Home Recording Essentials
May 05, 2008 Filed in: Recording
Mike answers a question
on the message board about home recording
essentials.
Q: What are some must
have items for a home recording studio?
A: Thank you for the post!
As technology advances, the line between “home” quality and “studio” quality continues to blur. Now-a-days, some of the best sounding stuff is coming out of houses. Even major label records are often tracked in a “home” or “house” setting—the vibe is often more conducive to creativity.
The home recording studio should make a few key considerations. I’d believe three to be absolutely essential: monitoring, I/O, and microphones. Monitoring refers to how you listen. I/O and microphones consider how sound is captured and translated from the air to your computer.
Monitoring
First, you’ll want to set up your monitoring in an optimal way. The biggest problem with recording in the home environment is that, most of the time, all of the rooms in a house are either square or rectangular. Sound travels poorly and distortedly, in more ways than one, through rooms with 90 degree angled walls.
I’ve found home studio monitoring success with two strategies. First, angle your listening environment so that it’s cater-cornered (or, if you’re from the south, catywampus). This angled setting is still less than optimal, but you’ve increased the randomization by two. Because sound travels in waves, certain aspects (called frequencies) can be canceled out or accentuated by the native environment in which it travels. One draw back to home recording is that the monitoring is almost never accurate.
The second monitoring strategy has to do with setting up a “dead-end/live-end” to your listening room. Ideally, the space behind the monitors should be “dead”; that is, absorptive of as much sound as possible. This can be achieved with egg-crate foam or designer acoustic foam (I use stuff from www.primacoustic.com). The space behind your head should be somewhat live. Ideally, this should be achieved with diffusion devices. These things are also expensive, so use your best judgment. I’ve found that the random placement of closets, doors, and pictures along my rear wall has provided as much diffusion as necessary in my old room. My new room is a different story--no foam, mostly wood at odd angles; it was professionally designed.
A great monthly resource for setting up and working in your environment is the magazine Sound on Sound (www.soundonsound.com). Every month they feature a home studio redesign that is done on a small budget. It’s really helpful. Most of this stuff (modes, diffusion, and absorption) is explained just about every month. Also, a great textbook on home recording that I consult regularly is Recording Great Tracks in a Small Studio. This book goes into greater detail about optimal home listening environment.
The home is a great place to work, but, by default, it’s also less than desirable for acoustics. That’s the main reason why commercial studio time is so expensive. More often than not, what you’re really paying for is an ability to hear accurately.
I/O
The second “must have” for the home studio is I/O. That’s short for input/output. This is different for every environment. The right answer to I/O comes from the question: what is it that you want to do in your home studio? If you want to work with singer/songwriters, you can get by with just one channel of input. I’d recommend a minimum of two channels of A/D (analog to digital) input. This is fairly standard on most recording platforms (I prefer the Digidesign Pro Tools LE formats (M-Box, 002, 003).
A/D input is different from mixer input. If you have a mixer, you can always record several tracks to two tracks and then pipe it into the digital domain. This is tricky, but very possible as an option.
If you’re interested in recording bands, I’d recommend a minimum of eight channels of digital I/O. This will allow for the behemoth of all recording tasks: recording drums. You can get a really nice representation of a kit with just four channels of I/O, but I’ve usually needed at least seven: kick, snare, 2 OH, rack, floor, room. On a project just last year I used a total of 12 tracks just on the drums…the four toms and two snares caught me off guard.
There are some great firewire and lightpipe “frontends” that will help achieve a high number of I/O with a minimum budget. I use the Focusrite Octopre for my drum tracking. It works great. The analog to digital conversion is very clean. There’s also a Octopre LE that has less features. Presonus makes a similar product that is even less expensive. These “frontend” units also come with a variety of ways to connect to your computer. A little research goes a long way here, so double check that everything will be compatible with what you already have.
Making sure that you have the inputs and outputs you need is key. But, you can make great recordings with just one input and two outputs. After all, you only get two outputs in the end (the L and R channels of the stereo). Knowing “when to say when” with gear acquisition is a valuable skill.
With the I/O issue resides the platform issue. The way “in” to the computer almost always depends on the platform that will be reading, processing, and putting together the sound files. Pro Tools, Ableton Live, and Cubase are examples of platform types. For the home recordist, having a platform with basic studio “plug ins” is essential, too. You don’t really need all of the wiz-bang stuff that’s really expensive. Most platforms come with everything you need: EQ, Compression, Reverb, & Delay. These tools are essential to putting together a mix.
For the home studio, it’s not essential that the I/O be of a “Class A” status. It’s also not essential that you have a snazzy channel strip (these can cost thousands of dollars). For basic home recording, usually, all of the tools you’ll need are in the computer. Now, having nice pre-amps isn't a bad thing. I’ve enjoyed my Digidesign 002 unit, if for no other reason that it has four, class A Focusrite pre-amps included. But, if we’re talking about essential stuff, getting tweaky about pre-amps is putting the cart before the horse.
What is important is that you understand how your audio is entering your digital domain. And, that it is of the appropriate quality for your needs. Audio production can get as expensive as you let it be. Understanding what your needs are can save you thousands in unnecessary gear.
Microphones
The third consideration is microphones. If monitoring is your “art gallery,” and I/O is your “canvas,” then a microphone is your “paintbrush.” There are three basic kinds of microphones. You only really need the first one to be functional. But, having more than one option goes a long way.
The most versatile microphone is the Shure 57. It looks like a big magic marker. It’s what’s known as a “dynamic” microphone. It requires no separate power source. You just plug in the cable and go. This microphone sounds great on just about everything: drums, electric guitars, and even vocals. The only place I use caution with dynamic microphones is with acoustic guitars. If you can only afford one microphone, get the Shure 57. The Shure 58 is also pretty good, but it doesn’t have the off-axis rejection that makes the 57 the winner in the studio.
After securing a good dynamic mic, a condenser mic is a great second investment. There are many kinds of these. The technology of the condenser is different from the dynamic mic. These microphones require “phantom power” or 48V of supplied line power (you’ll often see these buttons on a channel strip or pre amp). These microphones are more fragile than your workhorse dynamic microphone. They also provide more sonic detail. I like to use condenser microphones on vocals, acoustic guitars, and drum overheads.
The Rode company makes well reviewed, very affordable condenser microphones. Typically, large diaphragm condensers are great for vocals. Small diaphragm mics are great on drum overheads and acoustic guitars. There’s no hard fast rule, though. If you are doing a lot of stereo recording, the Rode NT4 is a matched stereo condenser that is very affordable.
A third type of microphone that is becoming more and more popular is the ribbon microphone. This microphone is different sounding from both the dynamic and condenser microphones. It has a more natural, present quality than the other two. It does not usually require phantom power; often the 48V will pop the ribbon, so you have to be careful. Good ribbon mics are expensive. I don’t have one; I don’t have plans for using one anytime soon. I’m not thinking that this would be a necessary investment for your home studio, but if you wanted to carve a niche for yourself, you could be the guy who only uses ribbon mics.
With the exception of necessary plug-in’s, I don’t regard software as essential, must haves for any studio. They can enhance the product, for sure. But, if you can get good results without using the boutique stuff, there’s no need to use it, really.
Beyond these three “essentials” all is a matter of taste. After these three issues are addressed, I might recommend a few different additions. The relevance of these other things would greatly depend on what the focus of your studio is.
If you want to work with loops, samples, programming, and synths, Reason by Propellerhead is a no-brainer must. A lot of rap and electronic albums are made completely in Reason.
If you are going to work with singer/songwriters, I recommend getting a class A channel strip. Something like a Manley Vox Box, an Avalon 737, or something even as affordable as the Focusrite Voicemaster. This will help to sculp tracks with great care and precision as they are being recorded to disc. Most platforms have compression and EQ “in the box,” but if you can get it right on the way in, that’s the way to print it. You can’t undo compression too easily, so you have to be careful. A good starting point is to use the compressor as a limiter, just to catch any random spikes that redline. Limiting is achieved by setting the ratio to 10:1 with fast to semi-fast attack and release times. This setting is usually transparent up to -6 db of gain reduction. Just reduce the threshold until it’s reducing the way you want it to.
Another great tool for singer/songwriter production is a loop library. These are good for inspiring great performances with unusual click tracks, or they can take the place of a live drummer. I’ve used Discrete Drums for years on demos and album tracks. These files are actual multi-tracked drum performances of different song sections. They sound like real drums because they are real drums.
For two track editing (which is great for two-track live recordings), I recommend Ozone 3 by iZotope. This all-in-one mastering suite does just about everything you’d ever need to do with two tracks. It can EQ, it can compress, it can even make your mix “loud” if you want that.
If you have the ability to run “inserts” on your system, the most versatile piece of outboard gear is the Empirical Labs EL8 Distressor. This compressor has a clean intrinsic sound. It can also emulate different kinds of old-time boxes. It has an OPTO setting, which emulates the pleasant sounding LA-2A leveling amplifier. This box is a bit pricy, but it’s a great out-board compressor.
If you want to record electric guitars and don’t have a lot of room to make a bunch of amp noise, I’d recommend the Line 6 tone port DI. This provides the versatile tones from the Line 6 Pod as a plug-in. The tone port also comes in an eight-channel version, which, if your computer is fast enough, can double as a nice front end unit. The Gear Box tone port has pre-amp emulations, as well as amp and cabinet models. There’s nothing like the sound of a real amp moving real air, but the Line 6 stuff is great for trying out ideas.
I could go on and on about studio gear, but I’ll stop here. Getting back to the question at hand, what are essential, must-haves for a home studio? To that, I’d say, accurate monitoring, sufficient I/O, and a Shure 57 dynamic microphone.
Happy recording!
Mike
A: Thank you for the post!
As technology advances, the line between “home” quality and “studio” quality continues to blur. Now-a-days, some of the best sounding stuff is coming out of houses. Even major label records are often tracked in a “home” or “house” setting—the vibe is often more conducive to creativity.
The home recording studio should make a few key considerations. I’d believe three to be absolutely essential: monitoring, I/O, and microphones. Monitoring refers to how you listen. I/O and microphones consider how sound is captured and translated from the air to your computer.
Monitoring
First, you’ll want to set up your monitoring in an optimal way. The biggest problem with recording in the home environment is that, most of the time, all of the rooms in a house are either square or rectangular. Sound travels poorly and distortedly, in more ways than one, through rooms with 90 degree angled walls.
I’ve found home studio monitoring success with two strategies. First, angle your listening environment so that it’s cater-cornered (or, if you’re from the south, catywampus). This angled setting is still less than optimal, but you’ve increased the randomization by two. Because sound travels in waves, certain aspects (called frequencies) can be canceled out or accentuated by the native environment in which it travels. One draw back to home recording is that the monitoring is almost never accurate.
The second monitoring strategy has to do with setting up a “dead-end/live-end” to your listening room. Ideally, the space behind the monitors should be “dead”; that is, absorptive of as much sound as possible. This can be achieved with egg-crate foam or designer acoustic foam (I use stuff from www.primacoustic.com). The space behind your head should be somewhat live. Ideally, this should be achieved with diffusion devices. These things are also expensive, so use your best judgment. I’ve found that the random placement of closets, doors, and pictures along my rear wall has provided as much diffusion as necessary in my old room. My new room is a different story--no foam, mostly wood at odd angles; it was professionally designed.
A great monthly resource for setting up and working in your environment is the magazine Sound on Sound (www.soundonsound.com). Every month they feature a home studio redesign that is done on a small budget. It’s really helpful. Most of this stuff (modes, diffusion, and absorption) is explained just about every month. Also, a great textbook on home recording that I consult regularly is Recording Great Tracks in a Small Studio. This book goes into greater detail about optimal home listening environment.
The home is a great place to work, but, by default, it’s also less than desirable for acoustics. That’s the main reason why commercial studio time is so expensive. More often than not, what you’re really paying for is an ability to hear accurately.
I/O
The second “must have” for the home studio is I/O. That’s short for input/output. This is different for every environment. The right answer to I/O comes from the question: what is it that you want to do in your home studio? If you want to work with singer/songwriters, you can get by with just one channel of input. I’d recommend a minimum of two channels of A/D (analog to digital) input. This is fairly standard on most recording platforms (I prefer the Digidesign Pro Tools LE formats (M-Box, 002, 003).
A/D input is different from mixer input. If you have a mixer, you can always record several tracks to two tracks and then pipe it into the digital domain. This is tricky, but very possible as an option.
If you’re interested in recording bands, I’d recommend a minimum of eight channels of digital I/O. This will allow for the behemoth of all recording tasks: recording drums. You can get a really nice representation of a kit with just four channels of I/O, but I’ve usually needed at least seven: kick, snare, 2 OH, rack, floor, room. On a project just last year I used a total of 12 tracks just on the drums…the four toms and two snares caught me off guard.
There are some great firewire and lightpipe “frontends” that will help achieve a high number of I/O with a minimum budget. I use the Focusrite Octopre for my drum tracking. It works great. The analog to digital conversion is very clean. There’s also a Octopre LE that has less features. Presonus makes a similar product that is even less expensive. These “frontend” units also come with a variety of ways to connect to your computer. A little research goes a long way here, so double check that everything will be compatible with what you already have.
Making sure that you have the inputs and outputs you need is key. But, you can make great recordings with just one input and two outputs. After all, you only get two outputs in the end (the L and R channels of the stereo). Knowing “when to say when” with gear acquisition is a valuable skill.
With the I/O issue resides the platform issue. The way “in” to the computer almost always depends on the platform that will be reading, processing, and putting together the sound files. Pro Tools, Ableton Live, and Cubase are examples of platform types. For the home recordist, having a platform with basic studio “plug ins” is essential, too. You don’t really need all of the wiz-bang stuff that’s really expensive. Most platforms come with everything you need: EQ, Compression, Reverb, & Delay. These tools are essential to putting together a mix.
For the home studio, it’s not essential that the I/O be of a “Class A” status. It’s also not essential that you have a snazzy channel strip (these can cost thousands of dollars). For basic home recording, usually, all of the tools you’ll need are in the computer. Now, having nice pre-amps isn't a bad thing. I’ve enjoyed my Digidesign 002 unit, if for no other reason that it has four, class A Focusrite pre-amps included. But, if we’re talking about essential stuff, getting tweaky about pre-amps is putting the cart before the horse.
What is important is that you understand how your audio is entering your digital domain. And, that it is of the appropriate quality for your needs. Audio production can get as expensive as you let it be. Understanding what your needs are can save you thousands in unnecessary gear.
Microphones
The third consideration is microphones. If monitoring is your “art gallery,” and I/O is your “canvas,” then a microphone is your “paintbrush.” There are three basic kinds of microphones. You only really need the first one to be functional. But, having more than one option goes a long way.
The most versatile microphone is the Shure 57. It looks like a big magic marker. It’s what’s known as a “dynamic” microphone. It requires no separate power source. You just plug in the cable and go. This microphone sounds great on just about everything: drums, electric guitars, and even vocals. The only place I use caution with dynamic microphones is with acoustic guitars. If you can only afford one microphone, get the Shure 57. The Shure 58 is also pretty good, but it doesn’t have the off-axis rejection that makes the 57 the winner in the studio.
After securing a good dynamic mic, a condenser mic is a great second investment. There are many kinds of these. The technology of the condenser is different from the dynamic mic. These microphones require “phantom power” or 48V of supplied line power (you’ll often see these buttons on a channel strip or pre amp). These microphones are more fragile than your workhorse dynamic microphone. They also provide more sonic detail. I like to use condenser microphones on vocals, acoustic guitars, and drum overheads.
The Rode company makes well reviewed, very affordable condenser microphones. Typically, large diaphragm condensers are great for vocals. Small diaphragm mics are great on drum overheads and acoustic guitars. There’s no hard fast rule, though. If you are doing a lot of stereo recording, the Rode NT4 is a matched stereo condenser that is very affordable.
A third type of microphone that is becoming more and more popular is the ribbon microphone. This microphone is different sounding from both the dynamic and condenser microphones. It has a more natural, present quality than the other two. It does not usually require phantom power; often the 48V will pop the ribbon, so you have to be careful. Good ribbon mics are expensive. I don’t have one; I don’t have plans for using one anytime soon. I’m not thinking that this would be a necessary investment for your home studio, but if you wanted to carve a niche for yourself, you could be the guy who only uses ribbon mics.
With the exception of necessary plug-in’s, I don’t regard software as essential, must haves for any studio. They can enhance the product, for sure. But, if you can get good results without using the boutique stuff, there’s no need to use it, really.
Beyond these three “essentials” all is a matter of taste. After these three issues are addressed, I might recommend a few different additions. The relevance of these other things would greatly depend on what the focus of your studio is.
If you want to work with loops, samples, programming, and synths, Reason by Propellerhead is a no-brainer must. A lot of rap and electronic albums are made completely in Reason.
If you are going to work with singer/songwriters, I recommend getting a class A channel strip. Something like a Manley Vox Box, an Avalon 737, or something even as affordable as the Focusrite Voicemaster. This will help to sculp tracks with great care and precision as they are being recorded to disc. Most platforms have compression and EQ “in the box,” but if you can get it right on the way in, that’s the way to print it. You can’t undo compression too easily, so you have to be careful. A good starting point is to use the compressor as a limiter, just to catch any random spikes that redline. Limiting is achieved by setting the ratio to 10:1 with fast to semi-fast attack and release times. This setting is usually transparent up to -6 db of gain reduction. Just reduce the threshold until it’s reducing the way you want it to.
Another great tool for singer/songwriter production is a loop library. These are good for inspiring great performances with unusual click tracks, or they can take the place of a live drummer. I’ve used Discrete Drums for years on demos and album tracks. These files are actual multi-tracked drum performances of different song sections. They sound like real drums because they are real drums.
For two track editing (which is great for two-track live recordings), I recommend Ozone 3 by iZotope. This all-in-one mastering suite does just about everything you’d ever need to do with two tracks. It can EQ, it can compress, it can even make your mix “loud” if you want that.
If you have the ability to run “inserts” on your system, the most versatile piece of outboard gear is the Empirical Labs EL8 Distressor. This compressor has a clean intrinsic sound. It can also emulate different kinds of old-time boxes. It has an OPTO setting, which emulates the pleasant sounding LA-2A leveling amplifier. This box is a bit pricy, but it’s a great out-board compressor.
If you want to record electric guitars and don’t have a lot of room to make a bunch of amp noise, I’d recommend the Line 6 tone port DI. This provides the versatile tones from the Line 6 Pod as a plug-in. The tone port also comes in an eight-channel version, which, if your computer is fast enough, can double as a nice front end unit. The Gear Box tone port has pre-amp emulations, as well as amp and cabinet models. There’s nothing like the sound of a real amp moving real air, but the Line 6 stuff is great for trying out ideas.
I could go on and on about studio gear, but I’ll stop here. Getting back to the question at hand, what are essential, must-haves for a home studio? To that, I’d say, accurate monitoring, sufficient I/O, and a Shure 57 dynamic microphone.
Happy recording!
Mike