I have had a life-altering encounter with the serpent world
After years of dicking around, I finally got myself a couple of stage snakes (i.e., with a box) and a patch bay and wired everything up in a useful fashion.
I have basic "pro-sumer" stuff (DMP3, BlueTube etc) but to get the most of what I got, it still helps to be able to plug any mic into any pre-amp into any comp (or not) and into any of 16 inputs.. This is now total freedom, compared to being sorta "hard wired" into a particular combination of mics, pre-amps, comps, channels etc (unless I wanted to start messing around with a spaghetti sandwich of cables). Now, it's no fuss, no muss, just plug this here, that there, follow the numbers, and away we go, with pretty much any combination possible.
It's not the creative side of recording, maybe, but what I've discovered in the process is not to ignore the boring logistical stuff. I could still record decent sounding stuff with my previous set (some of it's been pressed on vinyl, some was licensed for internet advertising) but this is so much easier.
Still, I gotta get some new songs written, to have something worth recording!
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