Commercial quality at home???

flatfinger

flatfinger

Use every dam bit!
That's the holy grail; eh boys!! what would you say, w/ all your years of experience, aside from the operator ,is going to be the biggest factor???

I say .

1) Monitoring accuracy. Spend yer dough on the best boxes and fix the room. You can't mix what you cant hear!!


2) CONVERTERS. when people talk about the pro's advantage, it's often overlooked that they have dedicated, seperate (not built into a PCI buss card, but a rack and $$$$$$ High Quality) A/D , D/A converters.


3) MUSICAL TALENT, you know , polished turds ect. ect.



What' on your list ????? :) :)
 
Musicians are first on my list, without good ones you will never get a pro sounding recording. They need to not only be good on their respective instrument, but also have an understanding of the difference between live playing and studio playing. Quality instruments are also a must have thing.

Secondly, you need the right room. Knowing how to place things in the room so they sound their best helps a lot too.

The best recording gear you can afford is next on my list. Good mics and knowing how to place them is more important than many people realize. Good headphones for tracking and good monitors for mixing are a must, hearing what is going on is critical.

Combine all the above with a good knowledge of how to use your gear to get the best possible recordings and you should be well on your way to getting something that at least approaches pro sounding recordings. The final step of remixing and mastering polishes the recording and gives that truly pro sound.

Generally speaking: Good musicians, on good instruments, accurately tuned, in a good room, with good recording gear, opperated by a good engineer, mixed propperly, then mastered well produces quality recordings. All are equally important, this is just the order you need to have them in.
 
Good musicians and experience. As much as I love the toys, if you have something special going on and you know what you're doing, what you capture it through and on is secondary.
 
The equipment you are using.
I mean the amps n guitars n stuff. Not the recording equipment. ANy old recording software can ususally do a good job with the right hands.

Also monitoring set up is crucial IMO.
But you dont need great monitors, you just need to be able to know your monitors very well, so the mix will transpose to all systems well.

Eck
 
Dani Pace said:
Musicians are first on my list, without good ones you will never get a pro sounding recording. They need to not only be good on their respective instrument, but also have an understanding of the difference between live playing and studio playing. Quality instruments are also a must have thing.

Secondly, you need the right room. Knowing how to place things in the room so they sound their best helps a lot too.

The best recording gear you can afford is next on my list. Good mics and knowing how to place them is more important than many people realize. Good headphones for tracking and good monitors for mixing are a must, hearing what is going on is critical.

Combine all the above with a good knowledge of how to use your gear to get the best possible recordings and you should be well on your way to getting something that at least approaches pro sounding recordings. The final step of remixing and mastering polishes the recording and gives that truly pro sound.

Generally speaking: Good musicians, on good instruments, accurately tuned, in a good room, with good recording gear, opperated by a good engineer, mixed propperly, then mastered well produces quality recordings. All are equally important, this is just the order you need to have them in.
Click to expand...

I'd say amen to that. :)
 
Well I must say that you peeps have all good ideas but lets be real. The Holy grail of recording is a good cowbell. You can have the right lava lamp, a David Bowie bobblehead, a great room, good people and great equipment and even with good drugs you're sunk without a good cowbell. Enuff said.

Can I get an amen on that?
 
NYMorningstar said:
Well I must say that you peeps have all good ideas but lets be real. The Holy grail of recording is a good cowbell. You can have the right lava lamp, a David Bowie bobblehead, a great room, good people and great equipment and even with good drugs you're sunk without a good cowbell. Enuff said.

Can I get an amen on that?
Click to expand...

usually, the electric triangle really brings my recordings to life.
 
A good groove in a tune...
Louie, Louie example, crap recording great tune. Ramones, many... some have overcome the sonic turd studying with pure groove.

A good recording...
Beatles Anthology showed a few examples how crappy a good song can sound without arrangements and good recording euiqpment/enviroment.

so i said nothing like usual? ying/yang...add/subtract...

in other words I don't have a clue?!! :eek:
 
Well usually the main difference between a commercial studio and a home studio are the room acoustics and the people operating it.

Then the other differences include gear, musicians etc etc.

You will never get commercial quality with a poor group of musicians. Not going to happen. And by good I don't just mean playing ability. They should know how a studio works and have to have previous experience in a studio. Without the basic knowledge of how a studio works they're going nowhere.

Second of all you need good gear. You're not getting commercial quality with a pair of Behringer C2's. You may think you're getting commercial quality but the second you hand it to a record company you'll find out that it's not. Good monitors and Mic's are the main thing but all the others count.

Third is your engineer. An engineer who does this stuff for a living will get a better sound than a hobbyist any day of the week. He should know everything about recording techniques and mic placement and everything there is to know about his interface.

Last but not least is room treatment. No commercial studio is setup in a living room. They are designed with sound in mind and sound production. Your living room is designed to be comfortable and have good places to put your TV etc.

They are all equal in gaining commercial sound. But personally I think it's about next to impossible in your standard home studio. By standard I don't mean someone who's setup a full blown commercial studio at home :p
 
Define commercial though. A lot of people are sick to death of the boring sounding (but they're loud! wheee wheee!) commercial cd's.

Give me an interesting production with ok sound over an uninspired sounding but perfect quality recording any day.
 
NYMorningstar said:
Well I must say that you peeps have all good ideas but lets be real. The Holy grail of recording is a good cowbell. You can have the right lava lamp, a David Bowie bobblehead, a great room, good people and great equipment and even with good drugs you're sunk without a good cowbell. Enuff said.

Can I get an amen on that?
Click to expand...
Amen? :confused:


I saw on Myth Busters that they proved the exploding lava lamp myth as the truth.

But they blew up 2 really nice lamps to prove it! :eek:
 
Lomas said:
Define commercial though. A lot of people are sick to death of the boring sounding (but they're loud! wheee wheee!) commercial cd's.

Give me an interesting production with ok sound over an uninspired sounding but perfect quality recording any day.
Click to expand...

Excellent point Lomas. Some of the most compelling recordings ever made aren't technically great recordings. First, a compelling acoustical event has to happen, that's a given....... but sometimes the recording process's best contribution is in staying the hell out of the way, both during tracking AND mixing. I love the example of "I love Rock and Roll" by Joan Jet. After the producer produced the hell out of that song for days never getting it right, the engineer put the 1st rough mix back up in the monitors, and then got whoever was around, including the receptionist, to sing the chorus in a raw, un-polished take, and the end result was brilliant in it's rough hewn but pure rock and roll sound.
 
I'd say the musicians and the music (songs) themselves are the most important. Everything else is secondary.

I'm sure $2,000 A/D converters are helpful, but I'd rather spend $2,000 on a new guitar or something. Most people can't tell the difference between poor/decent A/D converters and pro converters.

Most people can't even tell the difference between a good mix and a bad mix. Most people don't care either as long as the music is good.
 
I agree that the performance is far more important than anything else.

It's simple. In a world with artists but no engineers, there will still be music. In a world with engineers but no artists, we'll have stores full of blank CDs.

"It's the content, stupid."

That said, however, who says there is any relation between commercial CDs and "quality"? Sure, many of them are high quality productions, whether minimalist recordings or full-blown engineering tour-de-forces. But far more commercial CDs are of fair to average quality at best, and downright amateurish at worst, than there are great ones. This is even truer behind the glass than it is in front of the mic.

Especially in today's faddish time of "the artist knows more than the engineer when it comes to the engineering" and all a person needs to do to call himself a "producer" is to put together some lame rhythm sequence in a hacked copy of Acid, and we wind up with a bunch of recordings that are hard-panned, zero-dynamic, musically berift discs that sound "k3\/\/L", but don't sell unless they're backed up by some T&A music video that gets the pubescents horny.

Why is that something to strive for?

G.
 
The real problem with this question is that the only accurate answer is, "It depends". Depends on what? Well, that's where it gets a little tricky.

Let's say you wanna drive in a professional auto race. Is equipment important? Of course. You wouldn't drive a stock Kia in a Formula One race. But assuming you had a Formula One car available to you, the next question becomes kinda equally important.

How good a driver are you? Can you keep up with the pros? If you happen to be a very talented amateur, AND you have a Formula One car, you might not only keep up with them, but even win the race. Would that be rare? Yes, very rare, but not completely impossible.

So the answer to the "Commercial quality at home?" question can be answered by two other questions:

Do you own equipment (and a space) capable of producing "commercial quality" recordings?

And the second question to ask is: How good an engineer are you? Do you have a good feel as to how all the equipment works?

Unless you fall into the category of a "very talented amateur", a good engineer will beat you, both in a regular studio, or even using your own equipment, in your own house.

Why? Because they do this for a living, 24/7, day in, day out, for years. They know the signal paths, work-arounds, and tricks that will take you years to learn, if you're only spending a few hours a week working on your stuff.

So if you're a talanted amateur (with really good equipment), the answer is yes, you can probably make "commercial quality recordings at home", but it will be about as rare as a talented amateur winning his first Formula One race.

If you're not a "very talented amateur", what you will be able to do (fairly consistently) is make "good enough" recordings that you can sell at gigs, and on CDBaby, and to friends. It'll be about equal to a decent rough studio demo, which is often "good enough" for most uses.

The bottom line is, can you beat (or equal) my commercial studio (and all my toys) with a limited amount of home gear, by substituting raw talent for my years of experience? Yes, you can, if you're REALLY good, but it's gonna be rare, rather than a common occurance.

I think that's really the reality of your question.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top