Hello! Here is some insanely nerdy information about my current studio setup

My website is a constant Work in Progress. This page will update periodically.

​

​

For the past year I have mainly been working on an Eletebook 8740w workstation Laptop released in 2010. It is the best laptop from that era apparently. I have also been using an HP monitor in profile mode not landscape which i find to be very interesting being able to display things in a different way. The daw of choice for this set up is Logic 5.5.1. This is the same daw I used to make most of my biggest early tunes. The fact that I can load the old tunes in the same state that they were made is just amazing. Being able to see how simple it was back in the 2000s. 

​

In logic 5.5 there are limitations but in the limitations are the keys to some creative workflow. One of the key things that is missing in comparison to modern DAWs is Offline Bounce. Everything must be bounced in real time. This includes doing stems and bouncing the final masters. This might sound like a complete nightmare but in fact it is liberating. You have to listen to the tune when doing the final bounce and also when stemming out the parts you have to make sure you are satisfied with the FX and edits. I am using a small number of plugins VSTs with the DAW. As I dont entirely trust that I will be able to load the plugins in the far future I always commit to audio for parts before even the final mix or stem out so this is also a long process. I guess what I am saying is that it is way longer to make music this way but it really is so much better. 

​

The sound of the old software: 

The sound of logic 5.5 is in my humble opinion way better than modern logic. As far as I know they totally re wrote it from pretty much the ground up when it went from Version 7 to version 8 and the introduction of 64 bit plugins. I always noticed a change but thought that new must be better. I now know that it really was not better. The low end and the mids are so much clearer and crispy. Every tune I make on there sounds tight like my old stuff. It was so soul destroying working on modern DAWS and not being able to achieve the same feel and tone that I used to have and now I just do it all day. with the old DAW you can have 3 parts running like some Sounds, Drums and Bass and it sounds like a good tune. There is no messing around with a million plugins.

Things of note. The old version of the Logic Overdrive Plugin is completely different to the new version. I have done side by side comparison and in my opinion it is night and day better. The EQ also is very different sounding. 

​

Plugins I am using: 

Kontakt version 2.2 

Z3ta 

Massive v1.5

Waves Diamond Bundle (some of them don't work) 

Key waves plug I am using all the time are: 

Rvox

Rchan

C4

Lin EQ

Lin MB 

Rverb

​

I got a version of TAL sampler working in the old DAW too. it is slightly buggy but has got Legato which is something that kontakt cant do :/ Wtf is that all about... 

​

Now I am in the work flow of the old logic there are so many workflow things that are actually good. It takes time to go back to old software but get this. I can run way more samplers and synths than I can on my new computer. Yeah my new computer is not the best but because the software back in the day was designed to work with really crappy pentium computers it is insanely optimised and streamlined. For example kontakt 2.2 is 29 MB in total for the whole package. I think there is a lot to be learned from this by new software companies. 

​

Back in the day there was no Juce I am not saying that Juce is a bad thing but I think people are lazy and especially plugin developers, if you can just plug in a pre cooked algo for your EQs and other things you are going to do that. Back in the day every plugin had to be coded from scratch including the DSP and this is why every plugin sounded different. 

​

​Latest Edit: Thursday 21 May 2026 in the 2 hours I have while my 18 month old son has his 2h nap time.