Home Recording's Dirty Little Secret

[kcearl]

Id imagine there is but huge?

 

[RueMorgueRecord]

when i started almost 5 years ago!

it was on a tascam analog 4 track pos. and honestly i didnt care aout commercial and still dont. i just wanted to do it myself for my own band. and not having a tun of money thats where we(i) started. almost 5 years later i run mbox2 pro, pt 8, studio monitors, 24 channel mixer, decent phones and mics for my price range still and constantly upgrade things it seems every recording i do. and i now have 9 under my belt. rnaging mostly from metal to ambient noise stuff. live drums to fruity loops . and i learn everyday and never expect still or want to sound like brittany spears . i still attest to sounds of old stuff especially in my particular genres and just solely go each recording for having everything sound good in my mix as best as i could with each equipment set worked with and perveying the true meaning behind each band. and each time i record and upgrade they get better in my eyes (not commercial eyes) to what i want so i say just jump in and learn learn learn and never say, i cant do that! trial and error!

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Do you want to sound like the commercial product? I wouldnt in many cases...in fact Stanford has being tests on students over the last five years or so over what kind of format their students prefer to hear music (in a blind test of course) and every year more and more prefer the quality of mp3's...I think much of that is to do with their qualitiy improving but really...mp3's??

There a revolution going to happen in music and I think the divide between quality and quantity is going to split it right down the middle..I wouldnt be expecting many to be making much out of this industry when the most top bands will be able to afford will be a preset in T-Racks at this rate...

There's a lot of variables involved there. At least part of the reason they prefer MP3s is because the original commercial products these days sound so awful to begin with. Give these same students some actual quality "commercial" recordings that haven't been smashed to pieces, and the results might change.

Perhaps not right away; because the current generation has been so conditioned to listening to flattened pancakes, but it's important to remember that there are properties of sound that *intrinsicly* sound better to the human ear and human brain that it takes evolution far more than a generation or three to change, and that those are the properties that tend to sound more "natural".

I think "revolution" is the right word, but in terms of revolving around in a cycle instead of a permanent bifurcation. We've seen this cycle go through a couple of revolutions already between convenience/quantity and quality. MP3s are just the turn-of-the-century version of the 8-track tape cartridge.

Once this current idioticly stretched cycle of the loudness wars subsides (and it *will* subside - and return, and subside again and return again - because that's another cycle all it's own) and the fashion of the day goes back to fidelity, MP3s will join the junkyard as fast as my Mott The Hoople 8-track.

G.

 

[kcearl]

I was going for the "best actress in a costume drama" nomination in that post...I think I got it

 

[jazzloversinc]

Home recordings..

I have heard some darn good home recordings. My cd was basically a home recording and I think it could have been mixed at a higher volume, it still sounds fine to me. I have a friend who has several cd's and sells them..all done in his home studio. I guess it's what you are going for. I think it might be more difficult if you are recording rock bands and having to mic drum sets.

 

[WykedPT]

expectations......

Back in the 60's when I was in high school,I played in a band. (who didn't) we were average for the time I guess. There was a local dance show at the tv station every saturday...Our school got to go and our band went....we played a cpl songs (this was live tv)They taped the show so it could be used as reruns. After the show we were packing up and they were playing the audio...we were like "Wow,who's that" It sounded as good as anything we had heard....did they have thousands of dollars of audio equip? No....but they had a guy who was a wizz...This was a video tape soundtrack.....when I got into recording,I always kept that sound in the back of my head....Thinking I could at least come close...(naaaaaaa) but haven't....prob never will,but like others here I do it for the fun of it....One of the best recordings I ever made was on an old sears mono recorder...Was at a friends house and we were messing around with it, It
was raining and the front door was open. Had two really cheap Radio Shack condenser mics that came in a set and ran on AA batteries...(HIGH TECH) lol...........into a 4 channel mixer (just 4 volume controls) that also ran on batteries.....for some reason everything was just right,the room ,the day,the rain....cars wizzin by..you get the picture...Played a made up song on the piano. You could hear the rain and the piano plus cars going past and splashing water at just the right places......wow what a sound.....we never got that sound again no matter how much we tried....or what equip we used....So I believe enviorment has a lot to do with the sound you get...I Ihad hoped to come close to the tv studio sound,haven't ,but who cares....It's given me lots of pleasure trying.....and that's the point for a lot of us...so keep up the good work!

 

[TaintedDb]

I have to admit I am a gear slut. That being said, i don't have anything near what the pros have. OK, maybe I do have some but still. I do know this. I have freaked out many a band member but tracking their part and then hitting play and they can't tell it's NOT them playig then and there live.

My vote is on the experience, knowning your hear crowd. If you play a guitar part and i capture it, hit play and you look down to your guitar to see who is playing it then something is going right. Now recording vocals, adding compression and eq and talking rooms is another story. I agree with the guys who say that the better performers are always going to sound more professional.

 

[vinegar8]

Nah I just record at home. I dont care what everyone else gets or what the big artists record. they're just twats. I am looking for originality and quality of thought. Nobody needs to record in a fat studio to get good results. You just need time, talent and brains.

 

[ibleedburgundy]

This is an even worse case of ageism than that of which you accuse the adults. And it's pure BS.

"Advanced" technology does not always mean better quality. Most (not all) "advanced" technology for the consumer was designed and built not to make things better for the consumer, but to create new markets and generate new revenue.

Look at golf clubs for example. It's amazing how all that those fancy titanium alloys, computer analysis and design, and blahblahblah keep coming out over the years, yet golf scores have remained fairly flat over the past 40 years. The new tools have not make golfers any better, the only thing they have increased is the PE ratios for Titlist, Spaulding, Nike, and the rest.

Don't mistake capacity for capability. Capacity is provided by the gear. Capability comes from the user, not the gear. For example, when playing a guitar, tone is in the fingers, not in the guitar or amp; a concept that most beginners just can't wrap their heads around. You just can't get that from a computer. And you *definitely* aren't going to get that from a computer if you don't know the guitar well enough to understand that basic concept to begin with.

And finally, even if you could get all that from a computer jut by pushing a few buttons, what's the point? Why bother recording it if it's just a computer playing the music? There's absolutely nothing special about that. That's like watching the Super Bowl and replacing all the players with robots; there's no point.

G.

I think your overall point is right, but the golf analogy is not very good. Overall average driving distances on the PGA have risen by quite a bit over the last 30 years. It might not be reflected in scoring because courses on tour are longer than they used to be. Many of the classic courses have been lengthened.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I think your overall point is right, but the golf analogy is not very good. Overall average driving distances on the PGA have risen by quite a bit over the last 30 years. It might not be reflected in scoring because courses on tour are longer than they used to be. Many of the classic courses have been lengthened.

True, but look at it a bit deeper: Have the new clubs made your average golfer hit any straighter or otherwise better on target? Not really. Longer does not necessarily translate into better.

Have the high tech irons caused increased performance and scores on 170-yard par threes? Uh uh. Have the fancy-schamncy weighted and balanced and goofy-shaped putters caused an overall decrease in the the average number of putts or increased the number of birdies or eagles? No, they haven't.

It's still all in the golfer and not in the gear. And if the course designers simply adjust their courses to compensate for the new club technology, then what's the point? Why not just stick with the original Pebble Beach and club technoloy of the time? The reason is not because the new stuff is for the benefit of the golfer, but because it's a benefit for the equipment and course designer markets.

And I'm not saying that's necessarily all a bad thing; consumerism pays taxes and balances budgets and creates employment and does add enjoyment to the gearheads amongst the consumers, and helps keep the industry fresh. I'm just saying let's not mistake that for an increase in actual performance benefit or capability for the end user.

G.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

...and the fashion of the day goes back to fidelity, MP3s will join the junkyard as fast as my Mott The Hoople 8-track..

I can't quite agree with you here.

I'm a home recording nut, I'm on your side of the loudness wars, and I care very much about audio fidelity. I also have an iPod, which I love. What I love about it is it allows me to carry my entire music collection around in my back pocket, so I can listen to music at work and block out the trainer in the cube next to mine (I forgot it today, and she's annoying the living piss out of me), so that if I'm talking with someone at a party about music and there's a band I think they need to check out I can play it for them, or for those times when there's just one particular song I want to hear, so it'll be there.

Sure, even a 256kbps mp3 is a tradeoff in sound quality, but played back through my car speakers via a radio hookup, or on a pair of earbuds, it's not one that bothers me, since the ability to get the music I love is what matters more.

The mp3 will eventually be killed off, I'm sure... but I don't think it'll happen until internet connections improve and storage space cheapens such that lossless fidelity recordings become practical. For now, it's too easy to forget that most of us are in the minority with the way we place import upon fidelity, and that for most people it's the song first, the quality of playback second.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

The mp3 will eventually be killed off, I'm sure... but I don't think it'll happen until internet connections improve and storage space cheapens such that lossless fidelity recordings become practical

I agree with most everything you say; frankly outise the studio I am not the audiophile nut, and for most fo my stuff even a 128k MP3 is just fine by me for casual listening - though I try to stick to 192k.

And I agree with you about conservation of bandwidth and storage completely. Why be wasteful, even if you can afford it?

But, we don't necessarily need increases in bandwidth to go lossless, we just need decent lossless compression algorithms. The technology is there, it just requires the will of industry to implement. The will of industry requires two things. First and foremost, a consumer market, and there will not be a market until fidelity swings back into vogue. But once fidelity becomes "k3wl" again, we (hopefully) will see consideration by the MPEG committee of some decent quality lossless compression as the next default format.

But then we have the second drain of will, and that is the arguably unreasonable concern of the major labels of exact digital copies of their stuff. I don't know how to predict how that will com out other than to say that if they see a big enough potential market, they'll sell their own mothers if they had to.

G.

 

[Dr. Varney]

I never expected to come anywhere near commercial quality recording. What I've ended up with has exceeded my expectations - and I listen very intensely to music, through solid state.

Dr. V

 

[Zeppelin456]

load of horseshit if you ask me.

 

[Terry Wetzel]

I guess a lot of us are dreamers. years ago i was a working musician. each time i did a studio session, and i did my share i became more and more interested in what went on on the other side of the glass. i wanted to learn how and what they did to make records. without the tech training which was all "on the job" back then, and no relatives on the studio staff no studio would give you the time of day! i quit music and got a day job. my wife enjoyed living indoors and eating 3 meals a day! after some financial success at a different line of work i now have my own basement studio and i don't give a damn if no one but family and friends ever hear my recordings. it;s a great hobby and it keeps me busy. i think the daw technology out there is great and i wish it had been around years ago. I got started by building CRAIG ANDERTON's 6 in,4 out homemade mixer into a TEAC 3340s. thanks craig! I'll never be George Martin or even Phil Spector but what the hell' i'm happy.

 

[tuttlem]

I wasn't expecting commercial grade recording, but have been nicely surprised with not having to spend millions of dollars to achieve a decent result.

 

[audio_leak]

i only read the first 6 or 7 pages, so forgive me if this has been mentioned

but ive read lots of different opinions on whats ruining the sound for a budget "studio" some think its the band your recording, some think its the producer, some think its the room, and some think its the hardware

but i think one VERY important thing, to me at least is that as a producer of music, or an audio engineer or whatever your role is within recording music, is that you train your ears and your brain to recognise certain problems, frequencys, clips and other random noise that pops up in your mix.

i dont know how it is for some of you recording longtimers, but i started only around 4 years ago and this already happens to me regularly, where i cannot escape from "production" mode, and just simply listen to a song how it is.

i do it with songs that i have created, other peoples songs i have recorded even with bands i hear on the radio. i would say that anyone who has spent a long time with mixing or even creating music is gonna to have better judgement over wether or not the bass is too loud or a mic is in the wrong position.

too a certain degree i would say, we even hear the song differently to someone who has nothing to do with the process, you can see this happen all the time when a band and the producer realise how difficult the song was to record and mix, but the people who listen to it, just basically see it as "good noise" as opposed to "bad noise". they've got no idea that that electric guitar solo they loved so much, took you three weeks of mixing to get it to sound like that.

in most cases they dont hear a snare pop too loud or when the levels are too high at a certain point of the guitars.

where im going with all this is that, as producers, engineers or whatever the hell you call yourself, your always going to be chasing a better sound, even if you have a billion dollar studio. we teach ourselfs to hear these mistakes in music, and unfortunatly for me one of the setbacks is i cant really listen to a song ever without picturing the production process and how i would have gone differently about it.

one thing that sucks real bad for me, is that i can never, and will never hear one of my own songs and listen to it as someone else, you will always be the producer when it comes down to it, even if your trying just to listen and that means those mistakes will still always bother you when most people never even hear it. i have deleted alot of songs people liked simply because i cant get past that.

if you start on a low budget, (i did aswell) dont go into it with delusions that you will be the greatest straight away. it does happen for very talented people, that the music is all thats important to his/her or their fanbase. some people get lucky like this, but 99% of the time you realise your just like everybody else, learn your equipment, upgrade eventually and hope for the best.

 

[scott free]

aduio leak....I like your post. I have tossed so many recordings too...looking back I wish I hadn't, as that was my recorded journey and it would be cool to reflect with some of that material today. But its that critical listening that can sometime paralyze the process, causing us to over think instead of saying "it is what it is" It can be quite an emotional roller-coaster.

"Theres a kind of curve where you start from nothing, you learn the piece and gradually get better and better at it until you reach a peak---then you start to go down. You need to catch people at that peak." -George Martin.

Thanks,
Scott.

 

[hairylarry]

Huckabee

Well, Huckabee is a bass player.

I heard him play and I wouldn't call him a bass player.

Thanks,

Hairy Larry

 

[Mr Blastcap]

Lets have a show of hands....how many of you got interested in home recording thinking you'd be able to make home recordings that would sound similar to the recordings of your favorite commercial artists....and were sadly dissapointed after spending much money, time and effort in an attempt to do so? This is directed at the average home recordist of moderate means....not the guys who have decked out home studios.

I really got interested in recording after discovering what a four track was, after reading the liner notes of Guided by Voices' alien lanes cd. I did think that i could achieve that GBV sound with a 4 track and a clutch of shit mic's from Asda. I forgot that good songs were required!

I'm no Robert Pollard.

but it's fun.