what else do I need to make quality home recordings
Hello mandrum, and welcome. For starters, "quality" is a highly subjective term. A quality recording of shitty talent will still be recieved as shitty. A bad recording of GREAT talent, usually won't bother the listener, as TALENT is the one "quality" most listeners buy music for, not great "recording".
However, to answer your question is not easy. But I'll give it a shot.
First, is recording experience. A great "engineer" can get a quality recording from an SM-57 and a Porta Studio. However, an inexperienced "engineer" may still only achieve a marginally acceptable recording in a world class studio.
What I'm trying to say is owning the best equipment the audio world has to offer is no guarantee of a quality recording. However, the best advice I can offer is this.
Small rooms such as residential rooms create challanges for even the best engineers. This is because the three dimensions of rooms match wavelengths(and 1/4 and half wavelengths) of frequencies, which upon reflection, cause nulls and peaks at those frequencies. These are called room modes. In small rooms, these frequencies are most notabley, mid-lows which result in the typical boominess one hears in small empty rooms.
To overcome these problematic frequencies, broadband and low frequency absorption is employed to more or less "balance" the room response. Not only that, but a correct monitoring geometry(as well as good monitors) is important as well. But now it is time to differenciate two types of recording scenarios. The live room/control room studio and the combined one room studio.
In a live room/control room setting, the engineer has the ability to monitor the sound in the live room from a isolated space(control room) which sole purpose is to give the engineer the ability to HEAR these reflections in the live room, and adjust mics, treatment, musician isolation etc to keep these reflections at a minimum, as they create whats known as "comb filtering". However, if the control room has its OWN reflection scenario with time lags LONGER than the live room, the control room reflections can MASK the "comb filtering" occuring in the live room, which means the engineer will then OVERCOMPENSATE with EQ or whatever. What this means is, in a incorrectly treated control room, not only will it LIE to you when you track, it will LIE to you again when you mix. Hence, the MOST important thing one can do for a quality recording, is treat the LIVE room for a flat room response, but also the control room for early reflections at the engineering position as well as a TDG(time delay gap) shorter than in the live room. Not an easy task for even experienced studio designers.
However, few homestudios have the luxury of a live room/control room scenario. This means, the engineer must monitor the live sound in the same room as it is being produced, which is IMPOSSIBLE over speakers, as the sound of the speakers gets picked up by the mics, which is self defeating. Therefore, the engineer must monitor via headphones. Which, as you might already know, is a compromise in progress, as the headphones really do not COMPLETELY eliminate the sound in the room from leaking into the headphones. This fact alone is self explanatory, and is the reason why one room studios are a challange from the outset to create a "quality" recording.(see the paragraph above for an explanation).
The best advice I can give you is STUDY this forum for answers to this quagmire. They are in abundance here, however, there is a simple answer. Correctly placed absorption is your friend and the best investment you can make in your home studiol. PERIOD.
fitZ
