Prices

miroslav said:
I mean....it's mainly for me, for my personal use, though I guess if I got a console like that, along with my 2" and outboard gear, plus my DAW setup...I might be tempted to get into more commercial operations.
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This is something I've wondered about a lot: how many folks on here are doing commercial business (even on just a part-time basis) with their home studio. I tried to post a thread about it a good while back, but only one or two people responded. I also wasn't sure in which area to post it.
 
Let me tell you how I feel about it.... :D

Every time I think about doing a more commercial studio gig, which I can even now with what I have...I start to think about everyone coming and going out of my house/my studio...and consider that I will make very little in the way of any profits, because I'm not going to get the crème of the crop AFA talent....it will be the local bands/artists, most of who will not be wanting to spend too much, and thinking why should they when all you need is a computer and some plugs... ;)
...so my enthusiasm wanes quickly.

That said...I have NO problem for upgrading and spending some money just for my own studio enjoyment. I just think that with a more pro console, I will have pretty much the complete analog setup that might draw some more choice talent to come and record...like where I cherry pick what I really want to get involved with.
To be honest...what I would more seriously consider doing, is to provide a mixing service, with the carrot being the analog OTB mixdown, with the console, tape decks, outboard being the draw, and also being able to do it hybrid from a DAW, so all the ITB guys could just send files. Then I would also offer a few other things on the ITB side...if I went down this road.
That would allow me to keep my studio to myself for the most part...maybe do the odd, cheery picked sessions...and for the most part any other work would be just me in the studio doing mixes, edits, whatever was needed.

It's a idea....not sure if I will go there. Right now, I'm still working on the console upgrade. :p
 
Im with Miro. I just dont want that many people in my house. Especially ones I dont know, it just isnt worth it. I still do it for friends and their bands, and I do that more because. I enjoy it, not to make money. Just finished up a mono project. One mic, the whole band and single takes (albeit a bunch of them), decidedly low-fi but its alive.

I upgraded to a pro console a couple years back. I had built my studio around a pair of Mackies, um but I just never grew to like the sound of those boards. Hard to put in words, but "hard and brittle" come to mind. Finally found a studio decommissioning a console and I swooped in for the kill. I took a major going through to remove the smoke residue from that thing (cough cough). I love it, "Brit" EQ, transformer coupled in and out, every thing balanced and +4. Its rigged through the normals of a pair of TT patch bays to the 2" machine. Add patch leads and its either hooked up to the Tascam interface or a studio one (used as an interface). I still have to get 24 channels of bi-directional A/D D/A if I want to fully use the board and all my favorite outboard gear for mixing. But then again being so old school I prefer pulling from the 2"

So despite the discouraging prices like dumbass flower pot guy (He thinks anything with the Fairchild name on it is a 670 or something LOL), being patient still gets deals. The above mentioned 32 channel board cost me a tank of gas. And I just scored a bunch of NOS quantegy 499 1/4" tape for $1.50 a reel, granted on 7" reels, but perfect for the Nagra.

Keep looking its out there.
 
miroslav said:
Let me tell you how I feel about it.... :D
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Yeah, that all makes sense to me.

Plus, I don't know where everyone else stands in this regard, but I have a wife and two kids (6 and 3) and live in a two-story house. My control room doubles as my office (work from home), and my "studio" or "live room" doubles as my kids' play room. So, even if I wanted to try to run my studio as a business (and I have a much more modest setup than you, from what I can tell), it would be a logistical nightmare, and I simply wouldn't have the availability to make it profitable (that's of course making the assumption that I would be in demand much in the first place).

I could see possibly doing a little part-time thing with maybe one session every few months or so --- maybe making just enough money to buy the next piece of gear --- but running a truly full-time profitable studio from home just seems almost impossible ... for me.

That's why I was so curious to hear what others are doing. This site is called "home recording," so I assume that the vast majority of us are recording in our home. Yet I hear lots of people talking about "clients" and bands in their studio --- having to put up with their BS, or doing what it takes to make them happy, etc. These people often sound as though they're running a real business. And maybe they're all single (or at least don't have kids), own a home, and run a full-time studio out of it. I don't know. That's why I was curious.
 
With the exception of a very few people here...most of the ones with "clients" are probably talking about the one or two sessions they did for a friend or a friend of a friend once in awhile.
Most are hobbies that also do the occasional bit of outside work.

When you hear "clients"...you think the guy has a receptionist taking calls all day long, and is booking the studio by the clock. :D
 
miroslav said:
What console are you using?
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DDA console. Incredible build quality (Heavy as the day is long). EASY to work on. 40 wide frame, 32 channels ins, 8 stereo ins. A lot of mods, has automated faders (never bothered with them yet) VCA mute groups. Ive modded it further adding more DDA metering above the input strips, recapped literally more than a 1000 electrolytics...
 
As to the the "client"aspect, here is my experience.
If you have a good room that is accessible, noise can be made, and there are plenty of musicians......they WILL come. Before you know it your personal project studio is no longer your own.
It is tempting at first, soon to turn into a headache.

I had a home studio, 8 Track and couldn't track drums. But got a lot of music done. That is key, a lot of music got DONE.

Had a 6 room rehearsal facility and decided to move to that, uograde to 16 trk to be able to record live drums. This was at the start just for personal use. Me and my band.

The word got out, and it started out slow. A band here, a band there. Because there was overhead, there were no freebies, and it brought in some xtra cash.
After a while though, we started depending on the that additional income stream and the place was booked solid at least 5 days a week.
Personal band production slowed to a crawl as we were fighting to get time.

Its kind of how the shoemakers kids are the last to get shoes.

Over a couple of years I did a lot of bands, some great some lousy, but after a while the fun went out of it and it was just work, not to mention my own projects suffering.

Decided to call it a day, pulled the plug and sold everything off.

Now, years later, I'm putting it back together to finally finish up some old material.

We shall see where it goes this time around.

As far as the original topic..... pricing, I'm thrilled!
The gear that I know and love is dirt cheap nowadays. Yeah, some pricing is creeping up but overall analog gear is pennies on the dollar compared to back in the day.
 
mdainsd said:
DDA console. Incredible build quality (Heavy as the day is long). EASY to work on. 40 wide frame, 32 channels ins, 8 stereo ins. A lot of mods, has automated faders (never bothered with them yet) VCA mute groups. Ive modded it further adding more DDA metering above the input strips, recapped literally more than a 1000 electrolytics...
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Yeah...now that you mentioned it...I think you said that once before you had a DDA.

I check for DDA all the time when searching for on sale consoles...there are a few models they make that are interesting.
 
RFR said:
As to the the "client"aspect, here is my experience.
If you have a good room that is accessible, noise can be made, and there are plenty of musicians......they WILL come. Before you know it your personal project studio is no longer your own.
It is tempting at first, soon to turn into a headache.
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Oh I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to keep the "clients" coming, especially is you were willing to do lower budget stuff and you had a decent, comfortable place....but I know, it would quickly turn into headache...and then your only option is to shut it down or go for it all the way....just let it blow out, and maybe slowly work your way into an even bigger commercial gig.
There's a lot of guys who started out with a small home studio...record their friends and a few local bands in the basement, and all that kinhd of stuff...and then they got busy, and eventually grew and grew and finally went 100% commercial in a commercial location etc.

Of course...that's a permanent commitment, and you have to decide that you are now a studio operator and no longer a musician or a songwriter looking to record his own stuff. I'm not saying you still can't...but you don't want to turn those clients away once you get them coming, and let's face it, even some upscale studios pretty much NEED to keep the clients flowing in all the time, because the bigger you get, the bigger your overhead, and your gear has to always keep pace, otherwise the clients go elsewhere.
It's hard to do a low profile commercial studio, unless you really cherry pick and are able to say no to other clients...
...and you don't need the money. :)
 
Bingo!

Getting back to consoles. ....
I have this friend. An ITB guy, a modern engineer. He had a setup with the best of the best. Always had his pulse on the best new technology. His biggest hurdle was clients bitching that he DIDN'T have a console. Haha. These people weren't strangers to recording or unaware of technology either. But that image of a large console somehow equates to professional studio. Especially nowadays where anyone with an Ipad can say they have a studio.
 
There is something to be said to walking into a control room and be faced with a piece of equipment with several hundred controls on it and upwards of a couple of thousand LEDs doing their thing vrs, a laptop :(

Shock and Awe, LOL
 
Even my middlin' TASCAM makes the whole mix position and ties it all together, never mind a larger format console...not the million input jobs that go on for miles...a nice 7-8 footer, with a bunch of VU meters (or even LED trees) will get jaws dropping. The whole touchy/feely thing, and the sense that audio is actually flowing through something like that...plus you can lean on the thing or turn around and put you butt on the armrest, half-sitting on it....and you also see the whole damn thing in one glance, and you can turn a nob and also ride your faders at the same time.
Try that with a mouse and a screen. :D

It's just impressive even to a first time studio newb walking in to record.

AFA the sound...well that's always subjective, but there's a reason most pro studios with full-tilt DAW systems, STILL have a large console that gets used either at the front end or back end...or both...and the DAW also has it's place.
 
I hate to say it but it just looks right. A console that is. It takes it all back to earth in a real, "sense" oriented environment. As powerful as modern DAWs are you still just have a picture of faders on the screen. No matter how big the screen is it is still pictures. A former bandmate who is all into protools, tells me how he misses the days of mixing and hearing the music, where now he's just staring at a screen.

A friend helped me lift my mixer onto it's desk and it was quite funny looking at the face of my buddy as I set up my M520. Here he was in awe and envy of a piece of hardware that had probably 1/10th of the capabilities of his ITB mixing. But it was real and he could touch it. I also that day pulled out my Durrough level meter. My god, his jaw dropped! he told me he had the plug in, but had never seen a real one. I think there is something to be said about real gear instead of virtual.

Better or not, it's something that makes you feel good.
 
RFR said:
I also that day pulled out my Durrough level meter.
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Those fuckers are pricey. I use to keep an eye out for them, but never went for any...but I too have the plug. It's OK...I think over priced for what it does. I mean, plug wise, it's just another soft meter....the real hardware units were/are top of the line metering.
 
I just like using a console, maybe it's my age because I come across guys now that have never used one. I think it's that hands on approach not a mouse and screen. I have used digital console out live and I quite like them, but I like the console and racks of gear feel in the studio.

My studio would probably be called a project studio, it is not a 7 day a week setup but is operated part time (mainly due to me having a day job to actually pay the bills LOL). I did have a studio as a full time business in the late 1980's and 1990's but the computer home recording killed that. Most of my clients are repeat business as I offer an affordable studio that gets professional results and they like working with me. Sometimes the studio does nothing for weeks and sometimes I am booked solid for a month (after the day job hours, oh and my weekly radio show). I also pick my clients, if I book someone and I find that I don't like working with them, I don't book them again, most of my clients are great to work with.

I moved the studio out of the house about 9 years ago and set up an office/warehouse building to house the studio and all the music gear I have collected over the years, including the PA & lights and other live gear I still use. I sub-leased some space to friends, a film maker and at the moment my brother who lives there (I build a kitchen, bathroom and living area) and is also the caretaker after hours.

Moving out of the home we down sized the house and reduced the mortgage, we are planing to down size again next year when our new apartment is built, our home is then loan free. The studio building has a business loan which is tax deductible and with the sub-lease rental and the amount of studio work I do it is self sufficient cost wise so it was a good move to get it out of the house.

I don't know why more here that I read are trying to record in share houses or apartments or crappy small spaces don't hook up with others and share a dedicated working space, I have friends that are into building cars on the weekends and they share a factory unit so they have somewhere to work on the weekend, same thing as we are doing.

Alan.
 
I too have a pair of those Durrough 440As in a small walnut trimmed rack that I built and sits dead center on the monitor shelf above the console, its a real attention grabber. That rack shares a phono pre-amp for when the control room is used for a vinyl listening session along with one of the Furmans. Its pull out light illuminate the controls of the DDA while the monitor shelf it sits on shades the meter bridge.
 
I've never heard of those (Durrough level meters). I searched to see a picture, and nothing came up. Does anyone have a picture? What do they do?
 
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