It's that time of the year... here are some gift ideas for your home studio.
Furman PL8II Rackmount Power Conditioner with Lights
So you have thousands of dollars in gear and you're plugging it "naked" to your wall outlet or with a $5 Walmart power strip? I recommend you buy this power conditioner that will give you added protection to your gear. All your gear plugs to the back and you have a single switch to turn on all your gear. The lights are very handy too illuminating your rack gear so you can see what you're doing.
Korg MA-30 MetronomeKeeping time is important. And this little device from KORG packs a lot of sophisticated features at a small size. You can do rythms such as triplets and quadruplets with inner beats removed.
Stanton DJ Pro HeadphonesYo! Be nice to yourself and give yourself a pair of these nice DJ headphones. With swivel and folding capabilities, the DJ PRO 3000 also includes
high pass and low pass filter, detachable cord, and cool blue LEDs.
Rolls RA62C Headphone Amp (6 channels)
This baby can power up 6 headphones so you and all your buddies can all be hearing the mix. This unit has individual direct inputs, allowing you to mix separate stereo signal with the main input signals. Great for monitoring.
AKG K271 HeadphonesFor the producer, recording artist that needs maximum isolation from outside sound, a closed back headphone is essential. Unlike the 240S, which is open-backed, the 271 is ideal for applications where no sound must leak from the headphones... example, recording vocals in front of a mic. This is made by AKG, a very respectable name in headphones. These are used by recording studios, live sound engineers, TV sound, and broadcast engineers.
Behringer BCF2000 MIDI Controller with FadersTired of using your mouse? Want to tweak real knobs and faders instead of "virtual knobs" on your screen? Then this control surface is for you. It lets you move real faders and turn real knobs to control all the
virtual gear in Cubase, Cakewalk, Logic Audio and other major audio
software. You can control your softsynth, DAW, plugins, effects with this.
And that's not all... this has 100mm motorized faders! And it's very inexpensive too! This is a nice present for your studio, especially if you work a lot with MIDI and computers and DAW software.
Apple MacBook with Intel Core (2.0 Ghz, 13.3 inches screen)Unless you're living under a rock, you know that Apple switching to Intel processors is one of the biggest news of the decade. Now, you get the power of a Dual 2.0Ghz PowerPC G5 in the palm of your hand (or your lap). And since MacBooks are using Intel chips, you can install BootCamp and dual-boot and choose between Windows or OSX. And if you want to run Windows and OSX side-by-side, you can install Parallels. So it's a win-win situation if you buy a MacBook. This is a very, very nice Christmas gift for your self.
