Help with home studio upgrade!

kaz1488

New member
Hey All,

This is going to be rather long - so brace yourself. I have a lot of questions...

So, a little background in of my situation. I just finished making my first record with an engineer/producer. Great experience, but I am at the point where I want to produce and engineer my own work exclusively. I am very well versed in my DAW, mixing, compressing, EQ, etc. My issues are more hardware based...I have come to the conclusion that I have to slowly but surely upgrade my home studio equpiment. The issue is - I have no idea what's right for me...

Here's my current set up: My DAW is Logic Pro. I have 4 mics.
-Blue Mic (Blueberry)
-AKG Perception 220
-AKG C1000S
-Shure SM81
I have an old Axiom 61 for a keyboard.
My mic preamp is an M-Audio Profire 2626.
I forget the brand, but I have adequate monitors too. I'd like to upgrade those at some point, but they're passable for now.

So my biggest question is regarding mic preamps. My profire 2626 is fine for basic home recordings - but I need something that is SUPER clean sounding. I guess I'm not sure if I should continue using digital hardware, or if I should go to something analog. However, I have no experience at all with analog equpiment or mixing boards. I guess my question is - how much of a sound quality difference would I notice if I changed over? Do I even have to use a mic preamp if I get a mixing board and just run all my equpiment through that? See - lots of questions...

Here's a better way to put all my questions into one question: I have $10,000 to upgrade my equpiment - how should I prioritize my purchases? What's most important that I don't have now and why is it so important?

Thanks, guys!
 
"Adequate" isn't what you want in your monitoring -- The absolute most important part of the chain, no question, no exceptions - Every single decision you will ever make is based on how your monitoring translates to your brain (via the ROOM which hopefully is PROPERLY treated already).

Long story short -- Upgrading your monitoring and properly treating the space (no foam, no blankets, etc., blah, blah, yada, yada) is most certainly going to be the biggest upgrade.

A more vocal-friendly mic (assuming there's some vocal recording in there somewhere) would be high on the list as well -- SM7b, RE20, I've not tried the new Telefunken LDD, but I'd bet a dollar it's worth twice what they're asking (if the M80 is any indicator). A nicer preamp wouldn't hurt for sure... All over the map there... You could go all-out on a (Crane Song) Flamingo, you could stay pretty cheap with a GAP 73, you could hit somewhere in the middle and smack several birds with one stone with an API A2D assuming they're still out there.

What's the goal to some extent though -- WHAT are you recording?

If you want "uber-clean" then there's nothing wrong with digital (done right). Not that I'd ever argue against a good summing mixer, but that's going to blow half your budget (and wouldn't make nearly the impact of better monitoring and proper room treatments, which affects EVERYTHING else).
 
Thanks for the reply!

I'll respond first with what I'm working on. It's primarily indie-rock/indie-folk. I would say from an instrumentation perspective, it's somewhere between The National and Fleet Foxes. Lots of vocal harmonies, so a solid vocal mic is 100% necessary. I'm happy with the Blueberry I have, but it's certainly not as great as I would like it to be.

I agree that I should get better monitors - so do you have a recommendation? I could probably spend about $1,000-$1,500. Will that budget get me as far as I need to go?

As far as room treatment goes - I have a friend who does stuff like that professionally - and he's agreed to help me out when the time comes.

I don't necessarily want everything to sound "uber-clean" - but I don't want to be fighting a lo-fi sound due to equipment quality. As long as that's not going to be the case - then I'm happy.

As far as vocal mics go - from the ones you mentioned, which is best at capturing low-end vocals? I tend to sing in a lower register, and sometimes it causes issues that I have to EQ - which I'm fine with, but I'd rather have a mic that naturally picks up the tones properly rather than having to EQ the issue.

Also, do you have any ribbon mic recommendations? I've been using LDC's and SDC's pretty exclusively (with some dynamic's mixed in there - but rarely) and I'd like to mix in a ribbon mic.

Thanks so much!
 
I don't necessarily want everything to sound "uber-clean" - but I don't want to be fighting a lo-fi sound due to equipment quality. As long as that's not going to be the case - then I'm happy.

Though I understand what you're getting at and it suits the indie/folk style, you should focus on getting a nice clean sound...from the recording space to the chain to the "tape". You won't lose your vibe or performance. It won't be "uber-clean" unless that's how you play. Give yourself the highest quality sound possible to work with in the mixing/mastering stage.

Have you thought about an SM7B for your vocals? It's a good mic to have in the locker, regardless. Tons of applications. I thought I'd for sure have to add an external preamp to go along with it, but so far I've been pretty happy with the preamps on my M-Audio interface even with the gain cranked fairly high.
 
Kaz, what you haven't really told us is- What is the maximum number of tracks you need to record simultaneously, what instruments and/or voices would be on those tracks, and what physical space are you doing it in? Without that information, anything I could suggest would probably be dead wrong.
 
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