Commodore Amiga 500
I started in the early days (80’s) working with a tracker program on the Commodore Amiga and a 8 bits sampler card. Wow, the possibilities 🙂
Soon, together with Guido P, we invested in a Atari ST with Cubase and bought our first hardware synth, a Yamaha TG-55. We had the fortune that my dad always had recording gear (DAT, Tape, Mics) so we did not have to invest in those in the early days.
Yamaha TG-55
A multitude of gear then past by: Roland TR-909, Roland SH-101, Roland Alpha Juno II, Korg DW800, Yamaha TG-77, Roland Super Jupiter, Akai S1100, Oberheim Matrix 1000, Akai MPC60, Emu Emax II and many others (I probably also forgot a lot :-))
Atari ST
In the present time the synth’s I use come out of the box. Most of them by Arturia, Korg, Native Instruments, Roland and others.
I stayed a long time on Cubase (on pc) but then I tested Presonus Studio One and never looked back.
For mixing I use plugins from Universal Audio, Kush, Zynaptic, Plugin Alliance, Softube, McDSP, Flux, Eventide and others.
The setup simplified over the years but the possibilities are endless now.
My current setup is a Mac Studio, UAD Apollo X6, Ferrofish A16, 2 x UAD Satellite Quad, Presonus Faderport 16, Softube Console 1, Dynaudio Core 47, Avantones, Reftones, Ollo S4X, Kurzweil and Arturia Masterkeyboards. And of course, still my favourite instruments, guitars (Gibson, Fender, Epiphone, etc).
In the end its about transfering emotion from creator to listener, tools are just tools. (but I still need to get me some ATC speakers, and maybe a new plugin and and… :-))