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These are the Pear Anjou speaker cables, debates on the merits of $2,750+ cables aside, I have a feeling that kind of money would be better spent elsewhere in the frugal studio. And with a little time and almost no cash, homebuilt speaker cables can be constructed to standards that have impressed many a golden eared hifi reviewer. The highly simple instructions are here. Of course the same technique could be used for interconnect cables too.
Note : it appears as if the Pear cables have stirred up quite a controversy in certain circles!
If you're looking for some very high end mic preamps and are handy with a soldering iron I would recommend checking out Seventh Circle Audio. Their range of DIY mic preamp kits range from $79 up to $329. The higher end models offer circuit topology & sonic characteristics very similar to a classic Neve (shown above) or API preamp. Also available is a PSU, wiring harness and rack frame for a completed, 8 channel, professional product.
Bigger purchases get a discount, so for example, 8 Neve preamps with PSU, rack & wiring would set you back less than $3,000 or under $400 a channel. The Cheapskate studio loves that!
I've been a Mac user for pretty much my entire computing life, however, Cheapskate Studio is an equal opportunity blog and I know many people are happily creating music on their PCs. In fact popular packages such as Gigastudio & Sonar are still PC only.
There seems to be a lot of questions around performance tweaks for Windows machines & plenty of manufacturers offering audio-specific machines that supposedly address these with optimized equipment.
However, if you're handy around the control panel in XP you can do most of this yourself using this excellent & easy to follow guide from MusicXP. Some of the tweaks are fairly obvious but many are pretty deep. Best of all is the cost - nothing!
If you're handy with a soldering iron, have less than $10 and want to solve a common studio problem, here's a little weekend project.
If you drive your studio monitors from the headphone/audio out of your laptop or computer sound card you find yourself constantly clicking on the sound control panel to change the volume or mute your speakers. Here is a simple design using all Radio Shack parts that will give you a high-quality passive volume control at your finger tips.
Only one side of the stereo is shown for clarity. All the - sides of your inputs are tied to ground. I've shown this using mini-jack sockets, however, any type of input could be used to suit your preference. As for a box, since some shielding would be nice, I'd recommend an old standby, the Altoid tin (eat the mints first). Of course, the more handy can come up with all kinds of attractive boxes.
So, no more desperate clicking around when the phone rings.
A great source for creative DIY products is Parts Express. Although they have a Pro-Audio division, it's the parts & speaker construction sections that offer an interesting array of solutions at great prices. Many of their products are the OEMs that you see re-badged (and re-priced) by more famous brands! Sign up for their big, free catalog on the website.
These are the Pear Anjou speaker cables, debates on the merits of $2,750+ cables aside, I have a feeling that kind of money would be better spent elsewhere in the frugal studio. And with a little time and almost no cash, homebuilt speaker cables can be constructed to standards that have impressed many a golden eared hifi reviewer. The highly simple instructions are here. Of course the same technique could be used for interconnect cables too.
