Yup. One should not be too gear oriented. It's always sad to see someone buying 10k? worth of gear in hope of starting producing high quality stuff. Oh boy the dissapointement is huge when you can't get out any top stuff just by pressing a button and hoping for the best. Then the gear usually ends up in eBay.

Edit: By the way Panopticon, you make music by order or you do loads of gigs?

heheh. of course you can hear the difference. my old guitar had a horrible flat tone. and my teacher couldnt get rid of that. but he could pick it and play it and he was damn good. he could have knocked together a lo fi recording of it and i reckon it would pass for some of the lo fi rock out there very easily. but people who arent even half as good as my old guitar teacher complaining that they need a genuine fender strat cuz their fender squire doesnt cut it - they just need to practice some more.

same with producers i think. if some tarnce!!1 producer makes out that he needs a real moog to get his fat basslines when theres clearly EQing and clipping errors in his song. that person needs to realise that spending several thousands of pounds on hardware doesnt necessarily make you a better producer. he just needs to work with layers of the aturia minimoog plugin and sort his EQing out. once he has done that and really taken his software as far as it can go, then maybe its time to get that elusive minimoog. the plugin will never sound like the real deal but i bet you he can get it close enough for the layperson not to notice or give a damn and he can still make a damn good song without a real one. :D

absolutely. truth be told, ive heard enough fantastic proffessional sounding songs made on cheap software setups with only 2 or 3 VSTis and free drum samples that it makes me think - i would be kidding myself if i thought that purchasing my dream list of studio equipment would make my songs that much better. i would still have problems in my songs that i didnt sort out because i thought throwing money at it would fix it. it doesnt.

I have a recording contract and I play a lot of gigs. I received an advance from the label, and we're just wrapping up the LP for that release.

I can't post songs for you to listen to, as I'm under contractual obligation, but there will be snippets shortly available on www.suckstar.com, as well as video. It's undergoing reformat, I think it should be fully online by christmas. There's just a template there now....