The past few audio computers I’ve built have been named The Upsetter, after Lee Perry’s catch all name for his house band. The current Upsetter is a PC with an Athlon 2800+ (Barton core) and an Asus A7N8X Deluxe for a motherboard. I have a gig of memory via a pair of comparatively expensive matched Corsair 512 MB DDR DIMMS. I’ve used various audio cards in it, right now it’s an Aardvark Q10. I’ve been thinking of switching to a Firewire interface one of these days. I monitor with two pairs of NHT A-10s that are set up for quad surround mixing if I want to, but I usually don’t.

For software, my main sequencing environment is Cubase SX. I’ve written a few hundred pages about the app, so that’s not much of a surprise. Effects are various. I have a UAD-1 card mostly for the compressors, though I do use the tremolo a bit more these days. I use the PSP Audioware PSP 84 delay on EVERYTHING that I do--that thing is so good it’s almost an instrument. I use Reason and Live for some looping and such.

I’ve sold nearly all of my hardware synths, and all of my hardware samplers. The only synth I still have is a Sequential Circuits Prophet 10, one of the all time classics in my opinion. For software, I use almost all of the Native Instruments stuff (including the B4 for a lot of bass lines), which is great. I absolutely adore the Spectrasonics virtual instruments, particularly Atmosphere and Trilogy. For a long time I was using Kontakt as my main sampler, but more and more I’m using a shareware app called Vsampler. Vsampler is cool for a number of reasons, but mostly because of its superb integration of VST effects into the patches themselves. Instead of using a compressor strapped across the output bus of a synth, I can use a UAD-1 LA-2A directly in the patch, and have velocity vary the gain reduction. Or velocity can inversely modulate the feedback of a PSP 84, so quieter passages delay MORE than loud ones. I also like Groove Agent (though I usually program my own drum parts), the PSP Nitro filter is growing on my fast, D’Cota from the VirSyn boys, and the Orange Vocoder from Prosoniq.

Let’s see, what else. I have a few guitars. A ’62 reissue Strat that is about to become vintage on its own because it’s so old. I also have a lovely reissue Les Paul gold top with P-90s in it, a Danelctro 12-string, a Gibson semi-hollow body, and a bass or two. I DI most of my basses through a SansAmp and like the results a good deal.

However, the real crux of my studio is the software stuff. I was an early proponent of software instruments and samplers, and I think I’m being proven right more and more every day. Other than a few really special old vintage synths, I’ll take software over hardware any day. Now if someone would just make a Microwave XT in software, I’d be complete.