What do I need to setup my home recording studio?
First, you need to decide what kind
of limitations you're under and what kind of budget restraints
you have. Second, you want to think about what kind of sound
quality you expect from your recording gear. You may save
a little money initially, but end up buying everything twice
if you don't figure this out first.
Acoustics:
Are you recording in an apartment, or somewhere where there
are severe acoustic limitations? Do you live in a house
where you can dedicate a room or area to recording, and
acoustically treat the room to record in? If you are recording
in an area with bad acoustics, you probably don't want to
load up on expensive high quality condenser mics...as they
will pick up all the nuances of just how bad the room sounds.
There are some things you can do to make most bad rooms
sound better. If you have a lot of reflective surfaces in
the room, and not much in the way of cloth furnishings to
absorb these reflections, you can start there. Without even
adding expensive acoustic foam, you can add more pillows,
put up some heavy curtains, and try to avoid large reflective
surfaces, like glass or metal furniture. When playing the
instrument you are recording, listen for any sympathetic
vibrations in the room...do you hear buzzing or rattling
in certain frequency ranges? If you can track down where
this is coming from, you can work on either removing the
item, or soundproofing it better. Large metal office desks
can make recording electric guitars a real pain. Sometimes
with large vibrating surfaces such as these you can use
self adhesive foam weather stripping to cut down on vibration.
Basically, the better you can make the room sound, the better
the recording will sound. If you're only recording vocals
and electric guitar, you could use a high quality dynamic
mic for the vocals, and plug the guitar in through the line
out on the amp. Plugging the guitar straight in might not
get you the guitar sound you're looking for, though.
Recording gear:
The biggest question here is what type of device are you
actually going to capture your recordings on? There are
differences in price and quality, as well as certain learning
curves associated with recording devices. The two main choices
are standalone recorders, and computer recording systems.
Standalone recorders can seem like
a great deal, but sometimes the quality is not quite up
to snuff. The mic preamps built in don't always sound great,
and some don't give you any way to bypass them and use better
preamps. Also, if you're recording drums, you need to get
one with as many mic pre-amps built in as possible. A lot
of them only have 1-4 pre-amps. By the time you add up the
cost of buying a standalone machine with enough mic pre-amps,
with true bypass inputs so you can use different mic pre-amps...you
may find yourself spending more than you planned. Or, you
could by a cheaper recorder to save money, only to end up
getting rid of it when you start running into it's limitations.
You may wish to purchase a cheaper standalone recorder just
to learn how to record, then sell it and get a better system
later on. A lot of people start this way, but you have to
be realistic about what you are actually going to accomplish
with this setup. One thing to consider is hard drive capacity.
How large of a hard drive do they come with? You can't do
a lot of high resolution recording with a puny hard drive.
You probably want to get one with 20GB or more of storage
space. The more the better, if you plan on using it for
any length of time. Another thing to consider is how you
are going to get the music onto a cd. Some come with built-in
cd burners, which is pretty handy. On others you have to
upload it to your computer to burn it to a cd, so why not
just record on your computer in the first place? Another
drawback to recording with standalone recorders is their
limitations in editing and mixing. Usually, they only have
one or two effects processing chips, so you can't add seperate
effects to each track. Also, you don't have a very user
friendly interface for any kind of copying and pasting editing,
or time splicing. The EQ built in is usually not that useful,
being just BASS and TREBLE in some models. All told, you'll
have a much easier time editing and mixing in a computer
recording system.
Computer recording systems can be
a little daunting to some people, because they're not as
quick to get up and running. Computers are not designed
solely for recording music, like standalone systems. The
quality capable on them makes them worth learning about,
though. You will have to use a decent computer that runs
smoothly, without any bugs or problems. It can be worth
doing a clean install of your operating system before you
set it up for a recording computer. Also, some people keep
a computer dedicated solely for recording, and don't load
any other software onto it. They won't even have it connected
to the internet, except to make occassional downloads of
recent driver updates for their audio interfaces. Having
all of your recordings stored on a computer creates the
risk of losing them all to a corrupt hard drive. You do
need to be careful of how you use your recording computer
and what you download onto it. It's a good idea to upgrade
the computer to as much RAM as you can afford. RAM is what
you will be tapping into during mixdown, when you add EQ
and effects, and automated effects to all your tracks. It's
a good thing to have a lot of. Also get the largest, fastest
hard drive you can. Some people use an external firewire
hard drive. This can work well, as long as you have enough
firewire ports on your computer to use this with all of
the other firewire devices you need to use. You can also
use an internal hard drive, as long as it's not a slow hard
drive. Greater than 4200 RPM is recommended, the faster
the better. You can hardly go wrong with a 7200 RPM hard
drive. Also, you want the largest capacity available in
the speed you decide on. 80 GB or better is recommended.
Recording at 24 bit, 96 kHz resolution takes a lot of hard
drive space. The more you have, the better. If you have
a laptop with smaller hard drive capacity, you may want
to record at 16 bit, 48 kHZ. It will save quite a lot of
space, and even then you may find yourself wanting more
space. Most of the software programs available today offer
recording at 24 bit, 96 kHz resolution, as long as the sound
card you're using supports this. They all have their own
strengths, as well as quirks. If you use a lot of guitar
effects pedals and don't really want to use the effects
built into the software, some of the programs offer a scaled
down version of their flagship line. As long as it records
at the same resolution, this can be a big money saver, as
you can usually download the upgrade for a reduced price
if you end up needing it. Usually the scaled down version
has less or lower quality effects built in. Aside from a
functional computer, the most important thing is the audio
interface.
Audio interface:
There are two different ways to go here, depending on the
level of latency you're willing to deal with and the number
of tracks you need to record simultaneously. You can use
an external firewire or USB interface, or you could buy
a new sound card.
Using a firewire or USB interface
is an easier plug-and-play method, but it does have certain
drawbacks. An external interface is just something you plug
your guitar or mics into, that converts the audio signal
into digital, so the computer can record it. Obviously,
the quality of these can effect the overall quality of the
recording. Most of them do record at a high resolution,
so the main concern is really monitoring. Because the signal
has to go through the USB or firewire port, the speed that
it reaches the hard drive at is limited by the speed of
the technology. Some musicians have a hard time, especially
on USB interfaces, with the slight delay time heard when
trying to monitor their performance while recording. Some
interfaces have a direct headphone monitor jack, but you
have to listen to the input before it goes into the computer,
so you don't get to hear it with any effects or EQ. A lot
of vocalists perform better when they hear their voices
with EQ and reverb. Also, better mic pre-amps can be had
than the ones built in to the external interfaces. If you
are going to use an external interface, and you think you
may record drums or get into any of the multiple mic techniques
described in the Miking Techniques page, you want to get
a firewire device with enough mic preamps. Firewire is faster
than USB, so you can record more audio inputs without problems.
You can find firewire interfaces with eight mic preamps
built in. That means you have eight simultaneous tracks
you can record to. Perfect for drums, as long as the preamps
have enough headroom to not overload when you try to mike
drums.
Installing a recording sound card
in your computer has some benefits over using external interfaces.
You're not limited to the speed of the USB or firewire ports,
as the speed of the PCI slot its intalled in is significantly
faster. Delay times are usually not an issue as long as
your computer isn't too old, and even then there are options
available with zero CPU load. This means even if you have
a slower computer, you can record all tracks simultaneously
with no audible delay time. One of the only drawbacks to
using recording soundcards as your interface is that they
have no mic pre-amps built in. They'll have mic or audio
inputs on the soundcard itself, or multi-pin inputs designed
to use a breakout cable that contains the mic and audio
inputs. Sometimes, they'll have a seperate interface that
you plug into the soundcard, which has all the ins and outs.
Even if you have a soundcard with a breakout cable containing
XLR mic inputs, you need to plug the mic into a pre-amp
first. You then run the output from the preamp to the input
cable on the soundcard. Some of the more expensive soundcards
run around $600-$800. Even without built-in pre-amps this
is well worth it due to the incredibly low delay times involved
with recording sound cards; basically, you don't hear any
delay at all because it's in the small milliseconds. You
can never have something that doesn't take SOME time to
transfer but at a certain speed, you won't hear any delay.
USB is pretty fast, but slow enough that you can actually
hear the delay. You can buy cheaper sound cards with fewer
inputs, but the quality of the sound cards with more inputs
is generally better. Some of the cheaper sound cards have
a little more self noise and Total Harmonic Distortion.
Also you may only need to record acoustic guitar now, but
someday you may need to record drums, and you don't want
to have to ditch your old sound card for a new one. To get
the best sound quality out of your good sound card, you
need good mic pre-amps.
Mic pre-amps:
There are two types of mic pre-amps available. There are
those found in mixing boards, and there are dedicated mic
pre-amps designed for recording. Mixing boards with line
insert outs on each mic channel can be good for recording
drums. The good news with dedicated mic pre-amps is that
a lot of manufacturers are offering very usable pre-amps
in price ranges that would have been unthinkable just a
few years ago. A lot of the older cheap mic pre-amps designed
for the home studio were very noisy when you turned them
up to normal volume levels. The circuits in a lot of brands
now don't seem to add a lot of self noise. You can get good
sounding tube mic pre-amps to warm up your recordings, without
breaking the bank. You may get a slightly more preferrable
sound if you spend more money, but you don't HAVE to just
to get a good sound anymore. You do want to look for some
features in a mic pre-amp. Having a phase switch button
is handy in a lot of situations, such as miking both the
top and bottom of a drum head. Also, make sure you have
phantom power for your condenser mics, although dedicated
mic pre-amps should all have this feature. Getting a good
tube sound can be great for things you want to sound warm,
but it's also nice when the pre-amp has a tube bypass feature
or blend knob, enabling you to use only the solid state
circuitry. You don't really want to add a lot of warmth
to your cymbals, as they will sound too muddy. For crisp
sounds a good solid state circuit is usually better. Another
thing that's useful is a good input and output level meter.
You need to know when you're overloading the circuit. You
generally want input and output levels set as high as possibly
without overloading on the louder sections of a performance.
Because of this balancing act, good level meters are a great
feature to have. If you record something at weak levels
it won't sound very full, even after boosting the sound
in the software; you lose detail. Most dedicated mic pre-amps
have both 1/4" and XLR ins and outs. Dedicated mic
pre-amps generally come in either single pre-amp units,
or four or eight pre-amp units. A lot people use a solid
state unit with eight mic pre-amps for drums, or when they
want to use all eight inputs on their sound card. It's also
handy to have a couple of single unit tube mic pre-amps.
If you're not recording drums right away you might want
to purchase two tube mic pre-amps of the same model. This
will allow you to do stereo recordings, or have two mono
tracks recording simultaneously. This is probably the minimum
setup for most home recording studio situations.
Headphones:
You can get started tracking with a good set of accurate
studio headphones. You need headphones that are comfortable
enough for long recording sessions. You also want them to
have a long enough cable that you can have a player sit
a distance away from the headphone jack to record, although
you can use a long stereo 1/4" male to female cable
to lengthen the stock cable. If the headphones are accurate
enough, you will be able to have any musician record while
monitoring themselves without any problems. Some headphones
sound good but have inaccurate response in certain frequency
ranges. This especially seems to be true when recording
bass. A lot of bass players have a hard time monitoring
themselves with less accurate headphones. Eventually, you
will have enough tracks recorded that you want to start
mixing. Headphones can be great for hearing small details,
but it's hard to get the mix right using just headphones.
You need a set of accurate studio monitors. Without them
you might create a mix that sounds good only through headphones,
and doesn't have the proper stereo panning on the different
instruments. Caution: if you have one side of a set of headphones
without a signal do not continue to use them. You will most
likely turn the volume level up louder to hear, and this
can cause permanent ear damage with prolonged exposure.
Studio monitors:
A good set of studio monitors can make mixing, EQing, and
panning a lot easier and help you create a CD that sounds
good on many different stereo systems. Bigger, louder speakers
are not always a good thing with studio monitors. If you
mix everything at loud volumes, you never know how it will
sound at normal volumes. A lot of studio monitors designed
for home studios have built in power amps, which are nice
because they're matched to the speakers. You want to get
a set of monitors that are accurate enough you can mix using
them, but also easy enough to listen to that you won't get
fatigued using them. You don't want to have to stop after
a short mixing session because your ears can't take any
more. Whatever set of monitors you end up with, make sure
you listen to a lot of different styles of music through
them before you do any serious mixing. Hearing what different
recording engineers have done to their mix can help you
to tune your ears in to your speakers. If you start hearing
details you've never heard in songs you've heard a lot,
your speakers should work just fine for you. In addition
to headphones and studio monitors, some people like to keep
a cheap boombox around the studio to hear what the mix will
sound like through the worst possible system.
The next step in setting up a home
recording studio is getting your mics. For help on what
mic to use for different instruments, please consult the
Mic Help page. Also, the Miking
Techniques page can help you figure out how to use them,
and maybe also which and how many you need.
