Some facts about my little home studio:

This is where I produce my tracks and practice mixing on the turntables. I have neither synthesizer nor sampler, but I use my Computer for sampling and generating/processing sounds. For this purpose I have a soundcard (Terratec EWS64XL) installed on the Computer. A Masterkeyboard is linked to the midi-part of the soundcard to record small drum sequences, melodies or chords. A DAT (Digital Audio Tape) is connected to the Soundcard via digital lines. So I can do 1:1 copies of sounddata from and to the Computer. The 2 DJ-turntables are connected to a mixer. The mixer output goes to the amp and to the DAT. One analog output of the soundcard goes to a mixer line-in.

The Computer

It's a K6 200MHz with

The Software I use is mainly:

The Soundcard Terratec EWS64 XL 

The Soundcard divides into an ISA extension card with analog ins and outs and a 5¼" front panel with plugs for midi and headphones and digital ins and outs. It's a 64 voices synthesizer/sampler. The onboard DSP allows several FX like reverb, chorus, filter cutoff and resonance, vspace and a 4 band equalizer. The S/PDIF digital ins and outs let me transfer tracks from and to the DAT lossless in 32kHz, 44,1kHz and 48kHz sampling frequencies.

The Masterkeyboard (Roland PC 200 MK II) 

The Keyboard is touch sensitive and has a pitch/modulation wheel. The free programmable controller I mainly use for recording filter sweeps.

The DAT (Sony DTC-790) 

It supports sampling frequencies 32kHz, 44,1kHz and 48kHz as the soundcard does. Via optical out and coaxial in (S/PDIF) I can exchange sampledata with the soundcard in all those sampling frequencies. In fact, when I record samples from external sources, for instance from vinyl records, I do it with the DAT, because the AD-converters are better than the soundcard's and the noise coming from inside the computer doesn't pollute the recording. After that I copy the samples to the computer via optical line and there I can edit the samples to my needs. After finishing the production of a track I digitally record the track with the DAT. The master can then be used to produce dubplates or CDs.

The Turntables (HTE 190Q) 

These are very cheap and simple DJ turntables. Up to now I couldn't afford better ones. I only changed the Needles (Ortofon). I plan to buy the Gemini 2000 in the future. Compared to these the HTEs are not heavy enough and the belt drive has not enough power. At least I learned mixing with them though.

The Mixer (Numark DM1100Xi) 

The mixer is a standard DJ mixer. I can crossfade between 2 turntables and/or line ins (cd-player and soundcard). Additionally I can mix a microphone or another line in. With the 3 band equalizer I can manipulate the treble/mid/bass on each of the 3 channels. The two outs are connected to the amp and to the analog in of the DAT.