Home Recording's Dirty Little Secret

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What were your home recording expectations vs commercial high end studio recordings?

  • I was not expecting from the get go I could make high end commercial studio recordings.

    Votes: 529 40.1%

  • I had not considered the question of home recording quality vs commercial quality when I started.

    Votes: 287 21.8%

  • I expected I could reasonably equal the quality of commercial recordings.

    Votes: 502 38.1%
  • Total voters
    1,318
After being a musician for quite a few years I decided to give recording a try. I had no illusions of grandure (still don't) nor expectations of competing with the pros. I got into recording as a learning experience and I'm still learning. While I can say that I've had some success at getting some decent sounding recordings, I've also made my share of disasters too. My best teacher has been trial & error, I'm not that good with computers so there have been plenty of errors. It has been frustrating at times but it has also been fun learning how music works "from the other side of the desk." I still find it easier to record others than to record myself, maybe I just don't multitask well.
 
When I was 13 and got a Portastudio, I didn't expect much, but did expect more than I was able to produce :D

Now, I do believe that with enough time and patience, I will get to a point where I am happy. I'm not trying to record anything difficult... just acoustic guitars - all of which I have owned seem to have the same explosive Ab notes that I don't notice when I'm in a store :rolleyes:

...gettin there...
 
Great thread idea!

My only aim with recording has been to attain the lofty status of 'good enough'. It's not just the equipment or even the musicians, I don't have the weeks of my life to go through pitch-correcting a vocal syllable by syllable. I will never spend a week fiddling with EQ on the snare drum to get the difference between +5dB at 12khz and +5dB at 12.2khz. I have a life outside of that.

Sadly I've not achieved 'good enough' yet even though others have with cheaper gear. So I keep plugging away in the knowledge that plenty of home recorders have stumbled upon a winning formula ............ and in the knowledge that I'm not terribly motivated by sounding like the 'high end studio' releases now anyway.
 
The musician ship, and having good material is the most important thing of course, but I do beleive we will all be able to make recording comparable to the big boys, eventually.

I wouldn't be doing this at all - if I didn't think I wouldn't get to the level of quality I hear on commercial CD's.

I think really good equipment is a major factor.

But I think knowledge, experience and wisdom is even more important than that.


By the time we all get to the level of quality we are looking for - we'll have to all swap songs and enjoy each other's work...... because we all know the general public could care less about the quality coming out of their i-pods.

We're all busting our asses and our bank accounts here - when unfortuantly I feel most of that effort extra will be lost after converted to MP3.

I'm sure it's the same for most you guys here - but I work really really hard at this, every single day. I am forever reading books, watching tutorials, scanning this site and gearslutz, and saving up for my next piece of gear.
 
it seems that i've always done "home recording" on one level or another. tascam portastudios, daisy-chained cassette decks, you name it.

but it was when my co-conspirator and i went to a local project studio to record some "live" acoustic stuff that i said "why are were spending $40/hr for this? we can do this at home!"

well......many thousands of dollars and several years later, i'm turning out much better recordings than we paid that initial $200 for.

i never expected to rival commercial recordings, as those are largely a function of the room in which they're recorded as well as having professionals on both sides of the glass with high-end gear at their command.....none of which is at my command.

so no, i never expected to make recordings rivalling commercial releases. what i DID expect was to be able to make recordings of a quality which kept me from going to other local studios. to that, mission accomplished (and to a greater degree of quality all the time).


cheers,
wade
 
I view my home studio as a mix and composing room, not a recording studio. I knew that from the start and designed it that way. My plan has always been to use commercial studios to do any tracking of acoustic instruments/voice, and mix it here. As far as mixing, I can certainly do some good work here. Maybe not high end, but no-excuses kind of work.
 
By 1991, I had done some recording in a fairly high end digital studio - just as a musician - not an engineer - but nevertheless got myself an 8 bit soundblaster ISA card, and plugged it into my 286 computer with a whopping 4 megs of ram, and plugged in my one Shure Unisphere B 588A mic, and got to work.

The quality was really bad, but I set my expectations to match the quality -- that is, what we now think of as bitcrusher distortion was just the sound that I decided I was going for. Here are the results - further degraded by being converted to mp3 and then to myspace format, whatever that is:

http://www.myspace.com/melvinchuckwagon

[note that the "song" also includes existing samples that were available on local BBS systems, as well as various digital files (word documents, executables) converted to .wav files using a program called Trixwave]

Now, I'm getting much better results with my prosumer equipment, but still not the quality of the studio in the 80's I suppose (this is more a function of the engineer than the equipment, at this point). But it doesn't bother me -- I just subconsciously [or even consciously] decide that I'm going for the sound that I'm getting.

I'm a guitar player -- if I play a junky guitar, I adjust my playing to make music that suits the equipment, and the same for a nicer guitar -- either way it works.

Just pick the medium that is both: a) desirable and b) available, and go with it -- let the message be affected by the medium (or tailor it to suit the medium). Then, when you see a GAS opportunity to improve the medium, take it :)
 
Answered 2.

I had a bone to pick with a couple of friends musically, coversong-campfire guitarist friends, that looked at me downwards along their noses for playing the bass.. I had played guitar before that and knew I'd rock'em into a swamp with an ukulele if need to be.

Bought a guitar, an mr8hd. Registered here.
Took a couple of years rehearsing, but I can carry a grudge with the best of them.
...won't be long now...


I had no time to think commercial recordings, but recently, a year or so..

:o:o
 
My main reason for getting into recording was to put down the music I was writing. I bought a Yamaha 4 track about a million years ago and now I'm doing the computer thing. I guess I never really expected to make commercial quality recordings. What I do now is try to make the best recordings I can make with the gear I have. Sure I would love to spend more money on gear and get the best shit out there but I am realistic and my wife keeps me that way.:D
These days I think the gear is getting in the way of my writing but I'm working in that.
 
Interesting thread.

I'm not sure what I think about it.

But I know from experience that with $1K for a mic and $1K for a pre (spent intelligently) you can get an amazingly accurate capture of whatever sound is in the room.

But there lies the real issue.
 
I never expected to be able to copy the sound of a commercial studio, certainly not with a Portastudio. But I've always listened to recordings wondering how (and why) the producer or musician or engineer did what they did. I've internalized many of these little soundscapes. There are things I can do with a computer that were impossible with a portastudio--the effects, routing, mixing (even rudimentary mastering--for now), and especially, sound quality. I think just the sound I want is right there, waiting. Its important to know what you want, sound-wise, in the final product. I agree with one of the above posts that there is no reason why a person using what's available today can't make a "commercial" sounding recording. What exactly is a "commercial" recording? I'll bet I could make one, but only a fool would call me, when they can get a true producer to make their sound. I'm just a person who has just enough time (actually, no) to strive to get the sound I know I want.
 
When I started I wanted to learn how to make recordings that sounded as good as possible. I picked option 3 only because the keyword "reasonably" is in it.

I htought that I could get reasonably close to commercial sounding recordings. Note that it doesn't say 'the BEST commercial recordings" and that the quality of commercial recordings varies quite a bit. I didn't think my cassette 4-track would sound like a pro studio. I thought that with time, experience and well chosen equipment I could get reasonably close.

I still think that. It takes a LOT more than I thought when I was 14, but its doable.
 
i figured i could... but thought it was primarily about the performance... i had recorded as amember of the air force band in '74 and that didn't seem to take that much with a good ensemble.... so when i bought a 3340 and a model2 teac in '76 it seemed a no brainer....
 
Interesting pole results. Almost even in each catagory.

Bob
 
I went with number 1, though the granularity is practically binary. I still expect to come close, fool that I am. :) Actually, my expectations haven't diminished since I started, they've grown as a result of the advances in home recordist attainable gear, which has been staggering since I started out with a Tascam 80-8 back in the early 80's. But as we all know, the gear is only part of it.
 
I didn't really think about it, I just wanted to record my ideas.

Actually, I'm surprised at the results I have been getting, they're better than what I expected.

I figured, there's a reason the big boys record in in facilities I could never afford to build for myself. If they could do it with a measly few thousand dollars and my spare bedroom, then why would they spend all that money for those nice studios? :)

But, I think after I finish my mixes and send them out for mastering, I'll be close enough to fool myself and most people. :D:D
 
I was naive. I went with #3. My real goal was to make recordings that could be put into a cd player before or after a commercial release cd, and not have such a glaring difference that the listener said "Yuck!". I believe that I have achieved that.

But it took a while to sort through the hype, and find what was real. What tools will really do the job vs cheap crap that LOOKS like it will do the job. And then of course the learning curve on various things, EQ, compression, etc. Credible live drum sounds are the toughest. Decent acoustic guitars and vocals are comparatively easy.
 
omtayslick said:
I was naive. I went with #3. My real goal was to make recordings that could be put into a cd player before or after a commercial release cd, and not have such a glaring difference that the listener said "Yuck!". I believe that I have achieved that.

But it took a while to sort through the hype, and find what was real. What tools will really do the job vs cheap crap that LOOKS like it will do the job. And then of course the learning curve on various things, EQ, compression, etc. Credible live drum sounds are the toughest. Decent acoustic guitars and vocals are comparatively easy.
Click to expand...

See, now I've had more problems with acoustic guitar than anything. Granted, I'm trying to record finger-picked, solo parts w/ vocals overdubbed, so I am nitpicking a lot, oy... Trying damn near every mic placement with two omnis, the bottom end of my acoustic parts still doesn't translate from system to system, and the boomy Ab's on all my acoustics absolutely wreck the recordings. Still tryin tho :p
 
I started home recording purely so I would remember the tunes I wrote. I enjoyed doing it so much that it became more than that.
 
For me it was about the songs.

I've always believed that nothing can compete with a good song.

In the 80s people made a big fuss about guitar heroes and such, and that always bugged me. Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Engve Malmstein (sp?), and guys like that simply annoyed me. I couldn't get through one song, let alone the entire album.

Now, take Eddie Van Halen. He was a "guitar hero" but his band wrote great songs. The songs carried the day, not the guitar.


It simply doesn't matter what you buy or what you learn. If your songs suck, they suck. We so often forget that the listeners who don't know the technical aspects don't care. That's why they love "Brown Eyed Girl" instead of the latest "masterpiece" of some guitar hero. And I can guarantee you that many people on this website can beat the recording quality of the song "Wild Thing" or "Louie Louie", but the listeners just want a great, catchy song.


That's my goal: To write good songs.

Unfortunately, recording them has always been a struggle. I'm almost 40, and so most of the early multi-trackers were those crappy casette things that sounded pretty bad, but we tried anyway.


But, to make matters worse, I have no talent. My songs, no matter what they sound like in my brain, sound like crap in reality.


So, at this point, knowing I'm too old to be a rock star (or even get a record contract), I simply torture myself making songs that are never good enough for me, so I never post them. It'll be a cold day in Hades when I actually stop and say, "Wow, this song is great. I can't wait to post it."


I stink. But I still enjoy doing it. I just got a great new Pre-amp, and it makes my cheap crappy guitar sound insane!

Onward and awkward.
 
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