Recording set-up opinions

Frankiestylee

I had earmarked €2000 to do an album this year. I know that's a tiny amount for an album but I know a good engineer/producer who was going to do it on the cheap. Problem is he's moving abroad very soon and he's too busy to fit me in.

Now I'm left in the situation that I can't afford anyone that's renowned to be good, I don't really know another young engineer that I'd trust, and realistically I can't expect someone to give me the time I need for the money I have. I was planning on recording the vox, guitar and bass as normal and then use reason for drums and additional production... so I'd need someone willing to put in the time on the production end of things (obviously need someone a bit creative too).

Anyhows, I'm thinking this is too tall an order so I'm considering using the €2000 to buy myself some equipment and then do it myself. I know it'll take me much longer to get it up to the standard I want, but I don't mind investing my time in myself.

So now... what to buy?

Ideally I'd like to spend around €1500 with a max of €2000.

In the past I've used adobe audition with an Edirol UA-25 (2 input external soundcard).
I have the usual live dynamic mics (sm58, beta57, sm57), a 768mb ram laptop, a midi keyboard controller... and that's usually what I use to record.

So what else do I need to fill in the gaps? I take it I need a nice condensor mic, but what else? Preamp? Monitors? Is the UA-25 good enough or should I try and upgrade to a pro-tools rig or something?

Really... if you had my budget and you wanted to get the best home recording you could, what would you get?

I know I'm not going to produce a technically amazing recording, but then I'm not a huge fan of all the uber-polish these days. I like the recordings to have a bit of a quirky soul as that's how my music kinda goes.

Niall - Dahlia

Hey Frankie (Marshall Jackhammer, right? )

Are you willing to take the time to source 2nd hand gear?

1,500-2,000 isn't alot if you're buying new, especially if you'll need monitors (which you will) and potentially a new soundcard, but if you have the time and patience to get a good deal 2nd hand I don't see why you couldn't put something decent together.

You'll get lots of different opinions and varying suggestions on any forum you'll post on. A bit more detail about the current laptop you have would be useful though.

frobisher

This is a dilemma many musicians are faced with. I think that buying the gear makes sound financial sense but not necessarily the best one for the music. Before really being able to offer my own thoughts it'd help to know what style the music (myspace link maybe?) is, what instruments are involved, how prepared you/the musicians are and what your aspirations for the album are.

TelePaul

First piece of advice: Bruce Springsteen recorded Nebrasksa at his kitchen table with two SM57s and a Zoom tape recorder.

Okay, so first thing's first. Get your RAM up to 1 gig, minimum. More if you can spare and if you're going to be using alot of plug-ins or virtual instruments etc. Go to www.crucial.com and find out the best way to do this, it's a cool site.

RAM: €150

Next, your interface. You didn't say if you're happy or not with the Edirol, I presume it's USB? If you wanna track midi live you may be better with a Firewire interface (very low latency). I don't know if you have a firewire port but you can buy the card for around €50. You can use Reasons drums, or you could check out Addictive Drums (very cool, brand new) or some audio loops (www.drumsondemand.com).

Firewire Card (T.I Chipset): €50
Presonus Firebox (w/Cubase LE): €299
Addictive Drums: €205
or
Reason Drum Kits:€111

As for mics, you ahve dynamics which is cool, they're very useful. If you record acoustic guitar, I'd recommend a matched pair of small diaphragm condensors by Jon O' Neill at Naiant studios. They're very cheap and very good. You would benefit from a decent pre-amp, like M-Audios DMP 3. It's a two-channel pre for stereo micing and costs €159. As for vocals, you might try a large diaphragm condensor, I like the Studio projects C1. It kinda depends though, some people are better with dynamic mics for vocals. If you're recording bass, check out the Sansamp Bass DI which gives a good sound straight in.

M Audio DMP3: €159
2 x Naiant MS2s: €70ish
SP C1 w/stand, pop filter and cable: €222
Sansamp Bass DI: €222
It sounds like you have Reason, which is a cool sampler. I find if you're recording by yourself, get a good string sampler like the propellor-head strings refill or M Audio pro-sessions strings. Not essential, having a wide variety og good samples will add another dimension to your music.

M Audio pro Sessions Orchestral Strings: €116
or
Propellorhead Strings Refill: €68

As for monitors, I'd be reluctant to suggest much because I don't know much about them. I do know that the Tascam VLX5 are fighting well above their weight for 200 lids. A step up would be the M Audio BX8As, double the price though.

Tascam VLX5 €200
or
M Audio BX8As €400

Lets see how much of your cash I've spent so far

€1445-1645

Here's a couple of things to bear in mind: The above would be what I'd do...I'm not sure of your needs. Also, you won't REALLY be able to expand the interface to record a band at once: if that's your goal, maybe look at a more comprehensive firewire card (Presonus Firestudio/Motu 8 Pre). Also, the sound you get is gonna rely on a few things: How good you are at playing music, how good you are at recording and the quality of your equipment....I wouldn't worry too much about the last part, but read up as much as you can about recording techniques and mixing techniques. You can mix it fine yourself if you spend some time recording it properly, but if you want this to be a finished album, put the rest of the cash towards mastering....I don't know the first thing about how much that costs, sorry. But recording music at home is one of the most challenging, fun, frustrating, rewarding, things you can do.

Frankiestylee

Heya Niall, yeah I'm up for sourcing gear second hand, I know there's a good bit floating a round judging by various forums, I just kinda need to know what I should be looking out for
Laptop I'm currently using is a Dell, Pentium M 1.4g , 768mb ram. Am I right in thinking the Edirol UA-25 is an called an external soundcard yeah? Or is it the one in the laptop you're talking about? http://www.thomann.de/ie/edirol_ua25_usb_audio.htm Is the one I'm using.

Frobisher, some rough takes can be found at www.cpu.ie/frankiewhelan
The music is for the most part acoustic guitar and vocals, but I'd like to add some keys (though I donated my piano to the local school a few months back so I guess it's gonna be good ol reason for this) and then I'd like to do drums and other random instruments with reason. As far as musicians go, it's all me which is why I can take as long as I want with it. As far as preparation goes, they're all ready to rock, the production end of things though hasn't been fully planned out since my reason disappeared with my last harddrive crash. As for what I want to do with the album, I mainly want to get a record of my songs to a standard I'm happy with... then I'm gonna send it around as a bit of a demo, sell it at gigs. The usual. I'm not planning on a global release or anything

At the moment I'm thinking I'll need two of those lil pencil mics (dunno if that's the proper name) for recording the acoustic, though I know you can get similar effects by tracking the guitar on two differant takes, so if they were expensive I'd run away. I think I might definitly need a good vocals mic...though I've heard myths of people using SM58s in studios...
Um.. what else...

cornbb

Some great advice in this thread.

The UA25 is indeed a soundcard, its a great budget option, I use one at work. Thing is it only has 2 mic inputs but that'll probably suffice as you're not recording drums or anything.

As regards pencil mics, I got a pair of these fellas recently for the same purpose as yourself and got decent results: http://www.thomann.de/ie/the_tbone_sc100ii_stereoset.htm

A large diaphragm condenser mic would indeed be good for vocals but you can actually get quite good results with a dynamic like the SM58, depending on the type of vocals you plan to record.

Best of luck with it anyway man, sounds like a fun project.

PeakOutput

i dont know what standard your at or what your aiming for but 2K...hell 1K will get you alot of time in say electra studios in temple bar(with an engineer)....pro tools hd set up or radar hard disk recording(radar is ****ing great) i havnt been there in about a year but your not gonna get your moneys worth by doing it yourself imo

TelePaul

PeakOutput wrote:

but your not gonna get your moneys worth by doing it yourself imo

I disagree entirely.

Frankiestylee

Heh heh, Telepaul you hero! I was mid replying when you posted! Yeah, cool, that sounds like the sort of route I'm going. Personally I'm happy enough with the Edirol, but I wouldn't mind upgrading it a bit. I'm not really looking to record a band with this project, it's just for my own enjoyment.
And yeah... I was hoping for something in the €1500 price range so I could spend the other 500 on some mastering.

What type of vocals do you use condensor or dynamic mics for? I haven't had a lot of experience with large diaphram condensors and I'm not too sure what sound they're going to give. Does the choice depend on the type of singer I am or on the type of results I want to achieve?

As for doing it in Elektra... nah, it'd cost alot more. I'm planning on doing 14 songs and tracking them successfully would nearly use up my money, let alone either getting the engineer to do some production magic on reason or recording real drums etc... money is kaput. Also if you read my first post it's about finding an engineer/producer that I trust, alot of the house engineers in these places are pretty disasterous and might be on a completely differant wavelength to you musically. I know Elektra have had a really good house engineer for the last while but I also know the one I'm thinking of is leaving the job. Regardless of the engineers etc, simple matter is you can't get as much done for as little as I have without someone doing you some major favours

TelePaul

Frankiestylee wrote:

Heh heh, Telepaul you hero! I was mid replying when you posted! Yeah, cool, that sounds like the sort of route I'm going. Personally I'm happy enough with the Edirol, but I wouldn't mind upgrading it a bit. I'm not really looking to record a band with this project, it's just for my own enjoyment.
And yeah... I was hoping for something in the €1500 price range so I could spend the other 500 on some mastering.

What type of vocals do you use condensor or dynamic mics for? I haven't had a lot of experience with large diaphram condensors and I'm not too sure what sound they're going to give. Does the choice depend on the type of singer I am or on the type of results I want to achieve?

I wasn't giving the other guy a hard time, but I think of Home Recording as an investment....once you master the basics, it's there for you whenever you have the time or inspiration.

As for mic choice, well a condensor is more sensitive. It's also less forgiving in that respect, but if you're a very good singer, it'll give a very accurate reflection of your voice. It will probably pic up more of the room....the better equipment you have, the truer the reflection it will give of your recording environment. Dynamics are good, especially for rock performances, where the singer is really into it and sings quite loud, or is a screamer. SM 58s are great, and a very good quality dynamic is the Shure SM7B

Frankiestylee

Ah, I don't think anyone thought you were giving him a hard time. I was responding to your original post ya see.

Yeah, that's how I look at it... I'm constantly writing music and I can see this recording process as a nice long term therapy for life's ills.

Oh, don't like the true reflection of the environment idea... I can just imagine some dick mowing his lawn off in the distance or something. Ick.

TelePaul

Frankiestylee wrote:

Oh, don't like the true reflection of the environment idea... I can just imagine some dick mowing his lawn off in the distance or something. Ick.

You'd really only pick that kinda noise if you had to run alot of pre-amp power to your mic...but it can happen. I was mainly referring to your recording environment, an untreated room will be picked up mor eon a condensor than a dynamic.

frobisher

It sounds like you have decided to take the home self recording route so there's probably no point in making suggestions otherwise. What I would say is that you should be prepared for a very different type of work flow compared to how you were going to originally record it. I personally love home recording but anyone who tells you it's easy doesn't know what they're talking about. I've had good training in sound, experience engineering and a little experience in producing too and I find it tough to get sounds that are good enough to sound "pro". There is a lot to it and it is quite a different craft to that of being a musician or songwriter.

Okay, the meat and veg: If you need software on a budget look at program called Reaper. For converters don't, I repeat, don't and I'll say it again, don't be fooled by the latest flashing lights and "tube style" warmth of whatever budget unit is for sale in those fancy ads in Sound on Sound magazine or Thomann hot deals. The only cheap sound card I can recommend on a budget is by an extremely well respected company called Lynx. You can buy a used LynxOne for US$125 that will utterly destroy any of the newer home recording converters for several times the price. As far as I'm concerned they are the best bargains in pr-audio bar none. Although they are PCI based. They also don't have a mic pre amp built in so you'll need one of them. A good pre-amp is the groove tubes The Brick (us$200-$350). It's valve (and proper valve not like that crappy home studio stuff with near useless valve placement). It will serve you well on any mic and is great for DI'ing your bass or amp-simulators (pods etc). You could also keep an eye out for an old desk going cheap that contains good pre-amps. That'd be a great solution and would be great for having dedicated channels for various instruments making it good for work flow.
Shure SM7's (us $250-$400) are highly recommended by many as being an excellent vocal mic for the money especially if your room isn't acoustically treated as because it's a dynamic it isn't as sensitive as a condensor. There are decent monitor options out there but I think at the budget end I'd go for something used and just get to know them extremely well so you know how they translate to other systems. To be honest it's actually the place where you would gain alot by investing in the best you can afford. Good monitoring and some room treatment is the best place to start.

The songs in my myspace page in my link were done quite quickly at home and they have been serving me extremely well so it can be done. Although now I'm trying to really, really get that extra few % out of the home studio. It's a lot of work but it's also very rewarding. I'm sure you'll have fun!!

Frankiestylee

Ah Frobisher, I'm open to other options but I really don't think there are many out there. I was originally going to go down a differant route, but then the world spun as it does.

I take it the SM7 is a decent step above the sm58 or the beta57?

As for room treatment, I'm not too sure what has to be done on that front... and I also don't really "get" it with my setup. I can understand it's importance in a live room but as far as I can see all the mics are so close to their targets and they're all cardoid... how do they even pick up room sounds? I have two options for recording really, my bedroom which is a bit of a weird shape but mostly rectangular, and a seomra type shed thing which is square and made of wood. I kinda like the idea of recording in the shed but I dunno how it'd go soundwise.

I'm not too worried about getting a polished pro sound, alot of the music I love is filled with flaws and lil quirks that give it some soul and character... but I would like to have the tools to achieve what I do want, so whereas the fisher price recorder might have a charm to it, if I'm looking for beautifully haunting vocals at some point... I'd like to be able to do it.

So I think monitors might be my first priority then.

TelePaul

Frankiestylee wrote:

As for room treatment, I'm not too sure what has to be done on that front... and I also don't really "get" it with my setup. I can understand it's importance in a live room but as far as I can see all the mics are so close to their targets and they're all cardoid... how do they even pick up room sounds? I have two options for recording really, my bedroom which is a bit of a weird shape but mostly rectangular, and a seomra type shed thing which is square and made of wood. I kinda like the idea of recording in the shed but I dunno how it'd go soundwise.

An untreated room is always going to colour the sound to an extent. I imagine one of the first times you record an acoustic guitar you'll step back and say 'wow....that sounds like crap'. The sound you hear wont be the sound your mics pick up for various reasons (not least the fact that the best mic wont match your ear). In the same way that studio monitors will portray an unbiased sound, a well treated room will help capture an unbiased sound. Bass traps, aurelex foam etc will all contribute to making your room as neutral as possible. If you can capture a neutral sound and mix it well on a good set of monitors, the finished product is gonna sound amazing.

You can improv alot of stuff because purpose made acoustic treatment products are expensive. Singing into a wardrobe full of clothes or against a mattress will cut down on reflections. Gobos (or go-betweens) help too, they're basically just dividers that cut down on sound waves depending on your room (I have wooden floors and a glass roof which can be a pain in the ass).

Frankiestylee

So just maybe a backdrop of a sheet or something behind the mic to stop reflections?

Record the bass amp in a bathroom? ( I dunno why, but I think I saw Doctor J do it one time so sounds like a good plan )

feylya

Frankiestylee wrote:

( I dunno why, but I think I saw Doctor J do it one time so sounds like a good plan )

He was trying to find the brown note...

Frankiestylee

Are those Naiant msh-2 mics actually that good? I know they're cheap so obviously not going to be mind blowing... but I take it that since you recommend them then they're good enough for my purposes yeah? Just double checking before I order them. Crazy cheap they be.

Niall - Dahlia

I don't recommend stuff I haven't personally tried so I'll let the people here with more experience with different interfaces make suggestions, but you might wanna check out the setup I use myself for recording acoustic acts, as it's just about within your budget. Brand new ordered from Thomann it works out something like this:

M-Audio Firewire 1814 - €489
Pro Tools M-Powered - €269
Rode NT5 Stereo Pair - €333
Rode NT2A - €349 or Rode NT1 - €189

Total: ~ €1300, shop around/ebay (not the mics!) and you could easily get that down to about €1100

That doesn't include monitors but that really is down to personal preference/choice.

I hate blowing the Pro Tools trumpet and I actually agree with the Reaper recommendation as I finally got around to trying it out, but this is a really simple, expandable and portable solution.

The 1814 is a really nice interface for the money, the preamps aren't mindblowing but they'd be a step up from the UA-25. It's also easily expandable through ADAT if you ever needed more inputs. It's a Firewire interface so you'd need a Firewire card as TelePaul mentioned if you haven't already got a Firewire slot on your lappy. Review here

I don't have any experience with the Naiant range of mics (still waiting for them sound examples TelePaul! ) but the Rode NT5s are great on acoustic guitar if youre interested in stereo miking. The NT2 is a nice vocal LDC mic, equally good for sticking infront of an acoustic for mono miking, although if you wanted to save the pennies the NT1 is comparitable.

Anyway enough of that ****, I feel like I'm trying to sell my setup! No better way to decide on a setup than actually trying it out, so if you ever want do a session and get some songs down with the above setup so you can hear the mics and preamps I'd be happy to do it anytime.

TelePaul

Niall - Dahlia wrote:

I don't have any experience with the Naiant range of mics (still waiting for them sound examples TelePaul! )

I'm in the middle of exams right now, so I'm waiting till I grab a new set of strings for my Martin as a fair test. But until then, here's a sample of MS1s in an untreated room.

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/96626_msh1.mp3

(Right click and Save Target As)

pinksoir

instead of the m-audio firewire 1814 i'd probably go with the presonus firepod - http://www.thomann.de/ie/presonus_firepod.htm. it's only a tenner more than the m-audio and has 8 inputs. it's the one i use in my studio and it's a great interface overall.

that is, of course, if you are looking to record drums, or all/any of your stuff live. which you're not as you play all the stuff yourself! but it helps to look to the future and be prepared, you never know, you might need more than two inputs one day and be stuck!

i suppose another drawback is that you can't use m-powered software with the firepod. which means no pro-tools. but you get cubase le with it which is fine. i use nuendo 3 and have gotten great results.

unclebill98

Frankiestylee

PM'd you there, not sure how the replie thing works.

Frankiestylee

Yeah Niall I keep meaning to drop ya a line about getting a demo done for my band, but I see you're crazy booked up at the moment, but sure I'll be in touch when you're looking for more acts for your portfolio of rawwwwk

The firepod sounds pretty nifty alright, but I guess I'll have to way up future proofing with pro-tools usage. The aul pro-tools seems quite handy for porting straight to other systems and if I ever need some help/advice it's an easy way to go... but then the ability to record a band is tempting.

Unclebill I replied to your PM there.

Can't listen to the naiant mic sample just yet, leggin' it to work, but I will later. Still seems way too good to be true though :P

TelePaul

Have a listen to that sample, I'll find you some more later...I'll do my own when I put new strings on. I'll upload an MP3 later of an instrumental sound I got using two LDCs.

pinksoir

yeah, the lack of pro tools is one thing that i regret somewhat. but it is possible to save each channel down as a WAV and then import it into another program for mixing or whatever. of course this means that whatever mixing you have done will be lost. but i have done that before, taken old recordings from home before i had the studio and imported them into protools in another studio and mixed them there. once you have the recordings done its half the battle. (actually thats a lie, its more like a quarter of the battle, if that!)

though don't underestimate the popularity of cubase (and of course nuendo which is basically the same system) for support and advice. protools is great, but i made the choice to go with nuendo and i don't regret it. protools is industry standard, but that doesn't mean its the best program out there.

also, i'm not really sure how good m-powered protools is compared to the proper protools rig. someone with more experience could tell you, but i have a sneaking suspicion its not as powerful! and another thing is, make sure you have a pretty powerful computer. nomatter what sound card you do choose, you'll need a powerful enough processor if you're gonna have loads of channels with effects, plugins etc running. you could find a nice desktop on adverts for about 400 quid if you look around, which would do the job.

Niall - Dahlia

pinksoir wrote:

also, i'm not really sure how good m-powered protools is compared to the proper protools rig. someone with more experience could tell you, but i have a sneaking suspicion its not as powerful!

M-Powered Pro Tools and Pro Tools LE are exactly the same, the only difference are that you can't use a couple of things like the Control 24 and DV Toolkit with M-Powered.

frobisher

pinksoir wrote:

i suppose another drawback is that you can't use m-powered software with the firepod. which means no pro-tools. but you get cubase le with it which is fine. i use nuendo 3 and have gotten great results.

Well then stick with Nuendo. I wouldn't even think of going with PT m-powered or PT LE if Nuendo is an option.

Frankiestylee

I take it neundo is much better in your opinion then?

Personally I've only used cool edit pro and then later Adobe Audition when it was bought out, so I don't have a lot of experience with anything else.

When it comes to mastering would the choice of system pose any problems etc?

Niall - Dahlia

Frankiestylee wrote:

When it comes to mastering would the choice of system pose any problems etc?

No, whichever DAW you decide to use will all bounce your track down to a single stereo WAV or AIFF file, which is what you'll be sending to the mastering engineer.

pinksoir

As Frobisher said, and I wholeheartedly agree, nuendo is a much better option than any LE type affair. The thing is that the price reflects this. It's about 2 grand I think...

I would imagine that with the amount of money you've set aside you'll be stuck with either PT LE/m-powered or the Cubase equivelent. But don't get me wrong, you'd do fine with either of those!

Frankiestylee

I mean... the quality of the recording is going to be the same regardless yeah? The differant software is really all about ease of use, extra options etc?

I think I may be able to get my mitts on nuendo anyhows, but I'm not used to using any of the programs mentioned so I doubt I'm gonna shed a tear if I can't hook up with my ol' fave etc.

I take it adobe audition is generally a no-no for this sorta thing for some reason?