Back in the old days (around 'Nam) recording at home was
a new miracle. You could actually hit record on a device and
capture sound in your own home. Your eyes would light up just
like Thomas Edison did when he first invented audio recording.
Fast forward to 2005. It's now completely affordable to outfit
a fully functional recording rig in your home for the price
of a high quality, American made guitar. While the price of
getting into home recording is much cheaper than it has ever
been before, it's still a lot of money. Is setting up a small
studio worth the price? What are the pitfalls of trying to
record yourself? Would you be better off just paying a professional
recording studio to do the job for you? Hopefully, I'll answer
these questions and more.
What It Takes
You are going to need a lot of knowledge, gear, time, and
patience before jumping into the recording studio world. I
was a computer nerd half done with a degree in electronics
when I jumped into the recording world. I understood electronic
basics and had run live sound numerous times. I totally understood
how to operate a mixer/console. So all I had to do was jump
into the recording portion, right? ....Well, it turned out
that there was quite a learning curve to go from an empty
room to the creative process (which is the fun part) and walk
out with a finished cd in hand.
I had no idea how much time I would spend cursing Windows
audio drivers, failed hard drives, out of sync audio files,
clicks and pops, unwanted distortion, etc. Truth be told,
I went from an average computer user to a computer master
in that couple of monthes it took me to work out all the kinks
in my system. That's right. It took me a few monthes before
I was ready to record my first band. It was that tough. That
was in 2001. Maybe things are easier now. I'm guessing that
you'll still have quite a road in front of you.
After you get your rig fully operational, you are still going
to have to learn the software. I would HIGHLY recommend that
you buy a DVD and a book to teach you the software that you
intend to use. I could have saved myself hundreds of hours
of headaches if I would have just read the stupid manual and
had a little instruction. I learned a lot by tinkering (which
may be your nature too) but there is no point in learning
things the hard way if you don't have to. On my very first
recording session, I had my manual in my lap. You could only
imagine how stressful it can be if you have 5 guys staring
at you while you desperately push buttons on something you
barely understand. I'd say it took me a good 3 monthes of
everyday tinkering before I felt comfortable using the software
for basic recording. Keep in mind that I wasn't trying anything
advanced here. No crazy editing, no fancy automation. In fact,
I had very little understanding of audio when it came down
to early reflections and multi-tap delays. I'm talking about
just getting the stupid song onto the computer.
Okay, so I've kind of prepped you on how the learning curve
required for recording music. Let's talk about the gear.
These days, it's a waste of time to use the stand alone recorders
you see in the mail order company catalogs. While these boxes
promise to have everything you need to record your demo (and
they usually do) the learning curve requirements are astounding.
Yes, I just wrote an entire section on how tough it was to
learn computer recording. However, there is a big difference
between the learning curve of computer audio and the learning
curve of stand alone recorders. When you learn computer knowledge,
that knowledge is useful on just about every computer on the
planet. (I've kept myself from starving a number of times
with my computer knowledge which I mostly attribute to recording).
Also, computer recording software generally uses a mixer that
is a fairly close simulation of the real thing. The concepts
stay the same. When you are using the stand alone recorders,
you end up learning to hold E1 + Function + Menu to get to
Aux send page. Why do you need a page for aux send? Anyway,
I've had several friends who have used these boxes and don't
know anything about audio. They spent all their time learning
this foreign language that will be obsolete as soon as the
record is. In summary, I highly recommend that you go with
a computer for your digital recordings.
Okay, so you need a computer. The good news is you don't
need a very fast one by today's standards. In fact, I built
my recording computer for about $300 and it's overkill. I
need a faster computer than most because I do more projects
than most. It makes a difference when I'm rendering down mixes
that I can do it twice as fast because I have too many songs
to mix on a given day. I don't have 3 minutes to sit around
and wait for the computer to think.
On top of the computer, you'll need a soundcard. I recommend
a soundcard with a breakout box. This means that a cable will
actually come out of the back of your computer and connect
to a box where your audio connections are made. Setups with
breakout boxes are almost always preferred. In fact, I ownly
know of one professional audio company that doesn't rely on
a breakout box for their computer interphases. I do not recommend
Sound Blaster and those sorts. We are not playing games or
watching DVDs. We are recording music. The demands are certainly
not the same. You will find many Firewire and PCI soundcards
in the mail order catalogs that work great. Pay special attention
to the number of inputs and optional preamps. This is important.
You may only need 2 inputs for your recording. In fact, most
projects I do seldom use more than 2 channels 90% of the time.
Of course, the other 10% of the time we may be using 19 or
20 channels. If you are recording electronic music and only
plan on doing a few overdubs with vocals or the occasional
instrument, 2 channels will probably work fine. If you plan
on recording your entire 4 piece rock band live with rock
drums you are going to need at least 10 inputs (maybe more).
So plan ahead and figure out how many mics you plan to use
at once.
Next, you need preamps. Preamps boost the signal of a microphone
up to line level and are pretty much required. Preamps are
usually the top knob on the mixer of your PA. You'll need
one preamp for every microphone you plan on using at one time.
You'll want to have the same number of preamp channels as
you do inputs on your soundcard. There are many soundcards
that come with preamps. There are many many external preamps
that CAN improve you sound quality just slightly. If all else
fails, use the preamps in your PA mixer. If your mixer uses
inserts you can split the signal right off the preamp by only
pushing in the cable half way. I'm referring to the cable
that goes out of your preamp and into your soundcard.
Next you'll need mic stands. There aren't too many cases
where you don't need a mic stand. You have to be very very
careful with mic stands. If you buy a supercheap mic stand,
you may have problems with the mic changing it's position
in the middle of a session. The results can be absolutely
horrible. So buy decent mic stands. $30 per stand is a reasonable
low budget stand. I would not recommend that you spend any
less on a mic stand.
Next is microphones. This is where it gets fun. There are
so many to choose from and there are so many tonal options.
You'll want as many mics as you have preamp channels and soundcard
channels (or you went overkill on preamps / soundcards). Choosing
microphones is beyond the scope of this article. You can spend
$50 on a mic or you can spend $3000 on a mic and you have
no way of knowing which will sound better on a given source.
This is a severely big deal when it comes to recording and
it's one major area that seperates the men from the boys,
so to speak. Home recording studios usually have terrible
mic selections to choose from.
The most important piece of gear in your studio is your studio
monitors. If you try to use a boombox you will be very dissapointed
when you burn a cd and try to show mom on another stereo system.
Of course, you'll probably be dissapointed even if you have
a $10,000 set of studio monitors because your acoustics will
be all wrong in you room and even still you probably haven't
mixed enough songs to be any good at actually mixing.
Okay, I've outlined what goes into recording your cd. Guess
what, any decent studio has all of this taken care of you.
Do you know about audio latency in XP? Do you know anything
about room nodes? The studio guy probably does. That's how
he makes his living.
So when you walk into a professional recording studio ran
by a serious engineer who cares about your music, you can
expect to focus on one thing... the recording of your music.
You don't have to wonder about the specs of the computer,
the cables connecting the preamps and the soundcard. You don't
have to worry about wasting huge amounts of time while the
bass player stares at a mess of cables. You don't have to
buy the mess of cables. In fact, I've recorded entire albums
cheaper than you would spend on mic stands. In other words,
I've delayed charging a high price so that I could get tons
of practice and become well known in my area. You might find
a serious recording guy yourself who might work cheaper than
you think.
What an experienced recording studio engineer knows that
you probably don't.
1)The value of his time - An experienced engineer isn't cheap
(but could be much cheaper than trying to record yourself)
but he knows that his time is worth X dollars. How is this
an advantage? It's amazing how humans rise to meet a challenge.
When you go in knowing that you are about to spend $20, $30,
or $50 an hour on recording all of a sudden you take the time
to get your guitar setup beforehand. You make sure your songs
are mega tight and ready to go. You get your butt in gear
because you are about to spend some money. When your guitar
players tell you that he thinks he has the recording device
working right, you don't jump up get busy. You get frustrated
while he tries to figure out the problems on channel 1 and
5.
2)Advanced knowledge of acoustics - This is one of those
areas that you will entirely put off. At first, you are just
trying to figure out how to turn the computer on. Have you
really put any serious thought into the comb filtering effects
of your room? The odds are minute. In fact, I bet most bands
put no thought into their room acoustics. Guess what. Any
good studio has spent thousands and thousands of dollars pefecting
their acoustics. The only thing more important than acoustics
in a recording is the song, the musicians, and the instruments.
After that, acoutics is first. Proper acoustics are more important
than microphones. I'd gladly record an album with $50 mics
in a $2,000,000 room before I did the opposite.
3)Advanced microphone selection - Having the right mic for
the job is an extremely important part of being a recording
engineer. When you know that a guitar is too bright, you put
a mic on it that will reduce this brightness. When a vocalist
sounds dull, you put a bright mic on them. It goes on and
on. This is what really makes the sound quality part of recording.
Recording at home will make it hard to justify a $15,000 mic
collection (or much higher). Some studios have $15,000 mics.
4)Advanced knowledge of mic placement - Even more important
than the microphone is where you put it. A seasoned pro will
know what has worked on the past 10 albums he's done. He knows
what he likes and what he doesn't. He doesn't have to wait
until after the mixing is complete for him to figure out that
the snare sound sucks. You'll be experimenting like crazy,
but it will take a while before you get it right, more than
likely.
When you combine all this knowledge together, it becomes
quite clear that there are serious advantages to letting the
pros handle the work. With that being said, if you really
want to learn audio, don't mind pumping thousands into a bottomless
pit, and are really that excited about taking years and years
and years to learn the craft properly, go for it. I did.
