Home recording

Seany

Howdy folks,

Just wondering what everyone's home recording (not pro) set up is?

I am looking to do a few more home demos with the idea of working on the in a studio at a later date and looking at different options available.

I was looking at the multitrack hard disk option as I like the idea of it being portable where I can record at different locations (studio, home, rehearsal or with friends) but have found some of these units quite restrictive (maybe the newer ones are better).

Really I would like something i could build around..to start basic and build up as time goes on if that makes sense?

Should I go for..

Something like the Korg D1600/D3200 which has up to 8 simultaneous inputs but also has usb OR CD drive for transfer of wavs that could be used to bring tracks into other software like protools.

Or am I better of biting the bullet and getting set up with decent laptop, digital mixer, and mbox/002 rack??

Basic recording at home would be acoustic guitars, vocals, piano, bass.

Or should I spend money and just go to a professional!?!

Any other suggestions?

Cheers,
Seany

i57dwun4yb1pt8

first post in a bit , as i broke both me elbows and some ribs in a cycling accident ,
getting better now though - fecking hurts !


id go with a mac lappie and external fwire drive and a good converter with built in preamps if you want to go portable - to just track in quality

at home you will need a treated mix room and good monitors , to be serious about it .


also
your band is great . really like the tunes and vibe.

Seziertisch

Are you interested in learning how to record or would you say that you are more interested in getting results? The home recording route is rewarding but won't yield results immediately. There is a bit of a learning curve.

Also depending on how you want the results to sound it can require some not inexpensive equipment. You can get good results with an M-Box, a few inexpensive mics and a bunch of plugins but depending on what you are after you might not be satisfied with the results, whereas going to a pro will probably mean that they are packing the goods in terms of gear. And bear in mind every piece of gear has a learning curve as well, as does how any combination of pieces of gear working in tandem on one source (i.e. multi-micing, mic/pre combos etc.) A pro will also know their tools and will know what to use to get what results.

The other thing going the professional route provides is, hopefully, good recording spaces. Even with an ambitious home set up if you want to record drums and get good results, unless you have a great sounding kit and a good room (either naturally good sounding or acoustically treated) no amount of fancy equipment is going to give you what you want. The same applies to other sources but to a lesser extent (there is more you can do to make the average room in a dwelling house usable as a recording location for stuff like vocals and guitars).

So if you want to get your hands dirty and learn about recording but are not expecting to be producing instantly great sounding recordings then go the home route. If getting good recordings of your tunes that you feel do full justice to them is your priority go the professional route. Even if you do decide to go the home recording route it probably isn't going to mean that you will be able to do it all yourself (drums).

Based on what I heard on your myspace, I would suggest you contact trackmixstudio on this forum. From what I have heard of his work he would probably be worth contacting. I think he does a good job of capturing solid guitar/bass/drum recordings. He also has quite a few good amps/guitars etc. A big part of a good recording is recording a good source and finding the right guitar/amp combo for a particular part for example sometimes requires having access to more than one guitar and amp.

PaulBrewer

DaDumTish wrote: »

first post in a bit , as i broke both me elbows and some ribs in a cycling accident ,
getting better now though - fecking hurts !

Sorry to hear that ..... hope you heal quickly.

hexagramer

do what i did,

once you have an interface with roughly 8 inputs you can always build on.

i think the best way to start with recording gear is to buy urself an 002 or 003 rack unit....mainly because it can cater for your little bedroom setup all the way to being the brainchild of your commercial studio

id stick with the protools/digidesign route.....expensive but feckn ALWAYS worth it. the quality from anything digidesign is always professional.

when you can, always bite the bullet. my reccomendations is to go for the 003 rack because as i said, you can build on. its already got 8 preampsbut if u want, its got an adat in which lets u add another 8 using another preamp rack. you can start recording once u got the mics and leads, it comes with protools 8 and kickass plugins free. just use any speakers untill you buyrself a pair of decent monitors, and its not hard to learn how protools works. the more you teach yourself the more you get amazed at why your 003 equipment has what it has on it.

go forth! and wreak havoc!

Seziertisch

I wouldn't necessarily recommend going the Digidesign route. The differences between Protools HD and LE are more than just track count and functionality but also in terms of sound. The software engine in LE doesn't sound as good as HD. But HD is on a par with Cubase, Logic etc. in terms of sound.

I also get the impression that if a lot of guys were starting again they would probably go for a Mac with Logic.

That said any of them would get the job done

RealEstateKing

If you're a musician as well as an engineer, Id go for the stand alone hard disk recorder route - for recording - and then import things into the computer later for mixing.

Computers are a complete pain in the arse when it comes to being creative -hard disk recorders however you can fire up in seconds, plug in a mic and be ready to go when the ideas/vibe are flowing, plus they are usually set up more like a tape machine, not like a laptop where you'd have to fire up windows, start Cubase, and assign inputs to tracks before you can do anything.

With most hard disc recorders, once you're finished you can then import things into your computer for the post production process - generally speaking, for me at least, I like to stay the **** away from computer screens, plugins and jiggery pokery when Im doing the artistic side as it's a huge distraction, when the performance and the vibe are everything. THen when I want to start pissing around EQing bass drums, I can do it later.

Seeing as you probably already have a decent enough computer hanging around the house, thats what Id recommend.

madtheory

Seziertisch wrote: »

The differences between Protools HD and LE are more than just track count and functionality but also in terms of sound.

I strongly disagree. There is no difference in sound. The engine is the same, except that LE is 32 bit floating point, HD is 48 bit fixed. Basically it's the same code running on different platforms. There's no way anyone can hear the difference, because it's swamped by Schott noise.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

realestateking makes some good points

the pc does get in the way of free flowing idea recording

its a good option to consider.

Seany

Thanks for the replies guys...

Some great stuff there!!

Seziertisch

madtheory wrote: »

I strongly disagree. There is no difference in sound. The engine is the same, except that LE is 32 bit floating point, HD is 48 bit fixed. Basically it's the same code running on different platforms. There's no way anyone can hear the difference, because it's swamped by Schott noise.

I dunno, I thought I saw some discussion of it gearslutz. My bad for uninformed posting.

dav nagle

Seziertisch wrote: »

I dunno, I thought I saw some discussion of it gearslutz. My bad for uninformed posting.

Sheeeesh! Some of us still use Pro Tools around here Seziertisch!

studiorat

madtheory wrote: »

I strongly disagree. There is no difference in sound. The engine is the same, except that LE is 32 bit floating point, HD is 48 bit fixed. Basically it's the same code running on different platforms. There's no way anyone can hear the difference, because it's swamped by Schott noise.

Indeed, but one would imagine that the electronics in the hardware of a HD system would be superior to those used in an LE rig. There's a difference in the SNR's between the two.

Wouldn't it be fair to assume that there would be less shot noise on one system than the other?

DamagedTrax

theres absolutly zero discernable differance betweeen the two but thats only going on the 1s and 0s at same sample rates. the differance between the bit rates is just a differance in headroom.

when you take into account interface and front end then thats where the sonic differances can occur... still negligible though. although HD can go up to 192khz while LE has a ceiling of 96.

pclancy

RealEstateKing wrote: »

If you're a musician as well as an engineer, Id go for the stand alone hard disk recorder route - for recording - and then import things into the computer later for mixing.

Computers are a complete pain in the arse when it comes to being creative -hard disk recorders however you can fire up in seconds, plug in a mic and be ready to go when the ideas/vibe are flowing, plus they are usually set up more like a tape machine, not like a laptop where you'd have to fire up windows, start Cubase, and assign inputs to tracks before you can do anything.

With most hard disc recorders, once you're finished you can then import things into your computer for the post production process - generally speaking, for me at least, I like to stay the **** away from computer screens, plugins and jiggery pokery when Im doing the artistic side as it's a huge distraction, when the performance and the vibe are everything. THen when I want to start pissing around EQing bass drums, I can do it later.

Seeing as you probably already have a decent enough computer hanging around the house, thats what Id recommend.

Some excellent points and pretty much how I feel right now. I simply cannot be arsed messing around with sound cards, input devices, drivers, memory and latency issues and tuning my PC to the max. I'm thinking i'm going to be much better off just buying a small digital studio for recording 2-3 people at a time on various instruments. Anything you capture can always be uploaded afterwards.

I just want to get my musical ideas down quick when they come out of my head, record jams with mates and easily multitrack. I spend all day at work tinkering with PCs, at night i just want to press a nice record button and not think about how it has to work.

At the apologetic risk of hijacking slightly-whats the best options in the e500-1000 range?

studiorat

DamagedTrax wrote: »

theres absolutly zero discernable differance betweeen the two but thats only going on the 1s and 0s at same sample rates. the differance between the bit rates is just a differance in headroom.

when you take into account interface and front end then thats where the sonic differances can occur... still negligible though. although HD can go up to 192khz while LE has a ceiling of 96.

Hardly negligible in my opinion. My first experience of using the two I thought there was a huge difference. For the whole day I couldn't believe the difference in playback of previously recorded stuff and more so stuff going to tape. Even if it were a negligible difference, 24 tracks of negligible becomes an issue very quickly.

I recently did a vocal session where we tracked with a fairly posh outboard convertor one day and returned two days later to the exact same set-up except using a 002 box as the convertor, the mic and mic pre were exactly the same. The difference was very noticible even for someone with little experience. The vocal was more sybilant, grainer sounding, not as solid sounding and had not got the bottom end of the previous convertor. There was no comparison. Maybe for electric guitars and drums and stuff it might be ok. But when you actually compare the two it's very noticable.

Recording is a very precise craft in my opinion and as such even a small improvment will build up over the various stages of the process...

DamagedTrax

studiorat wrote: »

Hardly negligible in my opinion. My first experience of using the two I thought there was a huge difference. For the whole day I couldn't believe the difference in playback of previously recorded stuff and more so stuff going to tape. Even if it were a negligible difference, 24 tracks of negligible becomes an issue very quickly.

I recently did a vocal session where we tracked with a fairly posh outboard convertor one day and returned two days later to the exact same set-up except using a 002 box as the convertor, the mic and mic pre were exactly the same. The difference was very noticible even for someone with little experience. The vocal was more sybilant, grainer sounding, not as solid sounding and had not got the bottom end of the previous convertor. There was no comparison. Maybe for electric guitars and drums and stuff it might be ok. But when you actually compare the two it's very noticable.

Recording is a very precise craft in my opinion and as such even a small improvment will build up over the various stages of the process...

thats not what i was talking about. like i said the front end can change things completly. but the sound differances in the audio engine are negligible. the bit rate differances are headroom factors.

take a pre recorded loop into HD and the same loop into LE and the output is going to be basically the same thing. thats the whole idea with DAWS - 1s and 0s dont change from system to system (or at least they shouldnt.. god knows what happened with earlier ableton releases).

anyway, if you search on GS theres a null test where logic, LE, HD and nuendo all cancelled on the same settings.

savage cold

wow are people actually saying(WRONLY) that upon play back there is a difference in le and hd behahahahaha the whole digital thing mean except for the front end exact same EXACT SAME like its all 1's and 0's dont mean to come across as a know it all but if your an engineer or just some one with a hobby you just came across as an well...not very good....

i57dwun4yb1pt8

you are certainly going to hear differences in hardware , but not in DAWS
IF ALL SETTINGS ARE THE SAME .

cant imagine the software being different.

witty username

pclancy wrote: »

Some excellent points and pretty much how I feel right now. I simply cannot be arsed messing around with sound cards, input devices, drivers, memory and latency issues and tuning my PC to the max. I'm thinking i'm going to be much better off just buying a small digital studio for recording 2-3 people at a time on various instruments. Anything you capture can always be uploaded afterwards.

I just want to get my musical ideas down quick when they come out of my head, record jams with mates and easily multitrack. I spend all day at work tinkering with PCs, at night i just want to press a nice record button and not think about how it has to work.

At the apologetic risk of hijacking slightly-whats the best options in the e500-1000 range?

I've had a Boss BR1600 for years and recorded plenty of multitracked nonsense on it. Simple to use, decent range of doodahs and whatnot. record, mix, master, burn to cd. 1100 yoyos on thomann these days. Or you could go down a step and try the BR1200 which is 900 yoyos. either way, allow for forking out for some mikes if you don't have any.

pclancy

Cool cheers for the info mate. I'm leaning towards that idea now way more then getting an maudio interface for my PC.

Seany

Thanks for all of the replies....

I ended up getting a macbook pro and digidesign mbox2. The reason for this is that the more I thought about it, the better i wanted to get using protools/logic and it is always something i can build on (002/003 rack for more inputs, stand alone pre amps, plug ins, software upgrades, etc).

Although I appreciate the point of getting the song down quickly, I'd rather spend a bit more time working on the song and getting to know more about mics I am using, placement, eq,etc which also should stand to me when recording in professional studio.

If I find that I am spending too much time setting things up, I may look at getting a separate smaller unit to capture ideas but after a week or two in, my current set up is working like a charm.

Cheers,
Seany