I get emails from people asking me what I use or recommend as far as equipment so I figured I'd break it down for you who are interested.

Computer: ZT Affinity Intel Quad Core Q6600 2.4GHz 4GB DDR2 500GB HDD

I got the computer from Costco online for $579. They don't sell that model anymore but it is similar to this one. My only complaints are it's Vista (which I'm not a big fan of) and it's got a pretty noisy fan. If you're doing recording with a microphone near the computer it will be an issue. I replaced my fans with quietr ones but the case is still not insulated enough to be as quiet as I would like it to be. My previous computer was in an Antec silent case and was just awesomely quiet.

I added to this computer, a better video card. Unfortunately this card also has a fan which adds to the noise level a little bit. If I didn't plan to play the occasional game, I would have left this off. As a matter of fact I may remove it because I don't really play games on the computer anymore.

Audio Device: Line 6 POD Studio UX2

This was not my first external audio device, but it is by far the best one I have ever owned. It has two phantom powered mic inputs and two line-inputs for guitars or other external gear. It comes with a software you need to run to enable the recording mode called Gearbox. Playing back audio doesn't require Gearbox to be running.

I got this on sale at Amazon for $139. It retails for $200 so that was agreat bargain. I did endup paying extra from Line 6 to get some extra presets and allow Gearbox to run as a plug-in. I should mention that Gearbox is also a guitar amp simulator so I wanted that feature in FL and the plug-in version is NOT required to record or playback in FL.

Looking back on this purchase I think the Line 6 POD Studio UX1 would have been a better choice because it has 1 mic and 1 line-in which is all I really need.

When doing my videos, I need to record from the Mic and from what the computer is playing. This is a special circumstance that I could not get the device to do. This is not a weakness because normally you don't want the playback to mix with the input, but for my tutorials I need to speak and playback in FL to explain things. I worked around this by feeding my output into an old SB X-FI card I had installed. So when I record tutorials, Camtasia is setup to record from the SB line in and not the UX2. My normal beat making and recording all goes through the UX2.

 MIDI Controller: M-Audio AXIOM 49

I have my share of controllers all of them worked fine except my MPD16 which always crashes my computer (all 3 I've tried) due to poor drivers. I bought the Axiom for a couple of reasons. First it has transport controls. These allow you to control record/stop/play from the controller. Second it has drum pads. It only has 8 pads but thats all I really need and they are not tiny pads they are the same size as on the MPC. Of course it has all the cool extra knobs, faders etc.

I paid $208 for it  through Amazon. I love Amazon by the way. Most things have free shipping and they have pretty good deals.

Setting up the Axiom was a little confusing at first because it didn't have drivers for Vista out of the box, I had to download them. I also downloaded the configuration program called Enigma, which is a requirement. The good news is that once you set up the device for FL, everything works great. There is one minor problem I have that I haven't figured out as of this writing. My MIDI notes get sent twice. I noticed that the Axiom lists itself as two MIDI devices in FL so I may have a configuration issue. You can't really tell that they get sent twice since the notes are on top of eachother but when you go to tweak a not with the mouse I see that two notes are stacked. No one else has reported this issue so I'm sure it's unique to my setup and I'll figure it out.

Monitors: KRK RP-5 Rokit Powered Reference Studio Monitor

These monitors replaced my AlesisM1 Active MkII monitors and while they are smaller, they sound way better. I left my monitors on over a weekend and a power surge blew a fuse in one of them. I was happy to see that they included a spare fuse! Unfortunately I left em on again during a surge and it blew out the fuse again. So make sure you have these things on a good power source. Replaceing the fuse is a lot better than buying new monitors though!

I paid $199 for the pair.

Headphones: Audio Technica ATH-M50 Professional Headphones

I need headphone when I record my tutorials and these work pretty good. I don't like to use them for mixing down/matering though because they highlight sounds too easily. These replaced my all-time favorite BeyerDynamic DT770s and Sennheiser HD570. Both of which are perfectly fine in their own right but just had wear and tear.

I originally paid $145 for these and they are cheaper now but thats how it goes.

One thing I always look for in headphones is that they completely go around the ear. If you are doing any headphone work for long periods of time, do NOT get the models that press on your ear. Ear buds are also not great for long sessions, but I do use ear buds for casual listening at work and on my iPod.

Other gear:

External drives. I have seven extrnal drives for my audio computer. Some are network drives that plug into the hub, some are Firewire and most are USB. They are all different brands: Buffalo, Ximeta, ACOM, Western Digitaland IOMega. All are diff sizes from 120GB to 1000GB. I really only use 3 of them for the audio. The rest hold backups of my older stuff and family pictures, etc.

If I was to buy one today I would probably go for the AcomData PureDrive 1 TB USB because it's a great deal at $119 and my oldest external drive is an ACOM so I know they last.

Microphone:  For recording my vids, I use an Audio Technica ATR30 Microphone. It's cheap and gets the job done. I also have a more "pro" mice but I never use it since the room noise gets picked up very easily by it.

Video Monitors: I use a dual screen setup. Once you go to dual screens, you'll never want to go back.I use one 24" wide screen and one 19" wide screen (rotated).

The rest of my gear is stuff I rarely use anymore so it's not worth mentioning.

I may explain the software I use in a future post.