Separate rooms for tracking and mixing

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5stringer

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Does anyone track in one room and mixdown in a separate room? My modest home studio also serves as our practice / jam room. All of the drums and guitar gear is setup in my basement and my computer setup is in my bedroom (directly above the jam room). I was planning on using my laptop to track the instruments using headphones (too loud to set levels using monitors) then mix the entire project in my bedroom after tracking is complete. Just wondering if this is a typical layout for a home studio since I really don't have the room to build a control / isolation room adjacent to the jam room. Another option I was considering was to run my snake through the floor and try to track using my monitors in my room, but being that I play bass in the band, this would be hard to do without running up and down the stairs a hundred times. Just wondering if this is at all commonplace with home studios and what the disadvantages may be.
 
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to move your recording gear downstairs so you can run it from there while you and the others are playing?

--Ethan
 
Ethan Winer said:
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to move your recording gear downstairs so you can run it from there while you and the others are playing?

--Ethan
Click to expand...

I DO record downstairs using my laptop and interface. We typically end up with between 18 - 22 tracks of drums, guitars, bass, and vocals per song. But I do not have an isolation room so setting the levels and sound must be done using headphones. After tracking, I take the files upstairs where my mixing room is setup with acoustic tiles and bass traps and mix using monitors instead of headphones. I know that most studios have the isolation / control room in the same area as where the tracking is done and use monitors instead of headphones to do this. Does anyone else have their home studio setup this way?
 
This isn't making much sense.

How do you record? Do you have 18-22 inputs to get all those tracks in one take? Where are the levels being set - which part of the chain? What "levels" are you talking about - recording input levels or mixing?

A separate control/mix room is not uncommon but adds expense and is problematic if the "engineer" is playing with the band. The simplest solution is to have your recording and mixing station in the tracking room as well. You only have to treat one room. If you are tracking other people while they play then yes - you may want an isolated position but you need to have communication with them and visual communication helps.

It sounds like you are trying to mix on the fly like live sound FOH. Good luck with that.
 
Judging by the responses, I must need to explain further so here goes.
My basement is my jam room / party room. We record using Cubase 6 w/ a Profire 2626. All tracking is done over the course of a few days then the recording gear is put away so I can entertain w/o worrying about the gear getting destroyed. I then take the files upstairs to my "treated" room and transfer them to my Dell Workstation(also equiped with Cubase) and do my mixing there. Is this really that abnormal?
 
Instead of trying to recording levels and mic placement with headphones, I just have the performer play a bit, record it, have them stop, then play it back through the monitors. Then I adjust preamp levels and mic placement, and repeat. Unless you have an extremely well isolated control room, this is the best way to hear what the mic is hearing.
 
5stringer said:
Judging by the responses, I must need to explain further so here goes.
My basement is my jam room / party room. We record using Cubase 6 w/ a Profire 2626. All tracking is done over the course of a few days then the recording gear is put away so I can entertain w/o worrying about the gear getting destroyed. I then take the files upstairs to my "treated" room and transfer them to my Dell Workstation(also equiped with Cubase) and do my mixing there. Is this really that abnormal?
Click to expand...
Abnormal, no but what do you mean by "setting levels"? What levels are you setting?

I'm not sure what your question or "problem"/issue whatever may be. In the pro game there are mix engineers that get paid for the final mixdown and have nothing to do with tracking, aren't around when it happens and may be on the other side of the planet. This is not unusual. What are you trying to do that you aren't "getting" here?
 
Potsy24 said:
Instead of trying to recording levels and mic placement with headphones, I just have the performer play a bit, record it, have them stop, then play it back through the monitors. Then I adjust preamp levels and mic placement, and repeat. Unless you have an extremely well isolated control room, this is the best way to hear what the mic is hearing.
Click to expand...
I typically don't have my monitors down there when recording because it is only a temporary setup and because I mix in another room. I guess, based on the responses, the norm is to record and mix in the same room. I just can't leave that gear and setup out as my roommate parties down there and im worried about my gear.
 
5stringer said:
I typically don't have my monitors down there when recording because it is only a temporary setup and because I mix in another room. I guess, based on the responses, the norm is to record and mix in the same room. I just can't leave that gear and setup out as my roommate parties down there and im worried about my gear.
Click to expand...

Well, then I guess either keep doing what you're doing, or run a snake up to the bedroom and run up/down the stairs while your tracking. You'd get better recordings that way for sure, just because you'd be using the monitors for tracking (you really can't know if you like your mic placement and preamp settings if you can only hear it through headphones). Tracking well is more important than mixing if you want good sounding recordings. While it may suck to go up/down the stairs, that's your best bet for a quality finished product.
 
My setup is a bit different as I record a lot of other peoples projects and so I have a separate control / mixing room. However how I go about recording my own band may help you a bit, we record everything live except the vocals

I sound check everything with me in the control room, I get the guys to play a song or too and get the drum and guitar sounds happening (volume and mic position), I play bass so I have my amp set up in the room with them with mic and DI. After I get the other guys sorted I join in on bass, I have the bass with me in the control room and I run a line from the bass to the amp (mic / DI) in the other room. I have already set up my amp so I know how that's going, I then fine tune the bass levels and check that the amp eq is correct. I then check all the headphones are right by asking the guys and having a listen to the phones in the control room. When this is over I move into the other room with the guys.

Now I have everything sorted, my set up records onto a stand alone hard disk recorder (Tascam MX2424) I have the recorder via ethernet connected to a laptop in the recording room, that way I can start and stop the recording and watch levels if need be. Now we record a take and check the recording to see if everything is right. We then record a few takes of each song. I know you may not be using a stand alone hard disk recorder, however you can get a similar set up by using a laptop, Ipad, Iphone or notebook to control the control room computer via "Remote Desktop" and this will link via wifi.

Alan.
 
I have the exact same set up!

Yep! I do this. I run a snake through the ceiling (concealed neatly of course). Upstairs is the control room. I did this for a multitude of reasons. The main one being the fact that sometimes in heavy downpour, I'll get a tiny little trickle of water down there, which I'm always making sure is kept under control, but I just don't want my expensive electronic gear down there and cables on the floor against the wall etc. It's an old house. The drums are fine since they're on a riser and all the guitar amps and everything are on mini iso risers, guitars are on stands. It's never a puddle down there, but I just like to keep the instruments off of the basement floor.

The other reason i did this is because the way the "live/rehearsal" room is shaped, just didn't make sense for me to have a properly set up mixing desk, acoustics-wise.

It can be inconvenient running up and down, so you need to train your band member(s) how to work the recording software. Just basic things like start record, stop record, save (hopefully they know THIS one), play back and punch in. If you're wanting to track when no one's there, you can always run a vga cable down in addition to your snake and have a separate monitor (screen) downstairs. Then just use wireless mouse and keyboard (if it reaches through the floor). I have an imac with blue tooth and it's fine. Alternately you can get a "Tranzport" which can control your rig wirelessly through midi for all the recording controls and play back.

To get a headphone mix downstairs, plug one of the TRS male cable ends on your snake (hopefully it has some TRS connections) into your headphone jack on your interface or a jack on your headphone amp. When you're downstairs, plug your headphones into that corresponding female jack on the snake. Boo-ya.

Good luck.
 
It's not that deep. With very little trial and error, you can figure out where to put the mics to get the sound you want, and just put them there every time you set up.

Setting the recording levels is done with your eyes and the preamp gain knob, it doesn't matter where you are standing when you do it, as long as you can see the meter and reach the knob.

If you want to run a snake through the floor, there is nothing wrong with that. You can even monitor the band up in the bedroom and play bass in the bedroom using headphones or your monitors. (this is the way I run my studio. The cabinets are in a different room and the musician is in the control room with me, listening to the playback/rest of the band through the monitors.)

If you don't want to run up and down the stair all the time, continue to do what you are doing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

I think you are getting the responses that you are because your question comes off like you have some sort of problem with doing things the way that you are, when there is no reason to have problems doing it that way.
 
RecordingMaster said:
Yep! I do this. I run a snake through the ceiling (concealed neatly of course). Upstairs is the control room. I did this for a multitude of reasons. The main one being the fact that sometimes in heavy downpour, I'll get a tiny little trickle of water down there, which I'm always making sure is kept under control, but I just don't want my expensive electronic gear down there and cables on the floor against the wall etc. It's an old house. The drums are fine since they're on a riser and all the guitar amps and everything are on mini iso risers, guitars are on stands. It's never a puddle down there, but I just like to keep the instruments off of the basement floor.

The other reason i did this is because the way the "live/rehearsal" room is shaped, just didn't make sense for me to have a properly set up mixing desk, acoustics-wise.

It can be inconvenient running up and down, so you need to train your band member(s) how to work the recording software. Just basic things like start record, stop record, save (hopefully they know THIS one), play back and punch in. If you're wanting to track when no one's there, you can always run a vga cable down in addition to your snake and have a separate monitor (screen) downstairs. Then just use wireless mouse and keyboard (if it reaches through the floor). I have an imac with blue tooth and it's fine. Alternately you can get a "Tranzport" which can control your rig wirelessly through midi for all the recording controls and play back.

To get a headphone mix downstairs, plug one of the TRS male cable ends on your snake (hopefully it has some TRS connections) into your headphone jack on your interface or a jack on your headphone amp. When you're downstairs, plug your headphones into that corresponding female jack on the snake. Boo-ya.

Good luck.
Click to expand...

Witzendoz mentioned "remote desktop", which is an iphone app that lets you control your computer. I tried out different free app, and I think it'll come in very handy for recording myself. I have a small booth adjacent to the control room, but I still have to get up and around the drums to press record or whatever. Maybe this would save you some trips! I'm sure there are similar apps for android as well.
 
Potsy24 said:
Witzendoz mentioned "remote desktop", which is an iphone app that lets you control your computer. I tried out different free app, and I think it'll come in very handy for recording myself. I have a small booth adjacent to the control room, but I still have to get up and around the drums to press record or whatever. Maybe this would save you some trips! I'm sure there are similar apps for android as well.
Click to expand...
Man oh' man, that's sounds cool...if only I had an iphone! haha
 
RecordingMaster said:
Man oh' man, that's sounds cool...if only I had an iphone! haha
Click to expand...

Remote desktop can be run from a second computer if you don't have an Iphone, it can be an old clunker of a machine as the processing is still done in the machine located in the control room, the machine running the remote is only used as a remote control. A cheap notebook computer could do it. If you don't have wifi just run a ethernet cable.

Alan

P.S, I don't have an Iphone either.
 
witzendoz said:
Remote desktop can be run from a second computer if you don't have an Iphone, it can be an old clunker of a machine as the processing is still done in the machine located in the control room, the machine running the remote is only used as a remote control. A cheap notebook computer could do it. If you don't have wifi just run a ethernet cable.

Alan

P.S, I don't have an Iphone either.
Click to expand...

Well I DO have a terribly horribly aweful Acer Netbook running Linux. I've been toying around trying to get it to work as an aux monitor screen (so I can have my PT edit window on the small one and my Digital mixer view on the large main screen). I have an old clunker PC in the tracking room as well that we use to reference songs during rehearsal and such. I know that soon I'll find a good way to do this, but so far I haven't found a way to get "remote desktop" working between PC and Mac nor Linux and Mac. Also having trouble connecting the Linux to the iMac just as an aux monitor screen. So remote desktop on the PC downstairs (if I can figure it out for PC>Mac) would be the best option.
 
No smart phone at all? Man, I thought they barely made regular phones anymore. There are probably plenty of free phones that will run an app like that.
 
Potsy24 said:
No smart phone at all? Man, I thought they barely made regular phones anymore. There are probably plenty of free phones that will run an app like that.
Click to expand...

********** Torch. It's also extraordinarily terrible and I automatically assume that no RIM product would sync or be compatible with an Apple product. Apps on this thing are so limited and really bad. But it's a free phone from work, so I can't really complain! :D
 
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