What piece of gear helped you speed up or improve your workflow the most?

[wackob]

Replaced my Windows laptop with a Macbook Pro and I started liking producing again so much more hehe...

[sjm]

An audio interface with enough inputs to keep all my gear hooked up (32-in in my case) and ready to go immediately. There's no bigger productivity killer for me than the thought of having to rearrange the studio just to record a quick part. If I feel the inspiration to record something, I want to do it right now. I don't want to be looking for cables, crawling under desks, plugging and unplugging, troubleshooting when things don't work straight away etc. etc.

[Yorrrrrr]

Ableton Live 10 + Push 2.

[edthesoundman]

The purchase that helped my "workflow" the absolute most was a secondary display monitor for my desktop. It was so useful that I eventually upgraded my graphics card and am now using three total displays. Of course, good audio gear is important and you'll need that too, but these three displays make my daily navigation so much easier.

Having a MIDI controller is also very important, but might not be so game-changing unless you can at least somewhat play what you want to hear. Not making any assumptions, but keys are definitely something you'll want to incorporate eventually.

[uchinio]

Good reference headphones enabled me to analyze professional mixes, which in turn made my mixes better.

[CircuitEYE]

A MIDI keyboard.

... with drum pads, knobs & faders

And some kind of reasonable touch sensitivity...

[cleverr1]

Just curious, what gear helped you guys the most with getting compositions down, or producing, or mixing...

I’m debating getting a 88key midi controller, or a workstation, or a mini keyboard and good monitors and headphones, or some other things, right now I just use piano roll

dude, if you want to make records structure your tasks:
Stage 1:
write your song.
Gear needed is guitar or basic keyboard /whatever - chuck out the chaff only keep the great.
Stage 2:
demo your song.
basic mix of a good idea - any adequate user of any DAW can do this
Stage 3:
where appropriate make decent productions of your demos.
This is where it requires ability. musicians craft needs to be top drawer as does the engineering skills. This bit used to be expensive back in my day.
Stage 4:
Mixes A/R approved and sent to get professionally mastered.

So in summary I'd suggest getting great ideas first, and then following the old style process.
To contextualize, I signed a record deal last week after, ahem, a 23 year break.

Good luck!

[AndreasH]

Akai Fire

[VariKusBrainZ]

An audio interface with enough inputs to keep all my gear hooked up (32-in in my case) and ready to go immediately. There's no bigger productivity killer for me than the thought of having to rearrange the studio just to record a quick part. If I feel the inspiration to record something, I want to do it right now. I don't want to be looking for cables, crawling under desks, plugging and unplugging, troubleshooting when things don't work straight away etc. etc.

To piggy back this comment Ill throw in a Patchbay (£40 off ebay) and some snake cables.
I dont use an external mixer with my computer so this did revolutionise how I can patch in all my external gear.

Plus RME TotalMix which adds another level of modularity to send anything anywhere without having to screw around inside the DAW.

[VariKusBrainZ]

A MIDI keyboard.

... with drum pads, knobs & faders

And some kind of reasonable touch sensitivity...

Ill add the Sensel Morph, can be used as an MPE controller, ultimate multitouch midi controller AND an amazing touchpad to use with your OS

[morfic]

A MIDI keyboard.

... with drum pads, knobs & faders

And some kind of reasonable touch sensitivity...

Ill add the Sensel Morph, can be used as an MPE controller, ultimate multitouch midi controller AND an amazing touchpad to use with your OS

Thanks, I'm trying to sell off stuff in an attempt of "do more with less", along comes you and your Sensel Morph and I compare packages...

That thing is neat, and I like touchpads for OS too.

[Yorrrrrr]

..Live 10, also.

[VariKusBrainZ]

A MIDI keyboard.

... with drum pads, knobs & faders

And some kind of reasonable touch sensitivity...

Ill add the Sensel Morph, can be used as an MPE controller, ultimate multitouch midi controller AND an amazing touchpad to use with your OS

Thanks, I'm trying to sell off stuff in an attempt of "do more with less", along comes you and your Sensel Morph and I compare packages...

That thing is neat, and I like touchpads for OS too.

I cant say enough about the Morph. Just got the Innovators Overlay today.
Mwaaaaargh.........{dribble}
Looking forward to making my own controller.

Ive tried other routes for this over the past 20 years but this appears to be the easy, cheapest, feature rich and most flexible route to customisation with ease.

Got a kenton midi to cv I want to combine this with

[roman.i]

A MIDI keyboard.

... with drum pads, knobs & faders

How useful are those? I'm torn between getting a Roland A49 or Arturia Keylab 49 MK2.

[MMaarrkk]

Just curious, what gear helped you guys the most with getting compositions down, or producing, or mixing...

There are great comments that have gotten collected here over time, but all three are quite different. To get better production, you might need to invest into gear you, as a producer need, do you play piano, do you play guitar, etc. You have mentioned a midi, which is definitely a good call, that most people go for at some point. For mixing, well, that's obviously headphones, monitors and hardware if you want to mix physically over mixing in software. So it's really more on what you want to achieve now, instead of down the road. There's no real best way to get the things you want, but the thread seems full of good tips, so pick your favourite.