Ah HA! Finally, I can reply. Firefox has scroll bars so I can reach the "Reply" button. (I actually wrote this on the 24th.)

Silvertones,

It's assumed that you have talent to begin with, otherwise just give up.

What money will buy you in the studio is ancillary talent (sidemen, arrangers and engineers), a room with a 100-plus dB noise floor, and gobs of noise-free equipment. It also used to get you unlimited recording channels, but now that have digital workstations we all effectively have that, too. (Even if it's "only" 48 channels, bouncing makes it effectively infinite, and in stereo. And we get the noise-free processing gear, too, in the form of plugins.) Far cry from four-track days.

I figure that, given journeyman competence as a performer and engineer, anybody can get about 85% of the studio ideal. If the material is solid and marketed properly, the next album can be done in a "real" studio, leveraged by a record deal* or profits from self marketing.

So nyah.

R.

* The British prog rock group Marillion made history recently by going direct to their audience for financing of a double CD, eliminating the record company altogether. Contributors got an autographed copy and a bonus disk when the album was released. Think about it.