Home Recording's Dirty Little Secret

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob's Mods
  • Start date Start date

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
I keep seeing this thread pop up. I think I posted in it ten years ago but don't remember what I said. Probably too much, heh.

Re recording quality, I think it's a performance thing more than a recording thing.
 
I was a slow learner. But over time, no matter what gear I bought, it never sounded like the professional recording of it.

Education is always painful - and expensive.

But it costs even more to remain ignorant.
 
OMG you bastards can run on and on and on and on.

No, I never xpected to hit big with any tune I wrote. I love that people want to jam with me but that all depends on where and when.
 
Most are disappointed because they think, and are told that equipment, better, is where pro sounding recordings come from, and they never learn that 75 percent of the great sound is the room, the recording space. Many check out with never learning this, the ones who stay long enough eventually figure it out. The room is the big secret. You must have bass frequency control or you won't get pro sounding recordings. You must control flutter echo and comb filtering, or your recordings are left to hope for rare luck that you might be in a spot in a room where all things happen great just by chance.

If you have a good room, then you can learn to get semi pro recording fairly quickly. Good equipment and engineering are icing on the cake and they make you one of the big boys, but having a proper sounding room is most of the battle. If you don't have one, you will surely never be really satisfied.
 
Yeah...having a good room...nobody knows that shit at the start
 
Not to Nay-Say

Not to be a Nay-Sayer, cause I understand where you are coming from, but when I first started it was easy to get frustrated or wonder why it doesn't sound like the Chili Peppers, but after much practice I had friends with bands ditch the studios to have me record them with my little set up.

It can be done. Just remember artists like Imogen Heap and Moby record in their bedrooms.

Have I reached Butch Vig status yet? No, but who can get him anyways? And, he started like us too.
 
I anticipated being able to capture the sonic quality of a professional studio since I had a fair amount of professional studio time in by the time I got into home recording. The engineering basics were nothing new to me. My biggest stumbling block is my own performing skills and musicianship. The second biggest issue is the quality of the components in the signal chain. I am of the opinion that if a recordist has top quality equipment than a top quality signal will make it to the capturing device whether its a digital or analog recorder.

I don't consider my equipment to be top quality but more like medium high quality. However much of what I have is better than what I used in the professional settings of 20 years ago. So my aim is to at least duplicate the sound quality of my professional studio recordings. This is something I've been able to master.

There are so many modern recordings whose sound is so amazing that I realize that it is being created on equipment that is only available to huge equipment budgets.
 
Bob's Mods said:
Lets have a show of hands....how many of you got interested in home recording thinking you'd be able to make home recordings that would sound similar to the recordings of your favorite commercial artists....and were sadly disappointed after spending much money, time and effort in an attempt to do so? This is directed at the average home recordist of moderate means....not the guys who have decked out home studios.
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From the start (in the mid 1970's) I got good results.

But I did not over-reach myself.

I bought the best tape recorder and microphones I could afford and concentrated on acoustic music in a live acoustic.

I built up over the years from there.

I still specialise in acoustic music in a live acoustic - though my equipment list is a lot more nowadays - but my early recordings still sound great and I am not ashamed of them at all.

The first CD I recorded is still available on Amazon and is very highly regarded.

But I'm not a musician, I only record other people.
 
moresound said:
John.............. what is the name of your first CD?

:cool:
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The first CD I recorded was John Lenehan playing Satie.

son_of_the_stars.gif
satie.gif


Erik Satie - Son Of The Stars
Debut disc originally issued by EARTHSOUNDS in 1991 and reissued in 1998 on the Classic FM/ BMG "Full works" series.

Review:
Satie Piano Works
(BMG/Classic FM)

He shows a penetrating insight into this wayward composer, (Erik Satie) and brings to the music a personal sensitivity and tenderness that is at once evident in the piece that opens his recital. What follows does not disappoint..... . There are many things in Lenehan's recital that I would not want to be without, such as his moving playing of the "Réverie du Pauvre", his thoughtful account of "Je te veux", and the witty performance of "Le Piege de Meduse"

GRAMOPHONE


It's still available from Amazon UK HERE and from Amazon USA HERE.

My wife still loves this CD and plays it over and over again - despite the fact that I recorded it, it's probably the most played CD in our collection.


Technical details if you want: A pair of Sennheiser MKH 20 omni microphones - quite close as the producer wanted an intimate feel to the recording - recorded onto a Sony PCM-F1 digital recorder. The piano was an 80-year old Steinway concert grand and the venue was Farnham Maltings in Surrey (UK).
 
If I had recorded my last album in a professional studio, I wouldn't have sold any more copies than I have with the product I created.

What's the point?
 
Supercreep said:
If I had recorded my last album in a professional studio, I wouldn't have sold any more copies than I have with the product I created.

What's the point?
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And having listened to said album, I'd be willing to bet not a soul would say "This wasn't recorded in a 'pro' studio".
 
I wasn't expecting it at all, until I started doing it. I found that when I recorded a musician with a professional level of musicianship, even with low quality stuff which is what I'm starting out with. After doing some research I believe that I can create recordings that are ALMOST as good as some of the commercial recordings out there. I will never expect to get 100% there even if I do somehow get a decked out home studio, because I know I don't have the skills of the top engineers out there.
I do believe that I can make very high quality and enjoyable stuff, good demo quality. I have had people tell me that my recordings are like stuff they'd hear on the radio, or would buy and listen to, which is cool. In other words if they did hear it on the radio they wouldn't question the quality, which isn't surprising considering some the terrible quality stuff being played out there.
 
At the time they were made, I thought my first recordings were pretty good. Now, I think my new recordings don't sound too bad, and they're a whole galaxy-load better than my first ones. Of course, I've gained some years' experience in between; plus my last recording was done with Audacity, and my first several were on a TASCAM Porta07, and later a TASCAM 244. I still use the same Radio Shack microphones, but I get little bit more out of them than I used to.
 
The gap between ametuer musicians and professional musicians is definately closing as far as audio quality is concerned, largly due to affordable DAWs. I believe Frank Zappa and Todd Rundgren recorded "at home" but you wouldnt think of it that way because they had alot of the same gear available as most commercial studios. I recorded at Foghats Boogie Hotel, which was basically a big house with lots of high end gear. "Professional" and "Commercial" only mean that money/profit is involved. Great music can be made and recorded anywhere.
 
PDP said:
The gap between ametuer musicians and professional musicians is definately closing as far as audio quality is concerned, largly due to affordable DAWs. I believe Frank Zappa and Todd Rundgren recorded "at home" but you wouldnt think of it that way because they had alot of the same gear available as most commercial studios. I recorded at Foghats Boogie Hotel, which was basically a big house with lots of high end gear. "Professional" and "Commercial" only mean that money/profit is involved. Great music can be made and recorded anywhere.
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Yes and no.

Equipment, in itself, actually means very little.

The important thing is the expertise of the operator.

Give a professional photographer a cheap Box Brownie and he can produse an amazing photograph.

Give the man in the street the most expensive and high quality camera on the market and he will produce something mediocre at best.

Same with music - yes, all the new DAW stuff and the like helps - but in the end it all comes down to the expertise of the user.

Don't get sucked in by the fact that you can afford all this amazing stuff that you will produce an amazing end result without really learning the craft.
 
PDP said:
Yes, It always comes down to the craft.
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+1

...i've always believed this

you can have the lousiest equipment and still make something sound grand if you're crafty enough and love doing what you do
 
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