Starting a studio- what do i need?

[lpdeluxe]

I don't know that anyone has mentioned the most important thing...which is seat time: hours and days and weeks and years spent working with your gear and recordings and fixing mistakes and screwing up and salvaging and trashing and calling people up and saying, sorry, we've got to record that again.

And I'll bet, that if you go ahead with this, that the gear you own in 5 years will look very little like what you start with. Constant upgrades are a fact of life.

This is not to discourage: just remember that, whatever gear you buy, it won't run itself, the manual (if any) won't tell you how to get the best out of it, and none of it has the people skills necessary to accomplish a recording using human musicians with all their frailties & foibles (and yours, too!).

Go for it. You won't get it all in a week, or a month, or a couple of years. A lot of us here have been at it for a lifetime and parts of it --probably most parts of it-- are still challenging.

 

[Milkfaj]

Y'know, when you throw out a hypothetical question like this on a board like this, it's like throwing so much chum to the sharks.
/DA

I noticed that- Being new to this site, i was taken a little off guard. but you said it- its a niche market Im aiming for. I really apriciate your support. All the earlier discouragement and warnings have paid off and im finally getting some good gear advice and finding some like-minded people. i cant wait to get this thing going.

One other little puzzle i have in the back of my mind is how im going to record my own band- a three peice with elec. guitar, drums and... Casio Keyboard!? I was thinking i could get a DI box and also mic and amp and try to blend the signals with the casio. I need a good preamp and compressor too i imagine... what would you guys do?

 

[mshilarious]

I was thinking of using the AKG C1000 for hi hat, I dont know if i can afford to put another SM81 in my budget, unless i ditch the C3000, which i suppose i could do. i dont know much about that mic anyway.

You don't really need 3 SDCs. Just toss the C1000. If you really want another vocal mic, skip the C3000, and just get 3 57s, and get an SM7 or EV RE20. That's still a decent start even for a live band.

 

[ryanlikestorock]

I'd start by spending a week searching the internet for "the best way to record (instrument)" threads. Look for guitar, drums, piano, vocals, and whatever else you think you'll be recording fairly often. Spend a day or two on every instrument, just doing research. You'll see patterns in what professionals are using in terms of mic, preamp, compression, reverb settings and you should get some idea of the range of quality available. Search every piece of gear on ebay to find out more about each piece.

Also, visit 20-30 studio websites and look up every piece of gear they have. Google search for "(gear), review" to see what the critics are saying.

With a budget of 8-10k, I'd find 8 solid channels of preamp (a recording quality mixer will do - not a mackie), a Motu 828 mkII and a laptop with Cubase or something like that, and a handful of mics that do what you need them to do. You can't really go wrong with 2 SM57s, a d-112, a few Studio Projects LDCs and SDCs and a few cheaper, more experimental mics - pzms and stuff like that. If you have money left over, get one really really nice preamp like an Avalon or Universal Audio strip.

Don't skimp out on monitors. I have a pair of the M-Audio BX8s that have a lot of bang for the buck, but they're probably the first thing I'd upgrade if I was going to step up to the next level.

If you insist on analog, expect to spend a lot of money. Or, pick up one of the Tascam 238 cassette machines. With nice mics and preamps, they don't sound half bad... well, maybe half bad, but not fully bad.

 

[ryanlikestorock]

Oh yeah, once you have this stuff- record as much as you can and don't be afraid to try new things to get the sounds you want and to get the best performance out of the band. A great performance recorded with $20 mics is a better record than a horrible performance with all the gear in the world.

 

[LemonTree]

here's my HOBBY studio....

D.A.W.

PIV 3.0Ghz
Asus P4P 800-E Deluxe
1 Gig Kingmax DDR400
Maxtor 60Gig 7200rpm 8Meg cache system disk
Maxtor 160Gig 7200rpm 8Meg cache recording disk
Matrox Dual head 32Meg AGP video card
Dual 17" TFT displays
NEC 16x CD/DVDRW
19" 4U Rackmount Antec case with Zalman silent cooling

SOUND CARDS/CONVERTORS

Delta 1010 24Bit/96KHz AD/DA
2xDelta 410 24Bit/96KHz AD/DA
giving 12in/24out

SOFTWARE

Cubase SX 2.0
Adobe Audition 1.0
Wavelab 4.0
Soundforge 6.0
iZotope Ozone 2
T-Racks
Waves gold bundle
Digital phishphones
Antres Tube
Antres mic modler
(more that I never use and can't remember off hand)

CONSOLE

1987 Allen & Heath Saber 24/16/16/2 recording console
with full meter bridge and rackmount PSU.


HARDWEAR

M-Audio TAMPA Mic Pre
Behringer V-Amp Pro
Lexicon MPX100 Dual channel processor
Alesis Microverb III
Behringer Composer Dual comp/limiter/gate/expander
Valley Gatex 4 channel gate/expander
Countreyman Type 85 FET Direct Box


MICROPHONES

ElectroVoice RE 20 (1)
Studio Projects B1 (2)
Shure SM58 (1)
Shure SM57 (2)
Octava MC 012 (2)


MONITORING SYSTEM

Wharfdale Diamond Pro 8.2a active nearfield monitors
Audio Technica ATH M40fs Headphones (2)
Behringer PowerPlay Pro HA4700 headphone distribution system

RECORDING/MIXDOWN

16x NEC CD/DVDRW
Sony MDS-JE320 MiniDisk Recorder
*************************************************************

I think I wass somewhere around the £18K mark before I stripped everything out to start the acoustic treatment of the walls....I budgited £2K for that and I'm short....way short. I think that's about $30K american at todays exchange rates