So as many people know I just upgraded to a Icon Aio 6 sound card and DAW mixer.

Now since I've been having all sorts of problems with it dropping out and generally being a pain in the bum, I am upgrading (actually i'm not sue if its a downgrade actually) to a Digidesign 002 Rack mounted sound card with about eight inputs and eight outputs, as well as a array of MIDI ins and outs, Digital ins and outs and support for me to upgrade my studio monitoring system to have 4.1 surround sound! I have been thinking for a while to upgrade my monitoring system to have left and right rear speakers. I am getting another pair of KRK RP6 G3 active speakers. To do so I needed to uprade my soundcard to have over five outputs, one for subwoofer, two for front left and right and two extra ports for rear lleft and right. My Icon Aio 6 has four outputs, so I could have possibly done it with that soundcard, but to get a full surround sound effect I needed all seperate channels. So today I looked up Digidesign 002 and 003 sound cards on the bay of "E's" and found a 002 going for £29.50 which I promptly bid on, it just went for £51.00, which was slightly more than I bargined for, but I dodn't mind paying as these were the same sound cards I trained on at college a decade ago and they were very good at what they did. I kind of wished I waited out for a 003, but I don't care. I was originally looking at buying a Behringer FCA1616 firewire rack mounted sound card, but it was £229.00, I could have purchased it, but with a pair of KRK RP6 G3 monitors with stands, would have worked out to £579.00. Doing it this way I have saved potientially £140ish, so I fairly happy. 

I am also happy that I could effectively run Pro-tools now upto version 8.01. So this is a turn up as I used Pro-tools in college and Dan (Fireball01e) and Davis use Pro-tools, and the output is very clean. So hopefully will add to the overall polish of some of my mixes. 

With the chance to get 4.1 surround sound means I can start making ACC files with upto 5.1 support, so that means I can make more complicated projects with overall 3D sound effects. I will also make some more cinematic style projects, and lots more full ochestral projects. Jean Michel Jarre used full DTS 5.1 surround support when he made Equinox, even though DTS didn't even exsist back then. He used all analgue effects to make it sound like it was in huge 3D space and he did it very well. I plan to do the same kind of thing with my newer electronica, dance and trance projects, but obviously will need to have a bit of a play around first to see what kind of soundscapes I can come up with.

I can see big things coming of this and I hope I can use this kind of sound sculpturing to my advantage. I'll see what I can do....