Essential studio rack equipment?

S

SubLunar

New member
I have been slowly building up my modest home studio for several years now. I play guitar (drums, keyboard, etc) and since my various bands fell through I have become a one-man band with my computer. I am a college student and am looking for some reasonably priced rack equipment.

I have some decent equipment (Mackie 32.8, M-Audio Delta 1010 on a sweet custom built computer, etc) and as a result, my friend's band has asked me to record their CD in my studio. I do have enough equipment to do it and I think it has the potential to sound pretty good, but I have never recorded a band before and I'm a little intimidated...

I have a graphic EQ and a cheaper digitech "studio quad" effects unit in my rack, but I want to know:

What are some home studio staples in the rack?

What rack units are a must have in this line of work?

I appreciate any feedback on this.
 
You have a Mackie 8bus and you use your computer to record? :eek: How unnecessary.

Anyways, assuming your friend's band plays rock music, you'll want at least one good stereo compressor and limiter. DBX makes affordable units. ART gear is great quality for the price as well. A noise gate would be helpful, and some reverb units couldn't hurt either.

However, you use a computer to record. There's no question that outboard signal processors are better than computer plugins, but they are not always necessary. You could get away with using only computer plugins for processing if you want to save some money.
 
avieth said:
You have a Mackie 8bus and you use your computer to record? :eek: How unnecessary.
Click to expand...

What do you mean? Do you suggest plugging the Mackie straight into a CD burner or something?

I like the computer because I can write as I go along and don't have to waste CD's or other recording media. On the computer I can delete or completely rearrange things as I see fit...

The computer has 24bit/96khz AD/DA conveters on it which are fed directly via the balanced outs on the Mackie and I think it works pretty good...
 
It's not rack gear, but what I'd spend a little money on before any more rack gear would be some room acoustic treatments. Nothing has to be super-expensive or even permanent; but some basic bass traps, a couple of gobos, some diffusion of first reflections here and there; all both in your live room and your control room, if separate, and if you haven't already gone down this path. This will go miles to getting a better recording, more than rack gear without the acoustics will.

But as far as rack gear itself; what I would recommend would be one or two "gold channels". By this I mean input recording paths that bypass your mixer and instead go directly into one or two channels of high quality mic preamp or even rack-style channel strip. (This also assumes you have a quite decent mic or two and not just a handful of 57s and an Audix kit.)

This is not to knock the 32.8, which, while not exactly the Ferrari of mixing desks, should allow you to get at serviceable mix. But having a couple of premium channels along side of it can take you to the next level in your mix. Sometimes just having the same preamps for everything can give the mix a boxed-in sound. By having something a notch or two above for vocals, acoustic instruments, or whatever you want to use your A-list stuff on, can open up the sound considerably by adding the variety alone, not to mention the sonic quality.

@ avieth: The 32.8 is the analog console. You're thinking of the d8b digital 8 bus, which is a different animal altogether.


G.
 
And you still need something to record the d8b to... It doesn't record itself.

Anyway - As SSG mentioned, the room and the monitoring is (always, always) paramount in any chain. And backing up the rest - Preamps. Period. There's no need for a graphic EQ (except for side-chaining dynamics processors). There's no real need for dynamics processors unless (A) they're really, really nice and (B) the rest of the signal will actually benefit from it - Which means having really great preamps at the head of the chain in the first place. Otherwise, for 90% of your mixing purposes, digital dynamics will pretty much get you where you want to be. I don't see any reasonable reason at all for a relatively cheesy compressor, and most definitely not a limiter in the front chain. "Rock" has nothing to do with it. I can almost see a limiter in the chain as protection for classical - But not for pop & rock where the transients are so predictable. If you feel the need for one, you're tracking (way, Way, WAAAYYYY) too hot.
 
I think your first purchase should be a really good quality digital reverb. The least expensive I can recommend is the Kurzweil Rumour. But really, a Lexicon PCM-91 would be a much better choice, of course for a lot more money.
 
Are you recording live? Live rhythm section? Live drums? You'll need a couple or three mics and cables that you can rely upon.
Do you have enough headphones for the purposes? H/phone amp?
Are you DI'ing all instruments or mic'ing amps? Do you have some isolation gear to increase separation?
How does your room sound? Are you tracking & engineering/monitoring in the one space?
I moved a couple of things around in my space to make more room & completely stuffed the audio properties so now I have to spend real money on bass traps at least!
Have you tested the space you're intending to use with a band in it? A drum kit at least?
Are there enough spaces & places for people to sit & not make noise whilst someone else is trackng?
Recording a group is a LONG way from doing the one man band thing.
I have enough angst recording two people in my space (and one of them being me) when it comes to whaere to stand, sit, reduce feedback, not trip of cable runs or pull a rack down because of a headset.
Have you sorted out time zones - when the band can be there/who will be effected by the noise/where the band can get a feed or drink.
I only mention these now as you'll have to address the roblems when the time comes so some prep'd be good.
Given that all the above is pretty well sorted out I'd treat the room even more as described by SSG & MM.
 
avieth said:
You have a Mackie 8bus and you use your computer to record? :eek: How unnecessary.

Anyways, assuming your friend's band plays rock music, you'll want at least one good stereo compressor and limiter. DBX makes affordable units. ART gear is great quality for the price as well. A noise gate would be helpful, and some reverb units couldn't hurt either.

However, you use a computer to record. There's no question that outboard signal processors are better than computer plugins, but they are not always necessary. You could get away with using only computer plugins for processing if you want to save some money.
Click to expand...


No offense, but most of this seems completely backwards to me.

First, how is the Mackie unnecessary just because of a computer?

Second, I would not be buying compressors, limiters or effects for an outboard rack unless good quality stuff was being purchased. By good quality stuff, I do not mean "affordable" DBX or ART. In my opinion your money would go much further putting the price of a cheap outboard unit into good plugins. If you can start spending close to $1k per channel for compression then my advice might be different. I feel about the same way about reverb. Unless you want to spend some pretty decent money on a Reverb (like the PCM91 mentioned above) then software verbs will do just fine and quite possibly better. Especially if you get one of the nicer software verbs or some good convolutions. A noise gate would also not be on my list until 3 or 4 racks were filled with outboard, and even then this would likely only be if the mixdown were to be done completely in the analog domain. The only outboard gear I would really start with in this situation is maybe a couple of preamps, especially if we are talking a fairly modest budget.

Where I would really start is some of the places mentioned above. Start with making sure the room treatments and monitoring chain is in order. After that, make sure you have proper headphone monitoring for the workflow that will be necessary for the band. Make sure that you have the right amount of mics to do things the way you want to and then make sure you have the best mics you can for the task. After all this is done then I would consider looking at what you might want in an outboard rack and go from preamps, to EQ's, to either FX or dynamics, but this would only be if you have a way to utilize them (integrate them) at the mixdown process. If you have a good grasp on how to use compression (not for level control but for tone shaping and transient shaping) then you might bump a quality compressor up that list a bit.
 
SubLunar said:
I have been slowly building up my modest home studio for several years now. I play guitar (drums, keyboard, etc) and since my various bands fell through I have become a one-man band with my computer. I am a college student and am looking for some reasonably priced rack equipment.

I have some decent equipment (Mackie 32.8, M-Audio Delta 1010 on a sweet custom built computer, etc) and as a result, my friend's band has asked me to record their CD in my studio. I do have enough equipment to do it and I think it has the potential to sound pretty good, but I have never recorded a band before and I'm a little intimidated...

I have a graphic EQ and a cheaper digitech "studio quad" effects unit in my rack, but I want to know:

What are some home studio staples in the rack?

What rack units are a must have in this line of work?

I appreciate any feedback on this.
Click to expand...

Pre-amps
Compressors
Levelers
EQs
Patchbays
Effects
More Effects
alot more effects
keep the effects coming

Add as many of these as you can 'till you blow a fuse and back off by exactly 1 of the above.
 
SubLunar said:
... I think it has the potential to sound pretty good, but I have never recorded a band before ...
Click to expand...


Please forgive me for saying this, and I hope you don't take this the wrong way ...

But I'm afraid it probably doesn't have the potential to sound very good. :D

My recommendation would be to treat this as a learning experience, and have fun with it, while keeping your expectations in line. No one's first recordings ever sound worth a crap. Mine sure didn't, and if anyone else on the board tries to tell you theirs did, then they're LYING. :D

That said, the only thing you absolutely need are microphones, preamps, probably a headphone amp with enough headphones for anyone who needs them ... and enough channles on your system to track to.
 
Daisy said:
No one's first recordings ever sound worth a crap. Mine sure didn't, and if anyone else on the board tries to tell you theirs did, then they're LYING. :D
Click to expand...

Hey! Mine sounded fantastic! Of course, if I listen to them now, they don't seem to sound as good as they did when I recorded them!??!?! :eek:
 
NL5 said:
Hey! Mine sounded fantastic! Of course, if I listen to them now, they don't seem to sound as good as they did when I recorded them!??!?! :eek:
Click to expand...

Yea, it's that "digital degredation." It happens.

:D

Did you try baking your hard drive in the oven for a half hour? I hear that helps.
 
in all honesty, the first recordings i made were pretty damn decent

...but that was only because they were done in an environment where it would've been pretty hard to not get usable results. the 1st stuff i did at home by myself turned out pretty crap.
 
I'm not sure I'd call a headphone amp outboard gear. I think of outboard gear as processors like fx, compressors, eq, .etc.
 
I'd look at getting some good outboard pre's. An RNP is a favorite among here and it sells new for $475. I'd look at getting the best signal you can going into your DAW and then do most of your mixing in the box, so get some good plugins if you dont already have some.
 
avieth said:
However, you use a computer to record. There's no question that outboard signal processors are better than computer plugins...
Click to expand...

Not true at all, you gotta have some real high end stuff to beat plugins nowadays. I have some minimal outboard fx that I use ONLY for monitoring, so I don't have latency problems. (or playing live) But for recording I send dry signals to the PC and apply plugin fx exclusively.
 
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