We were talking on an Experts’ call about what our fantasy recording studio would have in it.

If you’re thinking about opening up your favourite dealer website and getting the list together, the fantasy studio is far more interesting than that.

The Rules

Here’s the rules;

• The gear can be either hardware or software and plugins

• You can choose gear from any era.

• Connectivity isn’t an issue, in this fantasy studio it all connects without any adaptors or dongles.

• Budget isn’t an issue.

• This is not a ‘I wish the product did this’ list.

The List

For the fantasy studio you can choose;

• A recording device

• A mixing device

• A 2 track mixing device

• A set of monitors

• A microphone

• An additional pre-amp

• An additional EQ

• An additional compressor

• An additional reverb

• An additional delay

• A computer and sequencer

• A controller keyboard

• A synth

What’s interesting is that when you are given limitless choice it actually gets harder to choose.

What Governs Your Choices?

Do you stay in the box and take advantage of a DAW and plugins or do you choose hardware all the way? Is you synth hardware or is it in the box? How much does nostalgia play a part in your decision making? Perhaps you still recall with fondness making music on your first Portastudio, or loved tracking an album on an old 24 track 2” with a huge recording console.

Perhaps you would love to still use an old Atari ST with a modern workflow. Perhaps you used to work on all the old gear that’s now being recreated in plugin form and think people don’t know how hard it was to use and are happy to see the back of it.

You may recall when the team thought it would be fun to see how much it would cost you to set up a decent home recording studio in the 1980s (the beginning of the home recording revolution) and compare it to what it would cost now. That brought back a lot of happy memories and we nearly ended up buying it all again on eBay! Home Studio Setup Costs Compared - 1980s And Now

There’s No Right Or Wrong Answers

There’s no right or wrong answer to this fun game, it’s all about what works for you, or worked for you in the past, or in some cases didn’t work for you.

Take some time to post your answers in the comments, who knows it may lead to a regular series if there’s a lot of interest.

So over to you, if you could build a studio out of all the recording gear in history what would it have in it?