New Equipment Vs Old Equipment

Something not a lot of you may know is that we don't just offer acoustic designs for recording studios. We also offer recording studio equipment and gear. We get questions all the time about whether people should be using new equipment or old equipment... it's really a toss up honestly. The nice thing about building a recording studio and planning out the acoustics for the recording studio ahead of time is simply that all of your gear is going to sound better. There is no knob, there is no button, there is absolutely no substitute for great acoustics. Past that, it's all about the recording studio gear. The microphones, the mic pre-amps, the compressors, EQ's, outboard gear, patchbays, recording consoles and or mixers, summing mixers, A/D Converters, D/A Converters, DAW or Pro Tools and then of course your monitor controller and monitors. So should you buy new? or Used? You can get really great discounts on used gear and honestly it really depends on whether you trust the manufacturer to use good quality parts. A little bit of investigation into who made that pre amp or channel strip would probably do you some good. You can save a lot of money on used gear if you can verify that they used good quality components that will last 20 years and you're buying a 3 year old part. The harsh reality is not if something dies but when that piece of gear dies. Then you'll have to get it serviced and brings us into a project management discussion of Total Cost of Ownership vs. Total Value of Ownership (TCO vs. TVO) The risk that you're taking by making the investment is that you may only get to use that piece of gear for a little while before it dies, breaks, or becomes unsupported by the manufacturer. Avid a few years ago unsupported a wealth of their control surfaces which anyone who know what they were talking about thought was funny because all of their control surfaces use the same information for control... if it didn't use the same information some of them would work and some of them wouldn't. Also a few ex-Avid engineers continued writing programs and made a bunch of money supporting old control surfaces. So there is always balance in the universe somewhere which is a good sign. Try not to worry too much. Someone will always see opportunity and try to help. Likewise if you want continued service, you can always go to a higher priced company like API or SSL and get recording consoles from them.... you'll end up paying a little more... BUT... you get what you pay for. A company where you pay a little more has more revenue. More revenue means they can hire better employees, then better employees can make better designs and offer you better quality of service. Even if you don't use the service because the design was so good, you sort have a good insurance policy that in the event something goes wrong, the service CAN be made available to get you up and running. So many people get caught up on cost these days and honestly don't focus on the total value of ownership. Usually when you look at the cost analysis of running a recording studio or designing a recording studio, it makes more sense to buy new when you think about brand new components, longevity of the gear and the warranty that the manufacturer gives you... it usually makes the most sense.