During the period of time when I was playing in the company band, my wife, Sandi, wanted to record a yoga chanting album. Jim Roberts, the keyboard player in the company band, also had a recording studio at home with a lot of really nice gear. I got fascinated in the process, watching him do his work.
My wife announced shortly after that album was done that she wanted to record another album, but this time she wanted it to be some songs that she had written over the years that were more contemporary. Jim had just gotten his life back from the first album and I knew this one was going to be harder and take a lot longer, so I decided this was my opportunity to learn about this field myself.
I did some research, and bought a small audio interface from Steinberg and a couple of cheap MxL Large Condenser mics. We sat down and recorded La Paz.
It was an awful recording. The pre-amp was clipping in spots, and it was too close to Sandi, so there were a lot of bad pops, or plosives. We recorded it many more times, but it was her best performance. I took the recorded MIDI information and cleaned up a few notes, re-played it through the keyboard and recorded fresh audio. I've probably re-mixed it half a dozen times over the past two years, but it's the recording that went on the record.
Then that Steinberg interface went kaput (german engineering, pffft) and I had to look getting a replacement. After extensive research, I settled on a Universal Audio Apollo Twin Duo and a Universal Audio 4-710d pre-amp with tubes in it. I became immersed in the world of analog equipment circuit emulated plug-ins and have since expanded the system to replace the Twin DUO with an UA Apollo Twin MkII QUAD and expand the system with a UA Apollo 8p, Satellite OCTO and a Focusrite Clarrett OctoPre. I'm pretty happy with my system right now and don't feel like it needs any further expansion...but gear addiction is real. We'll see. :-)