Friday 27 September 2013

Upgrading My Recording Studio

There comes a time when you must let go of the old and bring the new into your life. My Windows 98 desktop, coupled with an Aardvark Direct Pro 24/96 sound card and Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) had served me well since 2003. My home recording studio had provided all the tools for my second album, The Moods I'm In, along with many other recording projects which are too numerous to mention.

But the old desktop is too long in the tooth to be reliable, and as Aardvark no longer exist, there are no upgrade drivers for my much loved soundcard. So on a blustery spring day, after hours of "forum" research, I came home with my new studio:



¯  HP Envy 17" laptop (Intel Core i7-4700mq processor, 16GB RAM and two 1TB hard drive)

Jane Laws Music, Studio 453
I could hardly contain myself while my partner, Steve, configured the new hardware and software. When it was time for the taste test, I recorded one of my new songs and then waited with baited breath to hear the Octa-Capture playback to me for the first time. The sound was clear and clean with hardly any colour added; jackpot!