Greetings and Questions

[RitualMadness]

Hello all,

New to the boards here, so I will bow and say my hello's

I'm planning on spending the next 12-16 months researching and reading up, as I plan on making a move to the Toronto area next year and assembling together a home studio. My experience is heavily in IT, as a hobbyist programmer, server admin, support technician, and "all-around IT guy". I've been able to (for the most part) apply my knowledge to recording, and having a background in computer hardware and software I have been able to accomplish some (at least what I consider!) major steps toward my planned profession "paradigm-shift".

I've been doing amateur recording for about a year now, mainly using a microphone connected to a PC soundcard's Line In, using Fruity Loops for drums, and using Guitar Rig VST plugins to turn my electric guitar into bass tracks. Additionally I use Audition for track mixing and processing.

My recording results are pretty decent, and I'm certain if I had better pieces of equipment (e.g. a decent mic, a quality soundcard, a real bass guitar and drum kit) my final results would come out sounding even better, but really what I have (a mic, a guitar, an amp, some cabling, a computer, and software) really seem sufficient for my 'bare bones' recording needs.

What I would like is if some veterans here could possibly point out flaws and / or potential pitfalls of managing this sort of studio setup. I mean, I have the equipment a single musician would require in order to record music (or, for a band of musicians to individually record, as is my understanding of what one of the options are for pro recording, the other being micing everyone and recording ad-hoc live sessions). But I feel that I am somehow missing a bigger picture of what a recording studio needs to be capable of.

(On a side note, one of the things which really seems lacking in my setup is the ability to send different mic inputs to different tracks in Adobe Audition. Does it make sense to think that there should be a way to mic 5-20 different drums and cymbals, and be able to send them to different audio tracks on the computer? Alternatively I could send the mic inputs to a multitrack hardware mixer, and output a master signal as a single track, but this seems to offer less control. What are the options I have, if any?)

With the software I have, I can produce myriad of effects (if you've never heard of or used Native Instruments' Guitar Rig, please check it out!), silence track noise, normalize quiet tracks, and mix as many different tracks as the computer hardware can handle. At the end of the day, the audio tracks are burned to a DVD-R or CD-R (or USB keydrive, or USB harddrive, or whatever) for backup.

But... all this can't be enough! It seems too simple a setup to accomplish professional results. What other needs for a recording band or individual musician would need to be met in my situation?

Thanks for your time,
- Peter

 

[cpl_crud]

Compare your tracks to those that you find on a CD of similar genre.
Do they sound the same? If so, then you've got yourself a "professional" sound...

The majority of the people on this board are in a similar boat- they have the gear to get them 80-90% there, but it's that last 10-20% that has them stuck, and that's where a lot of the discussion on these forums comes from.

I can sum up the basic advice you're going to get quite simply:
Buy better microphones, preamps and monitors to start with
Treat your room (which should be concurrent with the above)
Move onto Dynamics/effects
get some decent ADAs.

However, the answers to "which mic to buy?" etc are a lot more detailed, and that's why there are threads set up for specifics, like mics, rack gear etc.

As a general rule, if you're going to ask about waht equipment to buy, let people know:
a) what you've got now
b) what you're going for and
c) your budget.
that way people can tailor a response for you.

Later
Crud

 

[Kevin Deschwazi]

First of all I think it's useful to know who's giving you advice, I'm not a veteran, I've only been doing this for a few years and only as a hobby at home. There are a lot of very knowledgeable folks here and a fair number of professional engineers. But I'll tell you what I've learnt anyway.

Before you start worrying about gear make sure you've given plenty of consideration to room treatment. You want a decent sounding room for live recording and a room suitable for assessing mixes (it might be the same room in which case you'll have to come to some sort of compromise but lots of us have to do that). The first bit of gear you should then be thinking about is a decent set of monitors.

This is critical to good sounding recordings and it's probably the most neglected area for new homerecors. It seems most people (myself included) don't bother too much with this when they start but as time goes on you realise how important it is. If I did it all over again this would be my first concern.

Then I'd be thinking about a few decent mics and a few decent channels of mic pres and converters. Too many variables to get into specifics just now.

Some good advice already on how to frame your questions, I would add to do plenty of reading first and use the search function but I reckon from reading your post you'd probably do that anyway.

Good luck with it.

 

[Dr Biscuits]

Hi Peter,
Well, from what I gether, you're talking about trying to get a profitable client based studio set up? I might be misreading your post, but if that is what you're trying to do I think the important thing to know is that even if you upgrade your gear and get yourself to a point where you can make a compitent recording and move to a large city, that's no guarantee you'll be able to make a living out of it. I'm not trying to deter you at all, I just don't wanna see you sink all your $ into gear, move to a new city and then have to sell your guitar to eat
Running a studio is a business first and foremost so the general rules apply... you're selling a product, which is "you", the engineer, based on your studio's sound, reputation, past clients, etc. Of course if you're determined (and good enough ) you can work your way up to this, but it takes a long time of establishing contacts, making a name for yourself at least within indie circles. Sure, you may be able to entice a few young bands based soley on the fact that you have a bit better gear than they can afford and offer a discount rate, but with decent quality results available to so many now at next-to-nothing start up costs (as evidenced by all the folks on this board) there isn't a lot of incentive for a band to go to a studio unless that studio is known for good results, far better than they could ever hope to achieve on thier own.
So again sorry if this is totally not what you're trying to do, just ignore my post! But if it is, I guess some practical advice would be the cliche "don't quit your day job", start building your studio's gear, work on your engineering skills and most importantly start getting connected with the local band scenes and build up a reputation - even do freebies, whatever it takes. It's a tough racket (and I don't run my own studio so I'm not just trying to scare away competition I'm coming from more of the perspective of a potential client having recorded in a few Toronto studios) Good luck to you, hopefully my rant was of some (minimal) use!
And if you just want gear recommendations, there's tonnes of great advice on this board, so keep hanging out!