Home Recording against Studio Recording

[leesrecordings]

I was comparing the vocals to when i recorded at home and when I recorded at the studio and the studio vocals were much more warm and of course sounded better.

This may be a broad question, but what are the most important things to do or

what is the most important recording hardware to get to make a home

recording sound more like a studio one?

 

[MadAudio]

Buy studio quality gear, have a good room to record in (which means a proper space with the proper room treatments), and a quality engineer. Really it's that simple!

 

[warlock110]

what's missing?

Audio treatment: they treat the room really well, something that's hard to do at home if it's in your bedroom/living space

Engineer: they have someone who's have experience with mixing/editing audio


Other wise I don't think gear is that important, I've watched a dvd where people did work extremely close to high end gear quality with super cheap gear, but that's because they're in a real studio, with real engineer.

Unfortunately it's hard at home where you usually capture your room sound and most people like me lack the experience and the trained ears to mix it like a commercial CD (some folks on here are very knowledgable about the subject, unfortunately it's only a few compare to the mass population).

 

[Daisy]

what is the most important recording hardware to get to make a home recording sound more like a studio one?

A studio?



Seriously though ... the guy behind the glass makes the most difference. He probably has a home studio as well. Everyone and their brother has a home studio. Some of us just get more out of them.

 

[CoolCat]

I'd lean toward the gear first. create a golden strip for the "money track"...the big kahuna, the main slam, the V track...

I've read articles speaking of great recordings of vocal tracks in shitty rooms (mixing room and waiting rooms) Loso Lobos or Sheryl Crow.....but never read anyone doing great vocal tracks with a $29 mic and a $99 M-AudioBuddy.

 

[leesrecordings]

It's probably because I don't have a very well trained ear, but does sound treatment really make that big of a difference?

I have slightly better than that...

a 150$ Mobile Pre-usb and a 100$ Studio projects B1 Condenser...haha

Golden strip...ehh??

 

[leddy]

It's probably because I don't have a very well trained ear, but does sound treatment really make that big of a difference?

The short answer is yes. In a big way.

Sound interacts with the space it is in. Read up on comb filtering.

It is probably accurate to say that the order in which the recording is produced is in line with how important each step is:

The source, the room (the space between the source and the mic), the mic, the preamp, the converter. The source is most important, the room second, etc.

 

[TimOBrien]

Really good gear in a horrible room will sound crappy.

Mediocre gear in a good room will sound great.

(Crappy gear in a crappy room.... you're on your own!!!)

 

[leddy]

This does not always mean you have to run out and buy expensive sound treatment. You may have a closet that would suffice. Or you may have a huge garage. You have to put time in recording in different rooms before you gain an intuitive sense of what the room will do to your sound, or what mic will compliment the room and the source, or mitigate its short-comings, etc.

Recording well is more difficult than most folks realize. It's about like playing an instrument. I played my instrument for 20 years before I reached a point where I could make a living doing it. Even after the first ten years or more, I still sucked compared to professional standards.

Why should recording be different?

 

[Massive Master]

I was comparing the vocals to when i recorded at home and when I recorded at the studio and the studio vocals were much more warm and of course sounded better.

This may be a broad question, but what are the most important things to do or

what is the most important recording hardware to get to make a home

recording sound more like a studio one?

Everything. Everything adds to or subtracts from the result. A cheesy mic, a cheesy preamp, recording too hot, a poorly treated room, bad mic placement, a non-wonderful vocalist, the wrong mic for the vocalist, a less-than-acceptable AD converter, ill-advised judgments due to poor monitoring - Everything.

Everything is the "most important" part.

 

[MOFO Pro]

I think the biggest mistake in home recording is the selection of an expensive high quality LDC for vocal recordings in a crappy room... all that extra quality is really going to buy you in that space is more shitty room in your mix... Go dynamic if you don't like the envirinment you're tracking in, spend the extra on the preamp...

 

[Daisy]

A cheesy mic, a cheesy preamp

Two things that a good engineer would be able to spot, and subsequently avoid using.

recording too hot,

Something a good engineer probably wouldn't do.

a poorly treated room

Something a good engineer would be able to find work-arounds for ... or treat it so that it isn't a problem.

bad mic placement

Something a good engineer wouldn't do.

a non-wonderful vocalist,

You're on your own there. Although an accomplished producer could advise warm-up exercises, singing lessons ... coupled with a combination of pitch-shifting and comp'ing / editing of takes so as to get the best possible track out of it in the end.

the wrong mic for the vocalist

Something a good engineer would be able to listen for.

ill-advised judgments.

Something you shouldn't get with a good enough engineer.

 

[MCI2424]

......what is the most important recording hardware to get to make a home

recording sound more like a studio one?

Your mind. If you want to really find out what things are working against you, use process of elimination (POE) to find the problems.
1. Use a great sounding source (like a good synthesizer) and plug it directly into your recording chain. How does it sound?
You have now eliminated the recording room altogether. Now, if your monitoring environment has issues, you must do some treatment. To eliminate that problem (if it is one) record exactly what you hear (your pristine source) to a CD and go around everywhere you can and listen to the recording on different systems. If all systems sound muddy, for example, then you can be sure that your monitoring room has issue like standing waves etc.

Bottom line, take away and isolate every single aspect one at a time and note any changes. Fix each problem in isolation.

Or as Massive said somewhere above, everything matters, but even the best cannot fix everything at once.

Good luck.

 

[Massive Master]

I think the biggest mistake in home recording is the selection of an expensive high quality LDC for vocal recordings in a crappy room... all that extra quality is really going to buy you in that space is more shitty room in your mix... Go dynamic if you don't like the envirinment you're tracking in, spend the extra on the preamp...

I tend to go with large-diaphragm dynamics for 90%** of vocal tasks whether the room is wonderful or not. Most LDC's are just too sensitive to capture vocals the way many of them should be captured. Give me a SM7b and a nice preamp and I'm a happy dude.

Heck, I keep a SM7b here...

** Sure, there's the occasional voice that actually lends itself to a condenser. It's rare, but it happens.

 

[CoolCat]

expensive high quality LDC for vocal recordings in a crappy room... all that extra quality is really going to buy you in that space is more shitty room in your mix... Go dynamic if you don't like the envirinment you're tracking in, spend the extra on the preamp...

this is what my finding was. still not great, but it was a noticeable improvement.

my LDC's I tried at first made things sound even worse in the drywall shit room. dang that brought back some memorys.....

good point. a great LDC in s shitty room will pick up every little turd you have bouncing around and the attic fan noise too.

 

[jaybriggs84]

The vocals I track in my home studio turn out just as good as the vocals we tracked at a $900 a day studio. We happen to have a very talented vocalist which makes it that much easier. My job is really just to to get proper gain staging and let him do his thing. I'm using an AT4050 and a RNP.

 

[mikeshead]

Following the room idea to its logical conclusion, is recording outside (obviously without interfering noise), a significant improvement to recording in a good room?

 

[jaybriggs84]

Following the room idea to its logical conclusion, is recording outside (obviously without interfering noise), a significant improvement to recording in a good room?

In theory, yes, there would be no reflections(considering you were in a wide open field) and no standing waves

 

[357mag]

What I do is use hardware emulators to record bass and guitar. My POD sounds really good for that. Drums I'll most likely add by way of Addictive Drums.

If I was going to mic my Marshall, then I would have to spend money to get another mic, a good preamp, and I'd probably have a isolation booth made.

 

[leddy]

Following the room idea to its logical conclusion, is recording outside (obviously without interfering noise), a significant improvement to recording in a good room?

Yes and no. Some reflections help to create a sense of realism to the sound. It just needs to be controlled. Why do we add reverb? If you record something totally dry, it will not sound natural.

You can have some reflections without audible comb filtering. That would usually give you a realistic, natural sound. This is what a good room gives you. It usually involves a mix of reflective-but-diffusing and some absorbing materials, very few parallel surfaces, and a decent amount of shear room size.

Record outdoors if you want it sound like it was recorded outdoors.