[jim1960]

Originally Posted by FlyWilde

1. Pick space: Inside the house (16’ x 16’) or in the extra garage (30’ x 30’) . Both areas are climate controlled and can be dedicated full time to being set up properly. There are no concerns about neighbors hearing noise and such. External noises such as cars, barking dogs, etc. are non-existent for all intents and purposes. Either space can be modified however I wish. Current thought is that a small space for just recording is all that is needed for the one person, one guitar nature of what I want to do. I am no longer looking at my ‘wood shed’ type practice space, hanging out space, and recording space being the same area.

A 16'x16' room will be fine so long as you treat it properly. I'd caution you about one thing ahead of time... you don't want to be too close to a wall. It's good to get your monitors a couple of feet from a wall if you can, and so your desk will be pulled away from the wall as well. When monitors are too close to a wall they can fool your ears by building up bass frequencies.

Originally Posted by FlyWilde

2. Room Treatment: Once the location and dimensions are determined the room treatment is going to addressed with a full blown ‘what ever it takes to do it right’ mentality. Budget for this aspect of the project is ‘what ever it takes’, short of construction a separate building. Currently exploring the idea of portioning off a small area, probably a corner, of a larger area using panels to create a booth type area.

The booth is probably unnecessary. If you're going to be recording yourself it might actually be a hindrance since you'll need the computer within reach. Rather than a dedicated booth, you might consider some gobos if you really feel like you need to create a smaller space within your room. A company like GIK can help you sort out your room treatment needs. They have a variety of design options that will allow you to create a space that inspires you ...and inspiration is always a good thing where music is concerned. In addition to a bunch of bass traps and absorbers, I own one of their PIBs and used it recently to record a sax track in a smallish room. It did a great job of cutting down unwanted reflections.

Originally Posted by FlyWilde

3. Set budget. This is currently a very wild guess for me. Based on the advice I’m being given I’m going to just plant the flag at up to 10K and go from there. This is based on incomplete research and some major ‘Kentucky windage’ type guessing.

That's a healthy budget. You should have no problems creating a fine home studio on that budget.

Originally Posted by FlyWilde

4. Gear: The quality of the monitors is the 1st priority. Don’t know enough yet to be more specific about mics. Seems like using an iMac is the way to go.

Wise decision. I think the priority list that sdelsolray gave you was spot on. We can't know how good our recording is unless we hear it well. Monitors provide us with that feedback. You had mentioned the Adam A7x and those would be a great choice for nearfield monitors. A friend of mine has them and he says he can work on them all day without too much ear fatigue. I'm going to add a set of midfields to my setup in the not too distant future and I'm leaning towards the Adam A8x for that very reason. But there are plenty of good options out there. Do your research and get out and hear them if possible. I know it's not always possible and sometimes you just have to roll the dice. That's what I did when I bought my Neumann KH120 pair. Luckily it worked out and I really like them.

As for the iMac, I think that's another solid decision. I'm a PC guy for just about everything except music. I have a 2017 iMac with a 4.2GHz quad core processor and 32gb of ram. It handles everything I throw at it. It's a bit more expensive than a similarly equipped PC but the computer never gives me any trouble nor is it ever the source of a problem. I don't do anything as intensive as music production on my PC and I still find myself troubleshooting issues from time to time, especially with drivers.

A bit of premature advice: Once you have your system up and running, don't be in a hurry to update software. It takes time for the software developers to catch up to OS changes and such. Be patient, let others find the bugs, and update when all the issues have been resolved.

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned is ad/da convertors often come with preamps. The quality of those preamps can differ tremendously. I think the best interface combination of quality conversion and quality preamps is probably the Apogee Symphony I/O Mk II 2x6 SE. I own a UAD Apollo 8Xp which I upgraded to recently and is also very good but I'd likely have gone with the Apogee if I didn't have so much money invested in UAD plugins.

Originally Posted by FlyWilde

5. DAW: Current concept is to go with ProTools.

As I said previously, Pro Tools is all I've used so I can't offer comparisons. That said, I like Pro Tools and I have no desire to move on from it.

Something to think about... the initial setting up of everything and getting it to all work together is a chore. When I bought my first system, I purchased my computer and my gear through Sweetwater. For a couple of hundred dollars (this was back in the early 2000s) they loaded all the software, tweaked the computer, and had everything setup for me so that all I had to do was make the manual connections at home and I was up and running. They also have really great customer support. That little extra I paid was worth every cent back then.

Originally Posted by FlyWilde

Again, much thanks to all who have helped. I am beginning to understand how hard earned your experience is. Thank you for sharing it.

You'll be flying that rocket before you know it.