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[Johnny B]

The man said 5 to $9K for budget.

For that, he could get a pretty good little system going, but don't skimp on the headphones. Nice and portable too.

57's for sure, got have those, get 2 or three. Entire albums have been tracked with just 57's.    

Sounds to me like he wants something he can pack up and take with him.

Hmmm, a rack with wheels? Mic case/locker thingee too? Cable reel? Maybe a little snake instead.

And a roadie to move it all. Cool.

Just kidding.

Seriously, Bill, what can he get for monitors in his budget?

What version of Mac are you considering?
How big a chunk of the budget will that take?

Damn, I almost forget, it's my first rule of computer buying, "Software First," then you figure out the box to run it on.

Do you want to do a lot of midi? I think you'll find some software is better for midi-heavy apps than others.

Are you using any audio software in school?

What are you learning in school and what are you majoring in?

Do you play a musical instrument?

Have you ever used any audio software at all?

Ever clean toilets in a studio?

Are you willing to do that before they ever let you near a potential client?  

Ah, the questions are endless.

I think some more information is called for.

But the good news is that there are great people here who will give you really solid information. Unlike the worthless drivel I just posted.



     

[Bob Olhsson]

Drums is one place where a real studio and a lot of high-end gear is going to make a huge difference. I would go for a few really high quality channels at home and hire a studio and a good engineer for drums. You'll learn a lot more and make some really valuable and important contacts.

[Level]

For monitors, he could look toward the blue sky monitors. The certainly translate very well.

[Max Foreman]

Wow, thanks for all the help guys.

To answer a few of your questions, I currently own an iBook purchased in the past year, it runs OSX and I don't consider it part of my budget. Yes, I do need something portable. The only studio on campus (there are none in town) belongs to the electronic music dept and you need to be a minor to use it (believe me, I'm trying). As for my experiecnce, I'm a classically trained pianist, I play guitar and drums competently, and I can fiddle around on an upright bass. My experience with the software is limited to the few times I've been in the studio and watched an engineer use it.

Pardon me for being naive, but I had no clue monitors were so essential. I was planning to use a nice pair of headphones to play back recordings.

Another naive question: what is the difference between a master and a mix down? Is mastering just cleaning the track up?

[captain54]

Max Foreman wrote on Wed, 28 July 2004 17:09

The Protools LE setup sounds intriguing (I'm planning on using a Mac by the way), but there are some things I've heard that are unattractive. Firstly, the Mbox is out of the question because it doesn't have enough inputs to effectively mic a drum kit. I'm unfamiliar with the 002 rack, but the digi 002, from what I remember, is unnecessarily expensive.  Thanks.

I have an Mbox, and there's nothing about it that I would recommend....you get two preamps, software, and set of converters for less than $500....what kind of quality do you think a money grubbing company like Digidesign is going to give you for that kind of coin...??   the sounds I got when I recorded into my Portastudio or vs-880 are about the same, maybe a little better...

the same goes for the Digi 002...you think you're getting a lot of bang for the buck, but you're not...so you get to use "pro tools"...big deal...I could get the same quality with a set of budget preamps, sound card and PC I scrounged up on Ebay for about half the money as the OO2

there are so many options out there its ridiculous....In the home studio game, you just have to bypass all the hype and marketing and shop smart....the focus should really be on some better quality front end analog stuff and the instruments, microphones, rather than the software and audio interface...

believe me, I've been down this road for years....I've had umpteen different software platforms, sound cards, digital recorders, etc, and in the end, the biggest difference makers were things like room treatment, monitors, mic placement, microphones, engineering skils, and front end gear rather than software, audio interfaces, and plug-ins...

[Level]

Quote:

Pardon me for being naive, but I had no clue monitors were so essential. I was planning to use a nice pair of headphones to play back recordings.

Studio monitors are supposed to tell you exactly what you are working with. If you have a set of monitors that are heavy in certain areas, light in others...you will be compensating for their flaws and in the compensation, your work can sound "non musical" or "unnatural" when played back over different systems.

Even with finer monitors, experience in learning the translation between what you hear in your studio VS what it will sound like on other systems must be practiced. Once you map out how the sound with your studio monitors relate to other systems, good judgments in balance can be made.

Headphones usually do not make good monitors for reference due to the fact, you are not hearing the sound as it propagates through a room. You can have something that sounds wonderful on one pair of headphones and truly awful on many loudspeaker systems. Many headphones exaggerate the audible spectrum in ways that allow for poor value judgments in your mixes. It is essential to put some "air" between yourself and the sound.

Quote:

Another naive question: what is the difference between a master and a mix down? Is mastering just cleaning the track up?

The master or Final 'mastered' work is for the consumer realm. The goals of mastering are:
A.Editing the heads and tails.
B.Taking the work out of the professional realm and into the consumer realm.
C. Adjusting the level and EQ of the works to coincide with consumer systems.
D. Having another set of unbiased ears to hear your work from another perspective.
E. Assuring the product is the best it can be.

The mixdown is simply your art and balancing of the work to provide the most natural representation of the artists. Mixdowns usually need the experience of a well trained mastering engineer to 'catch issues' before they get to the consumer. Well talented mixing engineers present works that are a pleasure for the mastering engineer as She/He will not need to do manipulation...rather simply convert the format and provide the proper spacing needed for manufacture and very light balancing of the mix. The finest mixes usually do not need any balancing at all!

When one works on a project for an extended time, it is certainly possible for them to become blind to rather simple issues. The mastering engineer is trained to listen for things that many recordists and mixdown engineers miss.

[studiomusic]

I would see if I could 'assist' in the one studio on campus. Just hang out and offer to go on food runs etc. Learn as much as you can!
I am mentoring 2 guys now that originally came to me to record a rap album (never saw the light of day). They assist me in studio duties (bathroom cleaning anyone?) and I show them what I'm doing and why I'm doing it when there's a client.
One has saved up $2000 to get a little rig. So I went to Ebay and bought him a Mac, TM-D1000 mixer, Mbox, 2080, an ok mic, a pair of MSP5's and a midi keyboard controller (I threw in stuff like cables , midi interface and 19" screen that I had laying around gratos).
It's not the top of pro gear (better than what I started out with), but it works well and he is learning TONS by himself at home. When he gets a beat or song down, he can bring it in to the main studio to work on the good stuff.
Now when he gets more money, he can buy the 'real' stuff, but in the mean time, he is working today and gaining experience.

[ted nightshade]

Prepare to get your butt kicked- this stuff is HARD! I've been through several nervous breakdowns and a lot of gear, and pretty much take this one day at a time these days... there are lots easier ways to get an album recorded, and playing music is a far better pastime for a musician. I can't figure out DAWs to save my life, so much more complicated than is necessary for me, so many ways to ruin the sound. Computers and music just do not go together for me. Computers and shop talk, well, OK.

Room acoustics continues to wipe the mat with me. I can't get up the heart to put tons of absorbtion all over everything and kill it all dead when what I really need is a huge gorgeous live acoustical space with lots of diffusion...

Think on it good and hard before you get deeper into this mess! I'm pretty deeply hooked now, but could be I would be a lot closer to realizing my musical dreams if I had never tried to record myself beyond diagnostics- i.e., how's the performance? And you don't need a DAW to do that, just a minidisc'll do you fine.

[Oliver]

Hi Max and All. I'm in a somewhat similar boat. I don't want to hijack the thread though so just ignore me if my questions stray off-topic. I'll be finishing recording school here in Montreal in September and will then be moving back to Connecticut. Hopefully I'll be able to find a studio to clean and start really learning in. I've got a G4 tower and recently bought an MBox. I'm not particularly impressed with the build or sound quality but for $360 (musician's friend blem) it's a pretty cheap start. Also, if you're interested in making any electronic music the MBox comes with Reason Adapted which can be upgraded to the full version for $250 (as opposed to $400). I was planning on purchasing Reason so overall it's not a bad deal for me. MOTU Digital Performer is really good for MIDI but not so great for audio editing, in my limited experience. At about $500 it might be a good start if you want to mix MIDI work with a limited amount audio.
As for headphones... my intention was to use a good pair of phones (of which I have several) and a cheap pair of monitors for mixing but that's just a bad joke at this point. Listen to the advice of others and mix on monitors, use headphones to check your mix maybe, along with as many other sources/rooms as you have access to.
So, my budget is smaller than Max's but I don't plan to be recording drums much so I can probably set aside up to 2K for monitors if it's worth it. Is there a great leap in quality between $1000 monitors and $2000 monitors? I've been eyeing the little ADAMs and Dynaudios but the only ones I've spent any time with are NS10Ms, M-Audio SP-8s with the Sub, and passive Alesis 1s. I'm not really thrilled with any of them.
Any recommendations for a sub $800 multi-pattern mic? Any rec's for relatively inexpensive mics for brass and woodwinds (Alto sax in particular)?
Thanks,
Oliver.

[saxist]

I think the Audio-Technica 4050 is an excellent mic under $800.  The C414 is another good choice, IMO; if you can stretch a little further, the Neumann TLM103 is also good.  None of them is going to win head-to-head with really classy mics (U47, U87, etc.), but they're all pretty good.  I play saxophone; out of these three, I prefer the 414 on my horn.

I heard the Alesis ProLinear 820DSP recently.  One of the studios in KC just bought a pair (they're now running two sets of nearfields in addition to their mains).  I agree that the Alesis M1s are no great shakes, but these are really worth a listen.  I was very, very impressed, especially given the cost.  Again, I don't think they'll stand against ADAMs or Dynaudios, but they're also going for something like a third the price.  I haven't heard anything in that price range that compares favorably with them.

Good luck,
Eric H.

[ted nightshade]

Without a room with excellent acoustics to listen in, you're pretty much screwed as far as monitoring- you may manage some kind of idea of what's on tape, but I couldn't recommend twiddling with the sound under such circumstances, even with great monitors. That's all the rage though...

Advantage of headphones is that they pretty much take the room out of the picture. I think it's very possible that you could learn to get those mixes to translate just as easily (read, not very easily at all) as pretty-good monitors in a so-so room. And you can get excellent headphones for much less than excellent monitors, and most things in life are cheaper than a really decent room to work in.

good luck!

[aZidjunky]

  just wanted to open a new thread with basically the same topic...
oh my...

im also doing an audio engineering kinda school and planning to build some small home studio...blablabla

what is this here, meeting of the recording noobs?? j/k

well for me this quote just sums it up

Quote:

Now when he gets more money, he can buy the 'real' stuff, but in the mean time, he is working today and gaining experience.

the most important thing is to start working at all. no matter what gear or quality. of course i wanna make some quality records but as students the starting budget isnt quite big...and yea get into studios as often as possible.

sry for not so on topic, whatever

2cents

[natpub]

Just wanna jump in here about the rooms.

Monitors are all fine and good. Recording chains and mics are all just peachy. But, there are two paths we see when looking at the last few decades of recording: Dead rooms with fake reverb, or real rooms.

Weather you are tracking, mixing, or mastering, if the rooms are bad, then all you are working towards is a nice sharp replication of bad rooms.

I strongly hold that good demos can readliy be made at home, and damping unpleasant frequency anomolies may be best served by making things somewhat dead. In the end, we may resort then to artifical reverberation. So it goes. Convience replaces devotion. The worst thing is, so much of our overcompressed and processed demos are ending up as mainline product.

However, I equally believe, there is no shoving aside of the classic studio and beautiful sounding spaces.

For final recordings, if space does not take part, then you may as well get the cheapest mic you can, and throw away any idea of taking the listener inside the music experience. That would be sad. Alas, in many ways, it is already happening. Yet, there are so many here and elsewhere, who hold strong to the ideals of giving listeners a deep experience.

Teaching listeners that falsified reality is as good as the true thing is about as moral as the current drive for virtual reality online, where someday soon, sex will be had via wires and buttons. What a pity.

I am sometimes disheartened that the corporate world would teach our children to prefer plastic over pasta. But, not for long


Regards,

KT

[cjogo]

 

Used or Low Net

Roland VS 2480 CD   $1500+      Automated board/effects/burner
Event 20/20 bas       450       Monitors (pasive)
Kurzweil K2Vx         450+      for sequencing/samples/drums
Rude-ROde-AT-CAD    75-400      mics for vocals-cabs


Master within the 2480..or >>> Xtras a decent EQ/Comp ====== DBX Quantum or Behringer DEQ 2496 :  $200+ or a Finalizer  $250+

Xtras ~~~ Mic PRes   USED under a $1000^^ Manley DVC.. Great RIver... Buzz...TC Gold..Grace...TLAudio...M AUdio..FMR...Joe Meek..Aphexube..many more in the above price range.

Maybe a Boss JS  drum/accompaniment --plenty of good accompaniment sounds and easy to arrange with for $100+

A few headphones $20-75

Accoustic supplies for the studio walls, etc.

I think we are well under budget

[ted nightshade]

Great post, Natpub!

I will heartily recommend this: Get a nice little couple channels of portable rig together, find beautiful rooms, and record them. You get the gorgeous, irreplaceable sound of a nice room, and the sense of occasion from making the trip. And much more inspired performances- people thrive on hearing beauty coming back to them from the walls.