I must admit that I redesign my studio at 4-5 times a year. Most of the time it is because I have added or changed items. Sometimes, it is due to me finding more effecient ways to route signals. Today is the first time I actually removed items and simplified my studio.

All it took was selling one sound module and keyboard for everything to suddenly change. I ordered my new keyboard controller which is USB-powered. So the need for MIDI and audio cables immediately left. And losing the sound module freed up two audio channels and the old keyboard freed up two as well.

Suddenly I was wiring 8 audio signals with an 8-channel snake and realized that I could completely pass the patch bay. The patch bay was a wonderful device that allowed you to route signals to different channels if needed. My Yamaha 01v has 16 inputs and believe it or not there was a time when I had more than 16 channels to feed it. But now with only 8 channels, I still had 8 free channels to work with.

Of course, none of this would be possible without virtual instruments. I admit that it took me some time to accept them. I always wanted to have the hardware handy. There was something about the nostalgia of old gear. But old gear fails and is heavy and requires more power, more midi, and more audio channels. With virtual instruments, you can use as many channels as your computer can handle. And with a quad-core Xeon machine, I can use a lot of virtual instruments.

And so it seems that my studio suddenly became simpler. I never imagined that I could ever be down to 8 audio sources, but here it is.

If you haven’t explored virtual instruments, I suggest you give it a try. You might be surprised by what you find with them.