Practically Big Time

Building a home studio like setup #3 won’t be cheap. Spending what’s necessary for such a setup means either that you’re a professional (or want to be), you’ll be charging to use it, or you’re a very serious hobbyist. However, if you take the time to learn how to use the equipment properly, you’ll be able to turn out some beautiful sounds.

Here’s what you need:

Everything from the first two setups: A PC with plenty of software, a good audio card, CD burner, Net connection, external hard drive, MIDI interface, MIDI keyboard or sound mod-ule, microphone, headphones. Plus:

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Mixer (but be aware that more and more musicians are working without one; see discussion)

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More microphones, preferably a pair of high quality condensers

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High quality microphone pre-amp

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Acoustic treatment

Oh baby, baby. With this much equipment—and the skill to use it artistically—you wouldn’t be practically big time. You’d be big time. This list is the core of even the most high-end dio. The difference between the desktop setup and the big budget studio is that the big stu-dio will have six pairs of Neumann microphones, one pair of which is specially enhanced, and they’d use them in a room designed by an acoustician flown in from Dallas, and there would an espresso machine. The home user would have only one pair of Neumanns, just some acoustic baffles to deflect noise, and an overused Mr. Coffee machine.

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Figure 11.8

With a desktop studio like that in setup 3, you’re ready to create some sweet audio.

But is there an audio difference? Put someone who cares in the mixer’s seat of that desk-top setup, spend plenty of time tweaking and mixing (you can take more time since the studio clock isn’t ticking), and then listen carefully to the finished product. In some cases you won’t be able to hear any difference at all.

The piece of gear that helps setup 3 go several rungs up the production ladder is the mixer.

Nothing big, perhaps just a 12-channel Mackie. The real brains of the setup remains the PC, and all the critical recording, editing, and mixing is done within this box, but a mixer enables you to route signals with greater ease and sophistication. It gives you more choices for combining your outboard gear, MIDI modules, and microphones (and helps set up a monitor mix for the headphones). Also, many of today’s prosumer mixers come with built-in compressors and effects units, which add new colors to your palette.

However, the mixer (which can be a major expense) is an item that even upper-level home sound designers are now working without. We wouldn’t be surprised if external hardware mixers gradually go the way of the Brontosaurus. A mixer’s most important functions—pro-viding inputs and outputs and aiding signal routing—are often done less expensively and just as effectively by an audio card/software combination. If you have a sound card with, say, 12 inputs and outputs, or even just 6 inputs and outputs, you could plug everything into the card and do all the routing with software. Before you make the leap to buying a mixer, think about spending more on a sound card with extra inputs and outputs, and get-ting a audio program with a built-in mixer—which most of the better programs have.

PARTIILET’S STARTBUILDING

Figure 11.9

This studio’s motto is “Come with your ideas…leave with a CD!”

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E E

Prosumer is one of the vague terms you’ll run across in music gear catalogs. A piece of gear that’s referred to as prosumer is considered nearly professional quality, but is priced for the consumer market. It’s hard to say exactly what that means, but generally speaking, it means the manufacturer has put more bells and whistles on it, and for audio gear, it should have S/PDIF inputs and outputs.

Hot Link: Le Home Studio (http://perso.club-internet.fr/krem) This home studio is in France (see Figure 11.9). Staffed by Phillipe Genestie and Remy Katan, they’re ready for business.

Connected to your mixer is an amplifier, which powers your speakers. (But also remember that you can buy active monitors—speakers with amplification built in—to avoid the expense of a speaker amp.) The speakers provide an element that sometimes gets forgot-ten in the desktop world: an accurate monitor. To mix, to artfully record and edit music, you need to hear what you’re doing—really well. It’s tough to make accurate and precise adjustments to the acoustic guitar’s reverb level if you’re listening on so-so computer speakers.

The most deluxe desktop setups have full-size monitors as well as near fields, which are smaller speakers placed close to the recordist, and hence are less affected by room acoustics. It’s also ideal to have a third speaker setup, a really small beat-up pair that maybe your dog gnaws on. This multiple monitor setup provides a variety of listening per-spectives. Music sounds a little bit different (or a lot different) on every pair of speakers;

you want your mix to sound good on the sweet speakers as well as the 4-inch Radio Shack specials.

You might be surprised to see outboard gear on this list. You can certainly work without this hardware help if you need to cut costs. These tasks—like delay or compression—can be done with software, and done much more cheaply. Still, it’s nice to have a Lexicon or other hardware effects box to add another dimension to your mix. It can be convenient to not have to route everything through software.

PARTIILET’S STARTBUILDING

Hot Link: Tweakheadz (http://www.tweakheadz.com)

Rich the Tweakmeister’s site is a must for those assembling their own audio setup (see Figure 11.10) .

Figure 11.10

It even describes how to get some scary samples out of a squeaky chair—now that’s home ingenuity.

Next on our list is the microphone preamplifier, often called a mic pre. A good mic pre makes all the difference. It adds color to the sound of your recording, boosting dimensions like warmth and brightness. A good mic pre in combination with a high-end mic—posi-tioned properly—is what makes great recordings sound so ear-catching. (Good musicians help too, but you can always fix their problems in the mix, can’t you?)

Figure 11.11

If you’re brave enough to record a full drum set in your living room, look at ClearSonic’s line of acoustic baffles.

A DAT machine appears on the equipment list, although the days of the DAT machine might be numbered. In a world dominated by digital file formats and CDs, we’d be leery of investing in a DAT machine unless you’re really serious. But if you work with a lot of col-laborators, the need for a DAT will come up.

As for acoustic treatment, this is usually the desktop recordist’s downfall. It’s not likely that your bedroom, your living room, or your basement can be turned into an acoustically per-fect environment. But you can get part of the way there with the help of a carefully placed acoustic baffle or two. Some home-based sound designers actually use the flaws in the home environment to create interesting recordings. Try recording the vocalist in the bath-room for that boxy reverberant sound, or out in the garage to add some serious bath-room tone.

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Hot Link: Baffles for Sound Separation (http://www.clearsonic.com/) With the right acoustic treatment, a home environment can sound similar to a pro studio. Visit the ClearSonic site (see Figure 11.11) to explore some of your options.

In document The Secrets of Digital Studio (Page 182-187)