find that isn't talked about enough.
The best part is the price. I've seen this thing dip down to as low as $149, which is insultingly low considering how damn good this thing is.
Native Instruments Komplete
Not everyone has needs for comprehensive virtual synths and samples. Those of us that do often struggle to find one single package that does EVERYTHING. Well, I'm not entirely convinced that Komplete does every single thing under the sun. You could certainly find SOMETHING it can't do. However, for a person that does a huge range of styles, I think you are going to have a hard time covering all your basis any better than this with one package.
I'm currently running Komplete 6 (Nov 2011) although Komplete 8 is out currently. At the moment I don't see a huge reason to upgrade. This isn't because Komplete 6 isn't good, but for the fact that it is VERY good and covers my needs.
Included synths and samples:
KONTAKT 4
ABSYNTH 5
GUITAR RIG 4 PRO
BATTERY 3
MASSIVE
FM8
REAKTOR 5
If you have anything you choose to get robo critical about (particularly real instruments in which you would use samples), you will want to purchase an over-the-top package that comprehensively nails it. Otherwise, Komplete 6 is incredible.
On the synth front, the combination of FM8, Massive, and Absynth 5 is going to cover pretty much everything I can think of for techno, trance, hip hop, rock keyboards, techno movie scoring, and just about anything else I can come up with. Absynth 5 does the ultra modern thing from the prettiest stuff imaginable to something that belongs in the movie Seven or a Nine Inch Nails production.
I do own several hardware synths (Moog Voyager RME, Prophet 08, Virus Rack, etc) which I do find very fun for creating electronic music. However, for things like modern sounding movie scoring, NOTHING beats Absynth in my experience.
Battery 3 offers tons of electronic drums, real drums, and everything in between. I prefer Superior Drummer 2.0 for real drums and I really like Electronic EZX for techno drums, but Battery has some awesome sounds I've not heard in either that are very useful. It's a straight forward little gadget and super fast and easy to use.
Guitar Rig 4 is one of the two guitar emulators I consider ready go to go (for 95% of us). Is it going to replace recording your real amp? My answer: maybe, but tone junkies will have a hard time without impulses (hint hint).
Reaktor 5 is a sound design thingy that can get ultra complex but allows you to do some ultra ridiculous processing in ways most of us would never imagine. This is very cool for techno stuff.
Kontakt 4 is the latest generation of what I consider to be the top sampler on the market. You are SUPPOSED to go out and buy the samples you want and load them into Kontakt 4, but the included samples sound exception and give me a nice foundation of sounds to play with that is bigger than you may think. Again, you may want to add your own, but this is a great start.
I find the Native Instruments stuff to be great sounding, reasonably priced, and very very reliable. They take excellent care of their previous customers. (I upgraded from Komplete 3 to Komplete 6 for $80!)
Top Preamp Recommendations
I get a lot of people who aren't ready to drop $2,000 on a mic preamp who want to upgrade from what their stock audio interface preamps can do.
I'm of the opinion that there are two preamps that aren't all that expensive that get you into tip-top land (maybe without a ton of character). These are the least expensive “real deal' preamps. Once you get up to “real deal” preamps land, pres don't get “better”. They just get different. (Kinda like a Les Paul vs PRS argument or something like that.)
Focusrite ISA428 / Focusrite ISA One
I own the ISA428 and it's my assumption that it uses the same guts as the Focusrite ISA One. You never know about this crap. You'll ALWAYS find a thread online SOMEWHERE where a guy claims that the new ones just aren't as good as the old ones for ANYTHING. So keep that in mind. Half of these threads are followed by a guy who's used the old one and the new one, but prefers the new one.
At under $500 (sometimes as low as $350), you can't beat the ISA428. It's a damn good, clean preamp with quite a few features that make it very flexible. It doesn't do the color thing. Sometimes the ISA 428 is a little bit....I wish it was more bold. Other times those things that make an API or Neve “bold” are what make it wrong.
Discussions on mic preamp coloration and such only make sense when you have multiple colors. Preamp variety is a luxury (or curse). If you don't need 10 different preamps, just get a clean one.
The ISA428 can often be snagged on Ebay for under $1,400. Not bad at all for a 4-channel tip-top preamp with this many features.
The ISA One only has one preamp, but can record a second channel via DI. It's obviously setup for the home recorder doing mostly overdubs and such. You could always run a second preamp to the second input. The digital outs are a nice touch, too, because most of use have audio interfaces with S/PDIF inputs that we aren't using. This can quickly turn an otherwise 2-channel interface into at 4-channel interface, which has it's perks.
True System P-Solo
By far, the True System preamp delivers the most life-like realism I've ever heard in a mic preamp and it does it at a very fair price. A person could use these all-life long and never have a problem. They don't do anything particularly exciting to the signal, but just like with the Focusrite ISA stuff, if you only have one preamp, clean may be the way to go.
The P-Solo is a single-channel box, but True Systems makes multi-channel models at great price points.
http://www.recordingreview.com/blog/...preamp-review/ Sonnox Limiter Brickwall Limiter
Everyone has to decide how loud they want their mixes to be. For me, I can't get around being any less volume than the songs the kids are buying off Itunes. I can't explain to my clients why I their recoding has to be so much “softer” than their favorite bands, regardless of any downsides that may be inflicted by getting a mix THAT loud.
I recently tested several brickwalls limiters: UAD Precision Maximizer, UAD Precision Limiter, PSP Xenon, Aradaz Limiter (freebie), and the Sonnox Limiter.
While the all have their inherent character to them that may or may not be to your liking for certain things, for me the clear winner was the Sonnox Limiter.
I'm doing a lot of electronic music these days that need ultra-pounding drums. I felt that the Sonnox Limiter kept the drums more “in tact” than any other limiter when under hard use. I like the Rock3 preset quite a bit and that's where I always start.
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Superior Drummer 2.0
When it comes to the world of drum recording, things have changed in a big way in recent years. There's no excuse for lame drum sounds at home. In fact, I'm hearing many, many flat out pro sounding recordings of drums that were done in ridiculously unideal conditions.
There are many great drum samples out there. The Steven Slate stuff is absolutely brutal. The Ocean Way Drums stuff is cool. However, when it comes to absolute flexibility, reliability, ease of use, and speed of use, nothing I've used beats Superior Drummer 2.0.
I've never had the program crash on me even once....and I'm REALLY great at getting programs to crash! Their proprietary method of sample loading is the fastest I've ever seen. Interfacing with electronic drums is a breeze. The included MIDI loops rock. Basically, this company has their crap together. Period. Hell, they are descendents of vikings. What do you expect!
As for sounds, I've found Superior Drummer 2.0 to be excellent for everything from metal to country. If the stock sounds aren't enough, their add on packages offer a wide variety of tones at very reasonable prices. Even their Electronic EZX is awesome!
I use Superior Drummer 2.0 by MIDI programming, electronic drums, and sample layering. Superior Drummer 2.0 is AWESOME for sample layering. When a real drum kit is almost there, using something like KtTrigger to get MIDI data out of a human performance and triggering Superior Drummer, is about as powerful as it gets. The less-comprehensive sample packages work well when you need simple, but when something is missing in your real drum sound, it's hard to find a one-size-fits-all sample that will always solve the problem. Superior Drummer 2.0 gives access to all mics. Let me explain.
Let's say are snare has plenty of meat, but is a little lifeless. By layering in a snare via Superior Drummer 2.0, we can pull down the snare close mic (with all the chunk) because we already have it and use more snare bottom to add the high end sizzle. We can forget the close mics entirely and use just the overheads and room mics. We can ditch the overheads and use just the close mics and the room mics. We can compress each portion of this individually to get exactly what we are missing in are drum sound. This is one of the best features of Superior Drummer 2.0, but one I find that isn't talked about enough.
The best part is the price. I've seen this thing dip down to as low as $149, which is insultingly low considering how damn good this thing is.
Native Instruments Komplete
Not everyone has needs for comprehensive virtual synths and samples. Those of us that do often struggle to find one single package that does EVERYTHING. Well, I'm not entirely convinced that Komplete does every single thing under the sun. You could certainly find SOMETHING it can't do. However, for a person that does a huge range of styles, I think you are going to have a hard time covering all your basis any better than this with one package.
I'm currently running Komplete 6 (Nov 2011) although Komplete 8 is out currently. At the moment I don't see a huge reason to upgrade. This isn't because Komplete 6 isn't good, but for the fact that it is VERY good and covers my needs.
Included synths and samples:
KONTAKT 4
ABSYNTH 5
GUITAR RIG 4 PRO
BATTERY 3
MASSIVE
FM8
REAKTOR 5
If you have anything you choose to get robo critical about (particularly real instruments in which you would use samples), you will want to purchase an over-the-top package that comprehensively nails it. Otherwise, Komplete 6 is incredible.
On the synth front, the combination of FM8, Massive, and Absynth 5 is going to cover pretty much everything I can think of for techno, trance, hip hop, rock keyboards, techno movie scoring, and just about anything else I can come up with. Absynth 5 does the ultra modern thing from the prettiest stuff imaginable to something that belongs in the movie Seven or a Nine Inch Nails production.
I do own several hardware synths (Moog Voyager RME, Prophet 08, Virus Rack, etc) which I do find very fun for creating electronic music. However, for things like modern sounding movie scoring, NOTHING beats Absynth in my experience.
Battery 3 offers tons of electronic drums, real drums, and everything in between. I prefer Superior Drummer 2.0 for real drums and I really like Electronic EZX for techno drums, but Battery has some awesome sounds I've not heard in either that are very useful. It's a straight forward little gadget and super fast and easy to use.
Guitar Rig 4 is one of the two guitar emulators I consider ready go to go (for 95% of us). Is it going to replace recording your real amp? My answer: maybe, but tone junkies will have a hard time without impulses (hint hint).
Reaktor 5 is a sound design thingy that can get ultra complex but allows you to do some ultra ridiculous processing in ways most of us would never imagine. This is very cool for techno stuff.
Kontakt 4 is the latest generation of what I consider to be the top sampler on the market. You are SUPPOSED to go out and buy the samples you want and load them into Kontakt 4, but the included samples sound exception and give me a nice foundation of sounds to play with that is bigger than you may think. Again, you may want to add your own, but this is a great start.
I find the Native Instruments stuff to be great sounding, reasonably priced, and very very reliable. They take excellent care of their previous customers. (I upgraded from Komplete 3 to Komplete 6 for $80!)
Top Preamp Recommendations
I get a lot of people who aren't ready to drop $2,000 on a mic preamp who want to upgrade from what their stock audio interface preamps can do.
I'm of the opinion that there are two preamps that aren't all that expensive that get you into tip-top land (maybe without a ton of character). These are the least expensive “real deal' preamps. Once you get up to “real deal” preamps land, pres don't get “better”. They just get different. (Kinda like a Les Paul vs PRS argument or something like that.)
Focusrite ISA428 / Focusrite ISA One
I own the ISA428 and it's my assumption that it uses the same guts as the Focusrite ISA One. You never know about this crap. You'll ALWAYS find a thread online SOMEWHERE where a guy claims that the new ones just aren't as good as the old ones for ANYTHING. So keep that in mind. Half of these threads are followed by a guy who's used the old one and the new one, but prefers the new one.
At under $500 (sometimes as low as $350), you can't beat the ISA428. It's a damn good, clean preamp with quite a few features that make it very flexible. It doesn't do the color thing. Sometimes the ISA 428 is a little bit....I wish it was more bold. Other times those things that make an API or Neve “bold” are what make it wrong.
Discussions on mic preamp coloration and such only make sense when you have multiple colors. Preamp variety is a luxury (or curse). If you don't need 10 different preamps, just get a clean one.
The ISA428 can often be snagged on Ebay for under $1,400. Not bad at all for a 4-channel tip-top preamp with this many features.
The ISA One only has one preamp, but can record a second channel via DI. It's obviously setup for the home recorder doing mostly overdubs and such. You could always run a second preamp to the second input. The digital outs are a nice touch, too, because most of use have audio interfaces with S/PDIF inputs that we aren't using. This can quickly turn an otherwise 2-channel interface into at 4-channel interface, which has it's perks.
True System P-Solo
By far, the True System preamp delivers the most life-like realism I've ever heard in a mic preamp and it does it at a very fair price. A person could use these all-life long and never have a problem. They don't do anything particularly exciting to the signal, but just like with the Focusrite ISA stuff, if you only have one preamp, clean may be the way to go.
The P-Solo is a single-channel box, but True Systems makes multi-channel models at great price points.
http://www.recordingreview.com/blog/...preamp-review/
Sonnox Limiter Brickwall Limiter
Everyone has to decide how loud they want their mixes to be. For me, I can't get around being any less volume than the songs the kids are buying off Itunes. I can't explain to my clients why I their recoding has to be so much “softer” than their favorite bands, regardless of any downsides that may be inflicted by getting a mix THAT loud.
I recently tested several brickwalls limiters: UAD Precision Maximizer, UAD Precision Limiter, PSP Xenon, Aradaz Limiter (freebie), and the Sonnox Limiter.
While the all have their inherent character to them that may or may not be to your liking for certain things, for me the clear winner was the Sonnox Limiter.
I'm doing a lot of electronic music these days that need ultra-pounding drums. I felt that the Sonnox Limiter kept the drums more “in tact” than any other limiter when under hard use. I like the Rock3 preset quite a bit and that's where I always start.