Xwell Media

The challenges and victories of setting up a home recording studio on a budget.

The purpose of this website is to chronicle the process of my hardware / software choices with their corresponding setups, and the methods I used to work out the bugs and kinks.

First a little bit about myself and my qualifications.

I have been a professional musician for over 27 years with plenty of formal schooling, touring, and studio experience to back up all of my crazy claims. I have also been very fortunate to have had the privilege of working with many of the big national acts that I grew up admiring along the way. I am also a certified IT consultant and consult for several corporations in the Greater Philadelphia Area dealing with the daily challenges of setting up and maintaining networks, hardware and software repairs, data recovery, data forensics, e-commerce, database design as well as security and remote access responsibilities.

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Music & Computers

Music and computers compliment each other in every way and this is the basis of what this website is about. Music and Technology. I hope that you my visitor, will have the patience to read through my ramblings, have some fun, learn something you didn’t know before you came here and/or contribute something I didnt know or write about yet.

Please feel free to leave comments and share your experience and expertise.

My Outboard Hardware

Computer: Rackmount Core 2 Duo, 4 Gigs RAM, 1Tbyte SATA Hard Drive 7200RPM running Win XP  and Pro Tools 8.3.

Laptop: MacBook Pro 4GB Memory, 500 GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM. 500 GB External Firewire Archive HD

Mixer / Interface: M-Audio NRV10 Firewire mixer  10 discrete channel recording interface. M-Audio Delta 10-10 internal audio interface. M-Audio Fast Track Pro USB audio interface.

Monitors: M-Audio BX-8 studio reference monitors with sub on floor for extra punch when needed.

Power Conditioning: ART PB 4X4.

Amp Modeling: Line 6 POD Pro rack mount with foot controller. Line 6 Spider practice amp.

MIDI Controllers: M-Audio I-control, M-Audio Oxygen 61, M-Audio Keystation 61, M-Audio O2, Behringer Fader Controller.

Mics: Groove Tubes GT66 valve mic with its PSM1 power supply. Rode NT1-A, Sure SM57′s, Sure SM58′s

Guitars: Fender 60th Anniversary American Stratocaster,  Washburn Tour 54, Manual Rodriguez Classical, Yamaha Classical, Taylor Acoustic Electric, Regal Resonator, Schecter Bass, Lap Slide.

Over the years I have learned and used just about every piece of music production software out there. I have become familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the best and the worst of them and have boiled them down to my select handful of favorites. At the top of my list is Digidesign (Avid) Pro Tools. Pro Tools is the industry standard used in most large production recording studios but comes with a bit of a learning curve. The more you learn the more you realize the power under the hood of this amazing piece of software.

My core DAW’s

Digidesign Pro Tools 8. The engineers best friend.

Logic Pro 9  for getting ideas down quickly

Reason adds more instruments via ReWire

My Favorite PlugIns:

I found myself using outboard gear less and less until one day I worked up the courage to sell it all on E-bay. I used the money from the proceeds to purchase a host of plugins that have proudly replaced all my clunky, noisy outboard gear. It was one of the smartest things I ever did. I prefer the performance of the software over hardware and I also enjoy the extra space in my music room. So, here is a rundown of all my favorite and most used plugins.