Jeff Strong - Home Recording For Dummies

Don’t be afraid to just jump in and start recording. The way to great-sounding recordings is through hours of recording experience (not to mention having great songs with which to work).

Some of the equipment I describe in this chapter isn’t on the top of the list for most home recordists. I discuss this equipment, though, because you’ll likely be taken over by a disease that runs rampant in the audio recording world. Yes, I’m sorry to inform you that you’re almost assuredly going to get a chronic case of GAS (gear acquisition syndrome). Don’t worry; it’s not terminal (unless, of course, you don’t run your future purchases by your family first), but it can be uncomfortable. Nothing much is worse than having your eye on a piece of gear you just can’t afford. “Let’s see, food for a month or that new compressor I’ve just gotta have? … Oh well, I needed to go on a diet anyway.”

The good news is that you’ll never run out of new equipment to drool over and you’ll never be alone in your suffering — everyone who owns a recording studio (private or commercial) suffers from GAS to some extent. The best way to keep GAS at bay is to decide on a system and buy it. Then stop looking at gear and get to work making music. After all, that’s why you bought the stuff in the first place.

Home studios can vary tremendously. A home studio can be simple, like a handheld digital recorder with a built-in microphone set up in the corner of your bedroom. Or you can opt for something elaborate, like a multitrack digital recorder with thousands of dollars in outboard gear and expensive instruments residing in an acoustically treated addition to your house (whew!).

Whatever your budget, your first step before purchasing a home recording system is to determine your recording goals. Use the following questions to help you uncover what you truly need (and want) in your home studio. As you answer these questions, remember that most recording studios aren’t built all at once — pieces of equipment are added slowly over time (a mic here, a preamp there). When getting your first home studio system, start with only those pieces of gear that you really need and then add on slowly as you get to know your equipment.

For most home recordists, the weakest link in their recording system is their engineering know-how. A $4,000 mic is useless until you gain an understanding of the subtleties of mic placement, for instance. (Check out Chapters 7and 8for more on such subtleties.) I recommend you wait to buy that next piece of gear until you completely outgrow your present piece of equipment.

To get an understanding of what kind of home studio is best for you, ask yourself the following questions:

How much money can I spend on equipment? For most people, money is the ultimate determining factor in choosing their studio components. Set a budget and try to stay within it. The sky’s the limit on what you can spend on recording equipment for your home studio, but you don’t need to spend a ton of money. If you know your goals and do your research, you can create top-quality recordings without having the best of everything.In fact, your skill as a recording engineer has a much greater effect on the overall quality of your sound than whether you have a $3,000 preamp. With the techniques that you discover in this book and tricks that you uncover as you get to know your equipment, you can make recordings good enough to compete in the marketplace. Digital recording technology has improved tremendously over the last few years and will continue to improve in the years to come. Don’t get sucked into the belief that you have to have the latest, greatest thing to make great music: otherwise you’ll always be buying something. After all, great albums and number-one hits throughout history were recorded on lesser equipment than you can find in most home studios today. Focus on the song and the arrangement — practicing solid recording techniques — and you can get by with any of the pro or semipro recording systems available.

Is this studio just for me, or do I intend to hire it out to record others? Your answer to this question may help you decide how elaborate a system you need. For example, if you eventually want to hire yourself and your studio out to record other people, you need to think about the compatibility of your system with other commercial studios. Your clients need to be able to take the music that they record at your studio and mix or master it somewhere else. You may also have to buy specific gear that clients want to use, which often means spending more money for equipment from sought-after manufacturers that may sound the same as lesser-name stuff. If you’re interested in going the commercial studio route, check out other commercial studios in your area and find out what they use and what type of equipment their clients ask for.If this studio is just for your use, you can focus on getting the best bang for the buck on gear without worrying about compatibility or marketability issues.

Will I be recording everything directly into the mixing board, or will I be miking most of the instruments? Your answer to this question is going to dictate your choice in how much of your budget goes toward equipment and acoustical treatments for your room. If you intend to plug your instruments directly into the mixer and you only need a microphone for the occasional vocal, you have more money to spend on synthesizers or plug-ins for your digital audio workstation (DAW) — or you just won’t have to spend as much. (DAWs are covered in detail in the section “ Computer-Based Digital Recording Systems,” later in this chapter.)Conversely, if you plan to record a band live, you must allocate enough money for those pieces of gear to allow you to do that effectively, such as having enough mics and inputs, sound isolation, and available tracks of simultaneous recording.

How many tracks do I need? The answer to this question is important if you’re considering a system that has limited tracks, such as mobile or studio-in-a-box (SIAB) systems that come with 2, 4, 8, 16, 24 (and sometimes more) available tracks. (For the lowdown on these systems, see the sections, “ Studio-in-a-Box Systems” and “ Mobile-Device Recording,” later in this chapter.) This question is still worth considering even if you end up with a computer-based system because, even though many recording software programs boast having “unlimited” available tracks, you’re still limited by the power of your computer and the number of inputs and outputs contained in your audio interface hardware. (For more on the capabilities of computer-based systems, check out the section, “ Computer-Based Digital Recording Systems,” later in this chapter.) Having more tracks is not necessarily a better thing. The more tracks you have, the more you think that you need to fill them for every song. This can make for cluttered arrangements and hard-to-mix songs. No matter how many tracks you end up with, use only those that you need to make your recording the best that it can be. With digital recorders, you can create submixes and bounce several tracks into one or two without losing sound quality, reducing the need for more tracks. (Find out more about bouncing in Chapter 10.) Remember that some great albums were made using just four or eight tracks.

Will I be sequencing the parts or playing the instruments live? If you plan on sequencing all your music (that is, programming your part into a computer or sequencer and having it play your part for you), make sure you get a good Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) controller. You can also consider having less capability for audio tracks. But if you plan to play and record all the instruments live, make sure your recorder has enough tracks for you to put each instrument on its own track.