Hi everyone

I make alot of house music on my pc using a midi controller and FL Studio and Ableton Live. But I want to expand my studio a tad.

I will defintly get my self a good synth and a new pair of monitors.

FL studio, cubase, protools and so on have good compression and mastering possibilities, so will it make a difference on my production with, lets say, a compressor or other signal processors?

I for one no longer trust software compressors, limiters, EQs, reverbs or any signal boosting plugins. I am not opposed to using wave modulation plugins, like flangers, choruses etc.

The main reason I don't trust them, is (at least for my ears) I can not tell if the headroom is being used up, or if the signal is clipping.

I did not realize this until I actually got some hardware and mix into a board. It's hard to explain, but with the hardware I am able to hear and see more clearly what is actually happening, and with plugins mistakes are made too easily.

That being said, you go with what you want. There are no rules. If you like what you hear without buying the extra hardware, stick with it. I will almost guarantee (I say almost, because nothing is a true guarantee) that if you get decent hardware, you will not use the signal boosting plugins I spoke of above.