Track In A Studio Mix At Home or Track At Home Mix In A Studio

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Beaverbee

New member
I've been researching different ways to save money while still ending up with a "pro" mix using a combination or a professional studio and a home studio. I recently started looking up whether it is more beneficial to record in a studio and mix at home or do just the opposite.

Assuming that:

1. The professional studio you are using has high quality mics, preamps, and a talented, experienced engineer
2. Your home studio has medium to high quality consumer grade mics and preamps, and you are fully confident in your mixing abilities
3. Taking into account for studio monitor quality, room sound and acoustical treatment in both the tracking room and mixing room for both studios....

Which option do you feel would yield a better quality end result?
 
Beaverbee said:
3. Taking into account for studio monitor quality, room sound and acoustical treatment in both the tracking room and mixing room for both studios....
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We can't take this into account without knowing the details of both studios.
'Medium to high quality' is subjective, but if you're happy with your gear, skills and environment, just do it all at home.

If you're not happy with the environment and monitoring, do it all at the pro place or look into upgrading your setting.
 
Its not very hard to imagine the sound quality of a studio compared to a home/project studio. My question was more referring to mixing on a home DAW with tracks recorded in a professional studio or mix in a pro studio with great monitors the tracks you record at home.

I know my parameters are subjective, but give me an overall general opinion on the matter. If you NEED me to give you examples, then lets say the "pro studio" has high dollar sound treatment and neuman mics with multi thousand dollar API or Neve preamps, and the home studio has rode and shure mics, little sound treatment and ART preamps or Presonus preamps or whatever comes in their interface...
 
If the tracking studio space(s) is THAT much better, and has the gear and expertise to match....I would track there and mix at home.
I think the quality of the tracking is what sets the stage for everything that follows.
If you go the other way....you may spend a lot of time firts fixing the home tracking...before mixing.
 
miroslav said:
I think the quality of the tracking is what sets the stage for everything that follows.
If you go the other way....you may spend a lot of time firts fixing the home tracking...before mixing.
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Thank you Miroslav! This is the type of answer I am looking for. I just wanna see what this forum sees as a general consensus. I am planning on recording again soon, and want to use one place for tracking and one for mixing. Just don't know which one for what yet!
 
Thanks for qualifying the gear thing. The environment is the big concern then.


I'm not disagreeing with miroslav, but I can think of a handful of people who would (may yet) say that monitoring is 100% the most important thing. If you can't hear what you're doing, you can't track properly and then it doesn't really matter where it's mixed.

My overall general opinion is that it's totally feasible to track and home and mix elsewhere, or vice versa, but there's a limit.
If your listening/recording environment is awful, forget it.

It's just one of those things you have to judge yourself from experience.
 
Guess it also depends on what you are looking for in a final product.

The norm lately is musicians are tracking at home in their little make shift studio then coming in to finish the project.
The homegrown feel is what they are after.

But if your not looking for that homegrown feel ... then what Miro said is your best route.
 
Assuming we are talking the average bedroom studio and a studio that has a space that is either naturally acoustically pleasing or a space like Michael Wagener's place my vote goes like so:

1. Track drums at the nice studio, hire a session player if the drummer isn't up to snuff. Do step 2 if he isn't and you don't want to hire a guy.
2. Edit said tracks at the home studio.
3. Track bass at the home studio.
4. Either track guitar at home studio (if your confident in the results) or track a DI and re amp them at the nice studio.
5. Record vocals at the nice studio.
6. Mix at home or hire a guy.
7. Find someone who hasn't heard any of the process at this point to master it. Go with a completely different studio or mastering house if possible.

This is just my opinion on the matter though.
 
Thanks for the replies. Indeed, I am not after the homegrown sound at this point. I think I may just track in the studio and mix in my project studio. As far as monitoring goes, I have a semi treated room 100% dedicated for music, and my ears are Yammy HS50's. I also use a dolby surround sound for reference. I have been using my speakers for a few years avidly so I am confident I can get a good mix out of them... I am just curious as to what would be the better route.
 
Guitargodgt said:
Assuming we are talking the average bedroom studio and a studio that has a space that is either naturally acoustically pleasing or a space like Michael Wagener's place my vote goes like so:

1. Track drums at the nice studio, hire a session player if the drummer isn't up to snuff. Do step 2 if he isn't and you don't want to hire a guy.
2. Edit said tracks at the home studio.
3. Track bass at the home studio.
4. Either track guitar at home studio (if your confident in the results) or track a DI and re amp them at the nice studio.
5. Record vocals at the nice studio.
6. Mix at home.
7. Outsource the mastering.

This is just my opinion on the matter though.
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This is exactly what I was looking for... and actually the response I was hoping for. I think my plan of attack will be to track drums, guitars, and vocals at the studio. Guitar amps are good Egnater Vengeance through 1960 cabs with V30s, but I dont have awesome mics to record the guitars :/

I will DI the bass, mix at home then send to a mastering house :) I will also post some examples of the mix when it comes out. I booked some studio time first week of April so hopefully Ill have a mix sometime in the following weeks.
 
Beaverbee said:
Thanks for the replies. Indeed, I am not after the homegrown sound at this point. I think I may just track in the studio and mix in my project studio. As far as monitoring goes, I have a semi treated room 100% dedicated for music, and my ears are Yammy HS50's. I also use a dolby surround sound for reference. I have been using my speakers for a few years avidly so I am confident I can get a good mix out of them... I am just curious as to what would be the better route.
Click to expand...

Am liking Guitargodgt's approach.
 
Beaverbee said:
This is exactly what I was looking for... and actually the response I was hoping for. I think my plan of attack will be to track drums, guitars, and vocals at the studio. Guitar amps are good Egnater Vengeance through 1960 cabs with V30s, but I dont have awesome mics to record the guitars :/

I will DI the bass, mix at home then send to a mastering house :) I will also post some examples of the mix when it comes out. I booked some studio time first week of April so hopefully Ill have a mix sometime in the following weeks.
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Posting at the same time. ;)
 
Right on MoreSound. Haha now that we're at it maybe I can just track at a studio then pay one of you guys to mix it for me! lol guess it kinda defeats the purpose though :D
 
Do it all at home and spend the money saved on beer to aid the creative process?

Seriously, there's no single answer to this. An aspect not mentioned much so far is that your resources and personal abilities also come into this. If you have a big room in your house devoted to home studio work with great acoustic treatment, this might yield a different answer than if you're recording in a walk in closet. Similarly, if you've been mixing to high quality for 20 years this is a bit different than "I downloaded Audacity yesterday".

However, all things being equal, I'd be with the record in the studio, mix at home brigade. My reasons are the same as already expressed: once laid down you're stuck with the tracks you have but you can endlessly change the mix even if the acoustic treatment in your mix area is not perfect. Burn enough CDs and listen in enough different areas and you'll learn how to compensate for your room.
 
Honestly I would DI the guitars from home, same with the bass. Unless you are looking for a 3rd party critic.

Reamp at the studio, that way you are only paying to play the tracks through the amps once.

Why? Because when you are at home you are not on the clock. The only performances that I would throw on the clock are vocals and drums.
 
Guitargodgt said:
Assuming we are talking the average bedroom studio and a studio that has a space that is either naturally acoustically pleasing or a space like Michael Wagener's place my vote goes like so:

1. Track drums at the nice studio, hire a session player if the drummer isn't up to snuff. Do step 2 if he isn't and you don't want to hire a guy.
2. Edit said tracks at the home studio.
3. Track bass at the home studio.
4. Either track guitar at home studio (if your confident in the results) or track a DI and re amp them at the nice studio.
5. Record vocals at the nice studio.
6. Mix at home or hire a guy.
7. Find someone who hasn't heard any of the process at this point to master it. Go with a completely different studio or mastering house if possible.
Click to expand...

I pretty much entirely agree with this and is very similar to what our band did for our last record; Drums in studio, everything else at home. I did DI all the guitars as a safety net ontop of micing the amps and we did go back into the same studio and reamp a couple of the tracks, purely because they're selection of amps gave a much more appropriate tone for a couple of the tracks. The vocals are the only thing i'd speculate on and suggest that, really, it comes down how comfortable the singer is and what equipment you have at home. For example, our singer often cracks under pressure and was therefore much more comfortable tracking vocals at my house as he didn't have to worry about time or anyone other than us listening to him tracking vocals. Fortunately my setup for recording has always been aimed at vocals and acoustic guitars and i could borrow other mics if what i had didn't work for his voice, but even if i had a less than idea setup, to me, it was much more important to get a great vocal performance recorded ok than a shoddy vocal performance recorded really well.
 
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