Flexstyle

I'll be attending as part of the Radio Hyrule party this year!

There's a lot of factors to consider, but as a music producer, I'd recommend looking for something with a proper Intel Core i7 processor, *WITHOUT* the "U" designation after it. 8-16 GB RAM, SSD if he can afford it, spacious 7200 RPM HDD if not. ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, Razer and others make good gaming laptops that would also double as production laptops effectively, or he can look more on the enterprise side of things (Dell, HP, Lenovo make decent workstation laptops, as long as you avoid their consumer grade stuff). There's also some manufacturers that do custom laptops--something like this: http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8171-clevo-p670rp6.html might do the trick.

I'm interested! Should be able to find enough time to do some vocal takes at least, esp if there's sheet music to make things simpler.

Or if you want something that has a warranty, check out the Steinberg UR series or the Focusrite Scarlett series. Also hold up, where's your SSD boot drive that is definitely something that you will want?

There's always gift codes.

And it was probably my favorite Christmas gift of the year! I'm in as well. Hoping to get someone with a creative list this time, too!

Yeah... I'm not going to delay my track's release any longer. Strader wants to include it on a separate release, cool, but I'm not going to keep it in limbo any longer because of stupidity.

Duuuuuuuuuude. Fun stuff! I ran sound on a Series Two for several years at my church, that's a fantastic board. Also have that same computer case, too, haha. Thanks for sharing!

I got to hear this one a few months early, and I fell in love with it immediately. Such a good album!

- Fact: I'm on staff and I'm not getting paid for any of this crap. - I'm completely okay with OCR making a bit of a return on the great service they provide to me as an artist. If that shows up in the form of a slight financial benefit from ads run on or near my submitted material, no matter what form those ads take, that sounds great to me. Viva OCR!

Description says this was the result of dozens of hours of work, and I believe it. There's not a sound out of place, everything is deliberate, everything is perfectly in its spot. Killer execution of the genre and an amazing remix, to boot. I love it!

Plus, Loudr will only be able to license songs that have seen a physical release here in the USA. Something as iconic as, say, even the Punch Out theme doesn't count -- I know because I released an album that had to drop a song before it could be released. It's not a magical, one-size-fits all solution -- you can immediately forget about most of the slightly more obscure games that the OCR catalog is filled with!

Have a reason and a deadline. Don't just sit down and be like "gonna write some music now!" because that probably won't get you anywhere. If you have a reason (even the competitions here on the forums are great) and a deadline (need to have SOMETHING done by X time and date), then you'll be surprised at how much music you'll be able to crank out.

Production-wise, I don't hate v2. It's kinda awkward on the panning and probably sounds a lot better on speakers than headphones, but it's not like there's some sort of piercing sound that's throwing the entire thing off balance. I do agree that leads should almost always be centered, though. That might help the entire thing feel a lot better in any case. It's compressed to heck but I don't think it detracts from the song's listenability, so that's a pass for me as well. YES (borderline)

You'll find what you need buried in either Nexus 2 or Omnisphere 2, I'd venture. Both of those have a ludicrous amount of incredibly usable presets.

The sound design possibilities of this thing are totally worth the $150, in my opinion. I'd be plunking that down even if I wasn't part of the beta/preset team, knowing what I do about how useful it is!

I actually own a 2i2 as well (use it as part of my MacBook rig) and I'd say they're on par with each other. Clean and plenty of gain. I'd take the Steinberg little boxes over the Focusrite ones right now just simply for build quality -- Steinberg's boxes are much more heavy-duty, although the Scarlett series is well worth the money too, no hate from me at all! Plus, I've found Steinberg's drivers much more stable under Windows than Focusrite, and haven't yet used the UR12 on my MacBook at all. I also own a Scarlett 18i20 plus an OctoPre for my big sessions but that's probably overkill.

On my main PC right now I'm rocking a little Steinberg UR12 interface. One mic input, one hi-Z line (instrument) input, fits exactly what you're describing for use case. Retails at $99. Super sturdy build quality, mic pre can even handle my Shure SM7B, so plenty of juice. Definitely would recommend. Mics: AT2020 is a decent entry-level mic, the 2035 might be even better for you as it's got -10db pad and low roll-off switches, and it only costs $150 at most retailers. I actually own a pair of the 2035s and got 'em brand new in sealed boxes on eBay for $100 apiece several years ago, so you could look around and see if such a deal is around elsewhere. You might also look at the MXL 990, which retails for under $100 but has a wealth of modifications available for it out there so you could potentially turn it into a beast of a mic. I plan on modding mine at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future. I also noticed that Samson is selling the MTR201 combo package which includes a decent-looking large-diaphragm condenser, shock mount, pop filter, and a nice carrying case. No experience with that other than knowing that Samson usually hits a great balance of quality per dollar in the budget sector.

If you were used to Logic, I'd say give Cubase, Reaper, StudioOne, or MixCraft a shot. Those will probably all have a similar enough workflow that you'll be able to adjust reasonably quickly.

Patently untrue. Macs use the exact same kind of hardware as PCs these days. It's true that a MacBook Pro will usually trounce a laptop off the shelf at Costco or something, but that Costco laptop costs about half to a quarter of the price of the MacBook, and of course it uses inferior parts. Spend the same amount of money on a high-end PC as you do on an equivalent Mac and you'll get better bang for buck in terms of component quality and power--I've done this many times, and I'm sitting here on my super high end audio PC that cost at most half of what an equivalent Mac Pro would have cost. Now, Mac OS tends to handle audio drivers more nicely than Windows does, but not by enough to make a difference to most people. Macs are great, but they are not in any way superior to PCs by any quantifiable metric...aside from maybe resale value. Now, I also love my MacBook Pro, and the one thing that the Mac platform does have going for it that the PC platform doesn't is that there is a very small number of variations that can be made in Mac hardware as compared to PC, which means that most pro audio and video manufacturers only have to support a small number of combinations of hardware to go with their drivers or software. PCs don't have that luxury, and sometimes you have to get very finicky in order to build a rig that plays nice with all kinds of specialized hardware. I can see why someone would prefer to stay on the Mac side of things for that reason alone, but that does not make the Mac computers inherently any better. It just means that there's less room for error when other things are introduced to the equation.

The sound design possibilities of this library are way beyond what a standard "emulation" VSTi can accomplish, especially when you start combining systems, filters, effects, the mod matrix...super fun stuff! Plus, the 1000+ presets (a few of which I had the privilege of designing) means that this is an incredibly valuable resource straight out of the box. I can't recommend it highly enough, myself, now that I've used it.

FWIW, I know a whole lot of game composers and professional engineers who swear by Reaper. It's supposedly one of the single most customizable options out there, so it's as good as any a place to get comfortable with. Everything has its pros and cons -- I like doing my live recording sessions in Logic, but would rather do my sequencing and "song building" in FL Studio. Just get good at something, figure out what you like about it, and then try something else if you feel the need.

It's a bit pricier than the linked one up there, but this is likely a little more solid: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202197 4 GB of RAM will help it stay relevant for longer, too, as opposed to 2 GB. EDIT: To clarify, I love my 750Ti, but for raw gaming horsepower bang for buck, AMD is definitely the way to go. Generally, Nvidia = better driver stability, and AMD = raw power.

You'll likely want one of these as well: http://smile.amazon.com/Hosa-CMP153-Cable-Inch-Dual/dp/B000068O3C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1460787873&sr=8-1&keywords=1%2F8%22+to+dual+1%2F4 This will take your signal from a 1/8" headphone jack (which is what it sounds like you have right now), and convert it into dual mono, suitable for use with a UR22 or 2i2. That Behringer interface you're showing has a fundamental problem, which is that you can't guarantee that the two inputs on it will be reasonably exactly the same level. One's a mic/line (the XLR with a hole in the middle), and the other is an instrument (the regular TRS-looking plug) input. The instrument input actually is at a different impedance than the other one, which is great if you're going to plug a guitar into it or something but not so good if you want a stereo recording with what you're doing. Like Neblix said, you'll just want to manually move the knobs until they're about the same. Or, if you're lucky, you'll be able to keep 'em all the way down, turn your Roland unit all the way up, and hopefully the gain is such that you don't even need to amplify it any extra. The reason you wouldn't just want to use the adapter you currently have (that takes 1/8" to 1/4") is that you'll be, best-case scenario, losing the right-hand channel if you just plug it into one input. Worst-case scenario you'll get some crazy phase issues, since that input will be expecting a balanced signal (the same thing on both channels, in a certain phase), and not a stereo signal. Here's a blurb I stole from http://www.portlandmusiccompany.com/balanced_unbalanced.php "A Balanced cable contains two identical wires, which are twisted together and then wrapped with a third conductor (foil or braid) that acts as a shield. The term "balanced" comes from of connecting each wire to identical impedances at source and load. This means that much of the electromagnetic interference will induce an equal noise voltage in each wire. Since the amplifier at the far end measures the difference in voltage between the two signal lines, noise that is identical on both wires is rejected. The noise received in the second, inverted line is applied against the first, upright signal, and cancels it out when the two signals are subtracted. This also prevents noise and ground issues in the signal and allows to run much longer cables without problems." Basically, the preamp is looking for something identical but phase-inverted, so plug a stereo signal into that at your own risk.

A Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 or Steinberg UR22 might be worth looking into. Those are a couple of home studio grade USB interfaces, complete with clean preamps and proper driver support. They'll set you back $150 apiece, but they're quite worth the expenditure. A little USB dongle is unlikely to include the necessary hardware for good, clean audio processing.