Home recording up to professional standards?

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seancfc

seancfc

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Home recording: How to get your recording up to almost professional standards? using either, pro tools, reaper, sonar or any programs like that?
What effects to use? what to have your room like? what equipment to use? how much do you have to spend?
 
Spends thousands on equipment. Spend thousands of hours learning the equipment. Then give up and hire a pro.
 
ido1957 said:
Spends thousands on equipment. Spend thousands of hours learning the equipment. Then give up and hire a pro.
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Or use your pocket money to buy the cheapest stuff you can find, record, convince yourself that you're totally pro and slag everyone off on internet forums who calls you out on it.
 
somegeezer said:
Or use your pocket money to buy the cheapest stuff you can find, record, convince yourself that you're totally pro and slag everyone off on internet forums who calls you out on it.
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Or just say you were going for the "lo-fi" sound..... :)
 
actually you don't need to spend 1000$$$ on equipment,
main obstacle would be your skills&experience,
mind owning bunch of tools dont make you recording engineer,
how to use them, just mic placement - it takes time...

good luck
 
seancfc said:
How to ?
What effects to ?
what to ?
what equipment to ?
how much ?
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I notice you're asking in a number of forums pretty much the same question.
In one sense, you're asking the right questions. But let me just point out, there is no "One size fits all" answer or magic formula for becoming competent quickly. Recording is like getting from London to Edinburgh. There are dozens of ways to achieve the same result. That's why time and trials are inescapable.
 
grimtraveller said:
I notice you're asking in a number of forums pretty much the same question.
In one sense, you're asking the right questions. But let me just point out, there is no "One size fits all" answer or magic formula for becoming competent quickly. Recording is like getting from London to Edinburgh. There are dozens of ways to achieve the same result. That's why time and trials are inescapable.
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ok, thanks. I appreciate your help :)
 
seancfc said:
Home recording: How to get your recording up to almost professional standards? using either, pro tools, reaper, sonar or any programs like that?
What effects to use? what to have your room like? what equipment to use? how much do you have to spend?
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Ask the Foo Fighters, they just won a grammy for a song recorded in their garage with an analog mixer and analog tape player using a Toy R Us plastic drum kit. :D
 
grimtraveller said:
I notice you're asking in a number of forums pretty much the same question.
In one sense, you're asking the right questions. But let me just point out, there is no "One size fits all" answer or magic formula for becoming competent quickly. Recording is like getting from London to Edinburgh. There are dozens of ways to achieve the same result. That's why time and trials are inescapable.
Click to expand...

It's nearly impossible to tell anyone that it doesn't quite matter what equipment you have to start - its likely going to take years of recording trial and error before you get good enough to produce high-quality stuff. No one, including myself 10 years ago, wants to hear that. Unfortunately, it's completely true. At least it was for me, and I still struggle to get a sound I want.

As for OP's question, it depends on what you want to create. For acoustic music, a Tascam DP 24 and some Naiant cardioid mics will do you very well for recording acoustic music. Throw a decent budget mic in for vocals, and you've got all you need to start learning how to record something passable. I gave up on PCs years ago as I found myself spending more time troubleshooting the setup than I spent actually recording.
 
Today, theoretically the equipment doesn't mean so much anymore. The quality for a cheap interface compared to the most expensive PT interface isn't that much. Or at least to normal people ears. What it depends on is that you can do the art of mixing/mastering. Nice tricks is to have equipment above a certain standard in resolution and really good preamps. Other then that it might depend on plug-ins/processing units and etc. But the computer and digital plug-ins have a lot of nice features. If you take a really good mastered album and play where you're going to mix, on the same monitors and computer, etc. Maybe the good mastered album needs more bass or having too much middle, then you compensate to it and compare your master with the good mastered along the process. Maybe export a cd or two and lsitening to it on other devices. Then you can compensate the cheap monitors to the (most likely) expensive monitors the great band used mastering their great sounding record. It's all about experience and tips, you have to understand and hear the art of mastering before you can make a great sounding record.

So, a little summary:
- You don't need very expensive gear, though it should be above a standard.
- It isn't the gear that makes the mastering good, it's you!
- Compensate by listening to your favorite mastered and compare it to your master several places and you might get shocked over how few details that can ruin the whole picture.

Hope this helps : )
 
Record all your tracks at home then get them uber-pro mixed.
pickup a copy of wavelab... and done ;)

that reminds me... anyone got Andy Wallace's phone number?
 
I'd say that now that DAWs are so cheap, mixing and mastering are getting easier and that the real problem is recording.

You can probably just have a good ear, some experience and produce good mixes/masters. At least, that's what I'm hoping.


Daniel.
 
If you want to save time then it's better to spend money in the professional studio than building your own studio at home .. I built my basic studio spent around 1200$ but now I'm feeling that I should go for professional studio cause I'm not good in mixing and mastering .. Unless you are a good sound engineer you can't make good music at home
 
It cannot be done. Homestudios can make some great recordings, and capture some fantastic performances, but to even remotely compare them to a commercial studio is just insane. Great acoustic spaces, limitless amounts of gear( not just better, but the ability to have unlimited options to capture the source the best way possible) and the knowledge and experience these guys cannot be duplicated in a typical home studio.
Do the best you can and spend most of your time learning to capture a source. And have a great time.
 
It all starts with talent, when you hear about the artist that recorded a platinum album in their home studio, we are talking about how good a result you can get with consumer gear if you have the talent to do it. That's why I laugh when a thread starts about "My Vocals Suck, what mic can I buy to make them sound great" Answer, a great vocalist will still sound great if recorded on a SM58 or a Neumann U87.

You also need to have talent in music writing and arranging, have a read about Moby and the recording of the Play album here and here, read the recording gear list, even if you don't like the style of music, at the time if was ground breaking in ideas and production and recording. I discovered the Play album just after release and could not believe it was not album of the year! 6 months later it took off and the next year it was album of the year.

It's always nice to have top of the line pro studio recording gear, but with most gear now available to the home recordist and some talent you can record world class releases that is a professional standard.

Alan.
 
I get amazing stuff from home studios all the time. And I get relative "crap" also. Same as I get from some of the best studios out there. Some of it's awesome, some of it is terrible.
 
Elton123 said:
It cannot be done. Homestudios can make some great recordings, and capture some fantastic performances, but to even remotely compare them to a commercial studio is just insane.
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These kinds of posts bother me...

Massive Master said:
I get amazing stuff from home studios all the time. And I get relative "crap" also. Same as I get from some of the best studios out there. Some of it's awesome, some of it is terrible.
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^^This is why those kind of posts bother me. They're just not true. I remember reading some massive thread on GearSlutz a few years back with some of the guys from Jimmy Eat World, and the producer/engineer/whatever you wanna call the guy who pointed the microphones at things and pressed record, about how they just decided to record their album "Chase This Light" in a rehearsal space. Not some crazy tricked out rehearsal space, mind you - like.. just in a room. There wasn't even a wall between the console and the band - and they just ran some cables across the floor. What little they used was relatively nice but they didn't roll in a billion dollars worth of all kinds of equipment and acoustic treatment or anything more than just a basic mobile recording setup, really. It was just the band and a recording engineer who all knew wtf they were doing and they just did it. And I'd put the production quality of that album up against pretty much anything else out there.
 
And if it was recorded in a big-name room, it may have even sounded better. But it sounds great because they sound great and they're working with great core sounds. That's 90% of it all no matter what sort of room you're in.

With a lot of people, you can have these wonderful songs with wonderful sounds and the biggest obstacle to a great capture is simply getting out of the way.
 
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