Opinion(s) required...

[Timo]

Originally Posted by MonkeyMan

But I do see the angle you are coming from. More kit is not always best - as there can be an emphasis on tools rather than creative flow and output. Liam Howlett from the Prodigy is the best example I can give - after having a modest personal studio and producing some of the most influential and best selling dance music of the 90's, his studio went into overdrive on getting kit. In his own words he totally lost the plot and his output was killed due to overdosing on too much kit and not getting the best out of it. He was only saved when a learned studio engineer told him to get back to basics. So he binned his kit - bought a laptop and a copy of Reason and never looked back.

And I, albeit personally, happen to believe that was Howlett's worst album yet (regards production/recording quality).

However, absolutely fantastic tunes/albums were made in the 90's using gear that, strangely enough, weren't made this side of the millennium! But inbuilt human psychology is led to believe newer/expensive is better. Often, yes, but not always, imho.
I'd say there's a certain threshold (price-wise) that, when you pass it, exponentially incremental cash injections aren't necessarily going to give you exponential differences.

Obviously, though, a ?100,000+ Neve or SSL console is always going to sound massively better than your average Mackie 8-buss, but you'd need to amass the huge wealth of knowledge needed in order to fully take advantage of the extra specs. Crappy example, but it's no good having something like a lovely top-end soundcard or console if you have a ground loop elsewhere in the chain simply because you don't know how to fix it!

It's better to spend that extra cash on something that's going to make the largest difference to your end result (ie. the finished audio), admittedly while giving a nod towards allowing for room for experimentation and growing into it (as opposed to growing out of it too quickly). As one different example, getting a mixer with more channels than you currently need.... blah blah...

I've prob'ly gone off on a tangent here, thus... nuff splother from me i'm off to make some choonz.