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Constructing a Home Recording Studio on a Small Budget?
Pinball Wizard asks:
"I would like to put together a home music studio. When it comes to keyboards, effects, and other electronic goodies, the choices seem pretty straightforward. But when it comes to guitar and recording other analog instruments and voices, the world of home recording seems bewildering. What are the best ways of recording analog sounds onto hard disk? I'm a lot more interested in a clever technical solution that costs less than $1,000 than I am taking out a loan and buying ProTools for $10,000 or more. What are the different pieces of equipment (microphones, preamps, etc) that are needed to do this well?"
There is a book on Amazon here that might be what you're looking for.
Book Description
Practical guidance in the design, construction, and operation of your own affordable acoustics studio. Every aspect of designing and building an audio studio is fully discussed: floor plans, control rooms, wall and ceiling treatments, reverberation time, air conditioning, noise considerations, and more! The authors carefully describe procedures, necessary equipment, likely cost, and possible design parameters. Emphasis is placed on low cost studios designed with your specific needs in mind. From studio plans, sound lock and acoustical treatment, to studio proportions and noise factors, this revised edition provides everything needed to:Set up a listening room, a recording studio, and a control room.Achieve good sound in a listening room, a recording studio, and a control room.Control background noise in these rooms.Make acoustical measurements. Learn how the new type RPG diffusors work. Use the new Tube Traps and more.
If you don't want to buy a book, look at this site that explains how to use a PC in a homestudio.
Another few sites are here here and here.
Hope that helps.
--Metrollica
Your Neumanns are over priced.
There are lots of mics for under $300 right now that sound just as good as any Neumanns.
The Studio Projects C1 I have sounds alot like the u87. Many people who have reviewed it like it more and are shocked when they find out its only $229.
The m-audio Audiobuddy is the best preamp under $1000 in alot of peoples books and it only cost $79.
The SM-57 is an ok mic. Most of its fame comes from how much abuse it can take and still sound the same.
There are a few mics that are around the price of a SM-57 that sound really good. The marshall electronics MXL603 is one of them. Its a Small condensor mic.
N-track studio is starting to mature and its under $100, Cool edit pro has been around for a while and I use it in the studio all the time, its around $200 I think. You can certianly multitrack with that software.
The M-audio Audiophile 24/96 soundcards are only $150. Thats 24bit 96khz and they sound way better than the Soundblaster soundcards. Their Delta soundcards are a little more pro with balanced +4 inputs.
Pro studio quality gear is now becoming within reach of the hobbest.
God, root, what is the difference?
Creative makes boards for games. Not for serious audio.
I happen to prefer M-Audio, because of their broad platform support: http://www.midiman.com/products/digital.php.
Their low-end card (Audiophile 2496) is cost-competitive with Creative's high end, and would probably do you very nicely.
You'll see most pro gear moving the D/A stuff external to the computer, to reduce noise.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
A word of caution-- reel-to-reel tapes are actually quite a lot worse than the best CDs. Signal/noise for current Ampex studio master multitrack analog tape is 64.8 dB. Digital recording with a good A/D converter, if it's true 16-bit (not just byte size, but actual resolution), would give you 96 dB. And people can generally perceive a difference of as little as 3 dB in signal/noise (I know because I've tested this). There are other noise and distortion sources in the signal chain, both on record and on playback, so your actual figures will be worse than that (which is one of the reasons that some CDs sound so crappy compared to old studio tape). The other reason is that recording engineers in those days knew how to mix and master so that the noise and distortion were less noticeable.
The other thing with tapes is to beware of media cost. Multitrack reel-to-reel is very costly compared to CDR or even DAT tape.
One way to save money on digital is to consider the added value of 24-bit versus 16-bit technologies. Theoretical max signal-noise for 16-bit is about 96 dB. The very best 24-bit analog/digital converters give about 103 dB s/n (ignore the phony "A-weighted" number), and 95 dB THD+N (a more perceptually relevant noise figure that includes total harmonic distortion). That is, really not much better than 16 bits: 103 dB is under 18 bits. The only big gain in having 24 bits versus 16 is that you get some guard digits that are helpful when doing long, iterative calulations, such as the ones that happen in digital reverbs or some kinds of SFX; also handy when doing lots of sub-mixes. But 16-bit digital technology is far less costly and not much worse in terms of actual sound quality. And some mixing and FX software tacks on the guard digits anyway.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty