Hello World! Help me! lol.

[sluvine]

Hey people, my name is Adam. I'm a poor college student who spent his summer saving up for some recording stuff. Here's what I have:

PreSonus FIREPOD 10-channel I/O FireWire interface
AKG Perception 200 Large-Diaphragm Condenser Microphone
Acer Laptop
Cubase LE

I know its not much but it still ran me like $750 which was almost all the money I had at the time. That being said, I was wondering if there is anyone who can suggest what my next purchase should be. I'd like to make one or two purchases a year of somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 each as I continue to expand my recording capabilities. I'd eventually like to be able to put together a professional or near-professional sounding album for my band (pop-punk/alternative) and also offer recording to others to make back some of the cash that I'm putting out.

I'd really appreciate any input that anyone can give me.

Thanks,

Adam

[brandondrury]

How accurate is your studio monitoring?

Brandon

[sluvine]

Thanks Brandon,

Well I'm new at this, so I'm not really sure what I should be looking for as far as accuracy goes. As of now, I've only recorded myself (acoustic + vocals) with the equipment and I've just used headphones to listen to what I have. It's a Sennheiser HD280 Pro headset, which I was told at the store were great for the price range, and the sound quality seems good to me. When I get back to my room from the sound rooms in the music building (I'm doing all of this from college) and I start mixing, I plug directly from my laptop to my stereo system (Two Dual DJL 103e speakers through a Sherwood Stereo) which I don't think really qualifies as a studio monitoring package, but as I said, I don't really have any knowledge in these types of things.

Adam

[brandondrury]

You'll know if your monitoring sucks when you take mixes that sound great elsewhere and you find yourself getting incredibly dissapointed. So how are you mixes translating using your headphones?

Other than that, you seem to have the basic required gear.

Brandon