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The Incredible Shrinking Recording Studio
what_the_frell writes "Wired has an interesting article on the increased use of laptops as a replacement for a recording studio. The article touches on how music schools are requiring the purchase of a Powerbook and software for this very reason, and also highlights artists like Steve Vai who are moving over to the more portable platform. Does this mean I can finally record that rock opera I've always dreamed about?"
I've been doing PC-based recording for some time now using digital equipment that doesn't cost very much. My mixer and recorder are my PC, as are many of my instruments. You can now do stuff with a $1,000 PC that you used to need a $20,000 console to do. And it's only going to get cheaper, as the laptop angle implies.
It's a pretty good time to be a music creator.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
After all, only RIAA members have the right to record music...
The reason you never recorded the rock opera; it's not the lack of recording studio, it's the crapness.
This is just more proof of the reducing costs of producing professional quality audio, and more evidence of price fixing and extortion of the major record labels.
Maybe, but you still need talent.... :)
Karma: T-rexcellent.
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Well, QnDJ works with an iBook and Propellerheads Reason 2.5 and this (USB powered)...
I think the ultimate power/portability/cost ratio has been reached for some time...
Otherwise, a cheaper but probably less autonomous PC using windows and FruityLoops could also do, of course.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
but only if it's about Franz Kafka!
("home movies" rocks)
Given the superior capabilities of laptops these days (and sprinkle in a bit of RIAA angst), it's no wonder you're seeing this more and more. Hopefully, this will give many garage bands the ability to get their music recorded the way they wanted it to sound in a large recording studio without all the $$$ involved. This in turn may lead to hearing a much better selection than the dreck on radio these days...
--- Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
...Kraftwerk's lastest album was made on a laptop.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
Heh, this is cool, as I am about to pluck down $2,200 for a Digi 002 and run it off my PowerBook 17" Eventually, within the next few months I'll probably be upgrading to the Control|24, as I like to have more than just 4 mic pres... and well, the idea of having 16 Focusrite pre's really gets me drooling.
I've been into home recording for almost 10 years, and have been pretty weary of going the PC-route, in that I've always thought of it as being "toy-ish" but now, with Digidesign getting into the more project studio market, its getting more "professional." This migration to PC-based production has been slow for me, in that right now (pre-Pro Tools) I am just doing "mastering" on my PowerBook (via T-Racks), but I've really become a believer in this PC production thing... especially when you have gear that is lacking.
sad robot making broken music
If you thought hauling around a portable studio in a laptop was pretty cool, there are already recording devices from the likes of Fostex and Korg that incorporate four- and eight-track multitrack recorders into handheld packages. About the only thing that keeps these things from getting smaller is the size of the jacks required to get audio in to and out of the device.
With CF and MMC media becoming smaller and cheaper, to the point where you can now get 256MB for less than $50, combined with advanced adaptive audio compression techniques like MP3 and MP4, are going to make these things as powerful as a Sonar-equipped laptop in a couple years' time. I like to take it with me when I go to shows or open-mic nights and get a 'hard copy', so to speak, of my performances. If I like them, the quality is high enough that with a little mastering compression, EQ and reverb, I've got an instant live recording.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Does this mean I can finally record that rock opera I've always dreamed about?
I mean music has been going downhill a bit lately (or I'm getting old).... BUT this is a dread scenario of open publishing, file sharing and the end of labels. Sure there are some good points, but will they be weighed down by the bad ?
Think on it this way.... this will allow the musical equivalent of an AOLer to blast music at us. Some things shouldn't be open to all, or at least they shouldn't be able to subject people to such torture without lots of filtering. Steve Vai doing something.... good and cool.... your average Slashdotter.... yeeeh gags... there is probably a reason that highschool band never took off.
Dude... most people suck.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
... I can say that things are getting smaller, cheaper, lighter and faster. Duh. Of course.
... say it after me kids ... OVER!
... in their big haughty studios.
:)
The days when a pro recording needed a 24-channel mixing desk, ProTools TDM hardware, a quiet room and a team of engineers are
With my tiBook and a Firewire Audio interface, I can record any band, anywhere in the world, produce their tracks live at the gig, and by the end of it have some polished material ready for distribution.
The whole "pro studio" machine is well and truly facing the same reality that "computer rooms" once faced from the PC onslaught.
Most of the reasoning for big-studio budgets these days is just dick-waving. Fact is, you can do with a $2000 collection of gear what most 'pros' would've charged $15,000 to do 'for cheap'
Amen, I say. There are far too many good artists out there (every single human can write a song) and its high time a lot of them were heard. The current 'music industry' is too elitist.
RIP, Pro Tools. Long live CoreAudio!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Let's see... they may use different software ? There's quite a lot of good opensource (and portable) software.
blah
Eliminating the need for expensive equipment, combined with an online music distribution and micropayment model would pretty much kill the need for expensive contracts with the music industry.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Opera rocks!
I have been recording "ambient collections" for a couple of years now.
a laptop with a good recording pcmcia or usb recording device, a small mixer (battery powered if possible) and a couple of me66 shotgun microphones and I get incredible results.
the most important thing is a sound recording device that is quiet (electronically) and can handle at least 48K recording rates. The external soundblaster audigy is OK for this use. (dammit why no XLR inputs???)
the hard part is finding a good external soundcard that is not a piece of crud.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You too can be a spotty bedroom boy and churn out identikit UK/Speed Garage, drum and bass and techno!!
And starting with Booyaka BadBwoy v2.0, you no longer even need to be able to speak basic english, as your `masterpieces` will be given names automatically!
You can now go from idea (well, the idea that you want to have written a song, anyway) to annoying the neighbours with loud boomy noises coming from your car (or bedroom) in under 15 minutes!
It seems that slowly, the power that these large organisations had over what can be accomplished is moving into the hands of the average user. We are seeing the revolution of this not only in music, but also in the recently accounced Fanimatrix
A wonderous use of special effects were used in this, which were simply created by an end user, without a multi-million dollar video editing studio. It seems this end user power is also moving to the music industry. Is it possible that big recording studios and Hollywood will not wield the same amount of power in the future as to what they wield today?
Apple has information on how Bruce Hornsby has done live shows using Powerbooks, and PARIS pro workstation... Its goes into more detail about why and how they are doing this type of recording and mixing...
n sby/audio.html
http://www.apple.com/creative/musicaudio/brucehor
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
At Acadia Univeristy in Wolfville Nova Scotia Canada, all students are provided with a laptop for their studies. The Music Technology students use their laptops for all their recording and their music editing. The laptops arent stellar but they get the job done and are protable enough to record anything anywhere.
When the students work on the movie projects, they do their editing on the school's network of 10 G4s in the music lab.
Cheers.
Andrew
while(1) { fork(); };
if "Mac People" (note, there is a difference between the average mac user and "Mac People") had their way, a Mac would not even be considered a computer. Computers are too "eww, icky" for them.
they are just like any other type of "zealots". stay away from them.
What other platform is there? (Just kidding!)
Seriously... In many cases most or all of the same sofware is available for Wintel notebooks. Reason, Cubase and a host of editing suites and plug-ins are out there for PC's. I have a Mac and my colleauge has a PC. We both run Reason 2 and collaborate across the Canada/US border (Toronto/NYC). We've yet to run into any compatability issues.
A small midi controller, like the Midiman Oxygen-8, works on both platforms as it has a USB interface and drivers for both.
Hope this helps.
cheers.
I work on a fairly tight budget, so my software of choice is FruityStudio (just go to fruitystudio.com). It's not very flexible in some respects, but it honors almost all the industry-standard plugins for audio and I've been able to do some really wonderful things with it. Cheap, too: the full version of the product is only $99.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
That's why you can CHOOSE to not listen! You aren't being forced to listen to crap bands! This new age of recording will simply mean more choice, and more choice is good. Also, you won't be force-fed by the RIAA and eventually they will die, which is also a Good Thing.
wired's cover story this month is about the superproducers in the industry. really limited article, but worth buying. talks about the people who are trying different things and making great albums.
or just check the website here
xavii aka bob
Electronic Musician has some good articles on this. They always seem to be ahead of the game.
h ri nking_studio/index.htm
http://www.emusician.com/ar/emusic_incredible_s
I would appreciate any pointers or suggestions you might have on equipment or software. I have a teenager interested in getting into music production.
This article is surely interesting, but none of it should come as a great surprise to anyone ...
Are you a musician? The Music industry is one of those "creative" industries that still tend to favor Mac's. This is changing slowly (I think PC's now account for almost 50% of musicians PC's)
But there's PC software/hardware too. Just check the back of music magazines and ask around at music stores (the ones that sell instruments, not record shops) for useful information. Just be careful because there's a lot of "junk" out there too.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Fruity Loops is a good starting point because it teaches the basics of step sequencing (beat-box style programming) and lets people start making good tracks right out of the box.
Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge and Acid are also good programs for loop recording arranging -- the best I've seen in the low-end home user market.
Reason is the ultimate in soft-synth sound generation. I don't know a single producer who uses software who doesn't love Reason. It's pricey, but worth it.
There is also a lot of good high-end music production software out there, many of it with great MIDI controllers like the Oxygen 8 or the Ozone. I use a combination of direct-recording hardware tools (a nice, high-end sound card, Line 6 direct recording equipment) to hook up my instruments (guitars, synths, beatboxes, etc) and a combination of Sound Forge and Reason to generate my loops. I can then arrange and mix them in Acid or Fruityloops. Fruityloops serves as my backup generator for certain drum and bass parts, but overall, my setup is pretty stripped down.
But if you really want professional studio quality digital recording, MIDI sequencing and mixing, get ProTools. It's like God.
IAALS.
Notes for those who wish to do similar: the sound quality of the cheapest sound card you can buy at a music store is better than the sound quality of the most expensive sound card at the computer store. The music store cards will be meant for sound reproduction, where as the ones from the computer store will be meant for sound production.
Err.... the Mac has overshadowed the PC in pro audio circles for some time...
I don't think it's a case of them being ignorant of alternatives.
The market is pretty level between PC and Mac now, though.
What a genius!!
"I did a lot of the vocal edits on a plane," said BT. "I cut and pieced the vocal together. There's something like 2,000 or 3,000 edits in that three-minute song, and I did that sitting on a plane."
Yes mate, but the trouble is that your music SOUNDS like it was stuck together in a few mins on a plane flight! Isn't it supposed to sound like it was hard work, or that at least SOME effort went into making it? I mean, I know the sort of people who listen to this sort of music take drugs to make crap things appear less crap than they really are, but...
(Of course, the next part of the story is promotions ...)
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
Oppenheimer said this:
... its just that they have to evolve into better and better musical *instruments* and not just computers-in-boxes-with-knobs-on. Software guys don't ever get a chance to know what its like to be held and played, heh heh ...
"It used to be that hardware synths sold like crazy, but those guys would kill to make decent sales on hardware synths today. The sales of hardware aren't what they used to be, and they're not going to come back. It adds up to big trouble for hardware manufacturers."
I take issue with this (but then, I would, consider where I work), and here is why:
There is *NO* profit in software synthesis.
There is not a single mainstream producer of software synthesizers who currently has drawn profit from sales of those synths.
The reason: cracks.
It is a very, very, very tough business to be in, when 90% of your primary users are simply stealing your product, not buying it.
Soft-synths is one market that may benefit from the whole "Trusted Computing" initiative, but in my opinion - being a hardware synth developer - the only truly "trusted computing" platform is one I built myself.
Hardware synthesizers will *still* be around, and there will still be a huge market for them (we do okay, thanks very much)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onemusic/studio/
I recommend flstudio (aka fruityloops).
Using a laptop studio is not exactly new. For computer studio news, you should check out the Computer Music magazine. If you buy it in a newsstand you get a CD with lots of free studio and synthesizer software.
:-(
They also have an old article about laptop studios here. While using a laptop is cool, using a fast desktop system brings you considerably more power for your $$$. For serious music production, you need lots of performance, a large screen, and a good soundcard. All of which is more expensive when using a laptop.
Too bad this is one area where Linux is seriously behind Win or Mac
)9TSS
Please tell me this is some kind of black humor or give us some links.
Here's a link, although it relates more to the NMPA/Harry Fox (sheet music publishers) than to the RIAA (record labels):
A Chilling Effect on Music
It's quite long, but here's the gist: 1. It's unlawful to publish and record music that isn't original. 2. It's likely for a songwriter to come up with a song that isn't original merely by accident.
And here's a short story by Spider Robinson that speculates on the eventual outcome of infringing-by-accident laws and copyright term extensions: "Melancholy Elephants".
Will I retire or break 10K?
Just what I always wanted, hisssss filled music. My Linux box has 3 sound cards in it. Lets see you try that with your Mac...
It is true that many of the steps of music production can be performed on increasingly small and portable platforms ( BT, who was mentioned in the article uses Logic with Digidesign TDM hardware incidentally). Much of the editing and mixing can be accomplished in this fashon. This is especially true if the type of music you are creating is fundamentally electronic. However, when you need to record musicians you still need analog gear: Microphones, mic-preamps, compressors, a good room to record them in. Just to name a few of the things. Computer based recording has driven down the price of some parts of the recording chain while raising quality.
Until human musicians that play acoustic instruments are eliminated entirely, the need for analog gear and recording studios will remain.
Also, when you hire a producer or recording engineer you are paying mostly for their time and expertise, not their mountain of cool gear. Top mixers do their work on in wildly different enviornments ( SSL9K Pimped out room -vs- laptop ) but they charge you for the finished product.
Rolling Stone published a similiar article where Butch Vig of Garbage shows the reporter how easy it is to build a studio and create music. Hopefully this will lower the requirements for a new act. Before they were at the mercy of large studios most of which were owned by the record companies. Not only do most acts get small royalties (as little as 4%), they were also charged for studio time. Some acts like TLC went bankrupt despite selling millions of records because of the high studio costs. That's why most artists who get a little foothold open their own studios.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Don't get me wrong -- this is revolutionary for small-time operators and independent artists. But it's a lot like innovations in self-publishing in the book industry. Lowering the barriers to entry for the most part means a lot more mediocre material will get into ciruclation.
I had a friend who, in the middle of the night, got an idea for a song. All he had was a PowerBook, an acoustic guitar, and a copy of Audacity (free - opensource). He recorded his new song on the internal mic of the PB and FTP'd me the song in the morning. I was amazed at the clarity and the quality.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Also, labels have always liked the studios because it facilitated their keeping physical control of the original recordings.
Now, artists don't have to wait for the studio to advance them money to go into the studio (money that of course has to be paid back) and record. They can and do do it any time. And they have physical control over their work which enhances the chances that the music will be released the way the artist intended.
http://www.myriad-online.com/enindex.htm
The best deal of the century, try before you buy. Why pirate Cakewalk? And yes, they take U.S. dollars, also.
I am just a very satisfied customer.
But having cheap semi-pro equipment can only get you so far. Isn't the quality of the engineer and producer much more of an important factor to sound quality than the affordability of the hardware being used? I own some digital recording equipment, and I've been recording with it for years, but guess what? My recordings don't sound nearly as good as anything professionally recorded, mixed, and mastered.
Any recording professionals here downsizing their studio in this way, and seeing results comparable to a full-sized studio?
In techno / electronica, this seems feasible, or maybe even in live recording situations, but in general?
Recording studios offer an interesting emphasis in the three-tier model: light demands on the GUI layer, heavy demands on the (DSP) application layer, and moderate demands on the data (storage and signal I/O) layer. A <$400 notebook PC is adequate, with a souped-up PCMCIA card handling the DSP and DA/AD conversion+I/O. Which card do you know that is well supported by Linux? I think the WAMI-BOX looks great, but under Linux? And does it actually sound good?
--
make install -not war
The band would get this by signing a multiple record deal that would be heavily in favor on the record company, the band would only make good money if they were able to sustain their popularity past their intial record deal.
What musicians need to do is break away from the tradional recording industry model:
- Recording: In-house or through a cheap studio
- Distribution: Website
- Promotion: Consultant
It would be interesting to see the development of recording industry model where the record company is basically just a web and marketing consultant for bands in exchange for a FAIR comission.It's amazing how slowly audio/music software progressed in the 80s and early and mid 90s and then BANG! Over the past few years many companies have sprung up and made revolutionary software for audio production and composition. Why does audio/music always take a backseat in the evolution of computer software?
It's pretty convient that you can just plug in your 15" Powerbook to the soundboard and supply fans with perfect quality mp3s and FLAC files. If only more bands would do the same thing as Phish. I'll gladly pay $10 for 3 disks worth of live music.
check out this pic to see Phish's sound man and his power book at IT.
"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria." --Old German Proverb
Fact is, you can do with a $2000 collection of gear what most 'pros' would've charged $15,000 to do 'for cheap' ... in their big haughty studios.
Problem is, recording artists still need some sort of record label to handle the legal aspects of publishing a recording. Record labels usually retain musicologists who are skilled in discerning whether a particular melody has been used before. Otherwise, they may find themselves subject to lawsuits from a songwriter they've never heard of who claims that their song is "strikingly similar" to a song from 30 years ago that it turns out they "might have heard once" on commercial radio. Most poor songwriters can't afford to defend themselves in court.
Read it and weep.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Apple's Soundtrack software (and plenty of others besides, I'm sure) lets you have a recording studio with pre-recorded instruments ready for mixing. Perfect for when you're trying to convince your drummer that his temper tantrums are not, in fact, an essential part of the creative process.
Does this mean I can finally record that rock opera I've always dreamed about? ...Please don't!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
...the way the studio engineer suggests that musicians are paying for his time and experience. with a laptop, no one needs his experience. a musician gains skills everytime he records on his own, an option not available to many without the funds to purchase an entire studio of hardware. Now, 3-5K can get you in the ballpark, less if you steal software;)
combined with an online music distribution and micropayment model
Would this include payments to the songwriters? Or if you claim that recording artists using this proposed model will write their own songs, would this include payment to the musicologist who certified the underlying musical work as in fact original?
Will I retire or break 10K?
> Does this mean I can finally record that rock opera I've
> always dreamed about?"
Yes, but it will still suck.
having have made 5 albums by recording into my video camera, running that into the vcr, that into the tv card, and doing a sound capture, I can tell you that home-based recording will never take the place of studio recording, simply because the hardware isn't up to par. Not necessarily the mixing boards and such, but the microphones and locations. Modern setups may not be as ghetto as mine, but recording into a PC microphone isn't the same as recording into a 1000 dollar one used by a studio. And soundproofing a room is still necessary, since you don't want to pick up car engines or noises from the people above you. Studios still have the upper hand on high-end production.
for the past few years, I can tell you that it has been cheap to roll your own studio for years now. the software is negligible. You have been able to get your hands on the software cheaply, if not free and all you really worry about is a decent sound card (plan on spending a few hundred if you need simutaneous in's/out's (and WAY lower latency) and about $80 to $100 per mic.
You have been able to record 20 tracks at a time for 5 years now on most any computer, and you can get better performance with some OS tweaks.
its been pretty aparent that the music industry has been doing creative accounting since the begining. I know bands that have used $2000 worth of PC, $300 sound card, free software and some less than awesome mics, record tracks in their basement and get weeks of national radio airtime.
The thing to consider though, is that
A] You still need to record good music people want to hear (to be sucessful,) and
B] You still need to have a good ear to produce properly. Most bands can do neither which is why you get so many horrible contestants on a show like American Idol.
A big label might charge a mint for an album, but they also employ expensive employees, spend crazy amounts on marketing and still would like to make money. While I can't justify as high of CD prices and paying bands next to nothing, they still have the people a band needs to become sucessfull (and of course have the ins with the radio stations, which an independant just can't match). Its not JUST equiptment. If it was, bands would be making it on their own BIG TIME from their basements.
This isn't new news, its just a new article. I could record my own everything 5 years ago on a P1. With an old copy of software, you can record your own album on a computer that your friend is throwing out. Every PC can record two tracks simutaneously (with a stereo sound card and a 5 dollar plug from Radio Shack).
I use Buzz for electronic music. It has tons of generators and effects...all for free.
Maybe, but you still need talent....
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
I've been into electronic music for years and with my current job it is impossible to sit down and get full use out of my studio gear. I'm simply never home.
However, my laptop is a very capable 1.8ghz machine with usb, so I picked up a copy of Propellerhead Reason, Adobe Audition (formerly know as cool edit pro) and an M-Audio Ozone portable USB keyboard.
All the need for a rack of effects and synths was filled by Reason. Audition is used for vocal recording. The Ozone is used for midi note entry, and is also a 2-in, 2-out usb audio device, which also supports micropones with phantom power! It's a very low-noise DAC and is perfectly suited to my recording needs.
With this setup, I can record clean vocals on the road and compose to my heart's delight. I've even pulled out the Ozone in the airport during long layovers and went ape with Reason. Don't know what I would have done without this combo.
Basically, people post links to good websites (or in this case good music). It's a peer review process. Someone else, who has entirely too much time on their hands (and there always is someone) filters out all the garbage for you.
Yeah, this trend is as big a boon as the four-track recorder was back in the 80s. But it's a much larger paradigm shift, as the article hints; we're not just doing digital multitrack recording, but also creating sound via software synthesis and f/x plugins.
Portability is an excellent argument for going to software synthesis, although price is not; for half the cost of the laptop, you can build a very powerful synthesis workstation (non-portable) with a used PIII PC and MIDI hardware synths, which are all over e-bay. An Alesis MidiVerb IV, Kawai K4, Yamaha TX81Z, Akai S1000, and an Oberheim Matrix 1000 can all be had for about $900 total, plus a Sequencer/Multitrack Recorder like Cakewalk Pro Audio, and a USB MIDI breakout box. Fun stuff!
So you can record professional tracks anywhere, huh? You don't even need a "quiet room"? Give me a break.
I'm guessing your work is quite shoddy quality and and/or that you're not any kind of professional at all.
You fooled the moderators good though.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
I think this article perfectly represents the sad state of popular music today:
I did a lot of the vocal edits on a plane," said BT. "I cut and pieced the vocal together. There's something like 2,000 or 3,000 edits in that three-minute song, and I did that sitting on a plane.
I think pretty much everyone knows that "bands" like nsync have no musical talent, but I think this quote proves it. Come on, the "band" can't get through a 3 minute song without thousands of edits on their vocals?!?!
For years, music students were expected to learn to play the piano as the main instrument for their education...those days are over. "People are turning to the computer as the way of learning music...
"Music" students are learning to use point and click applications instead of actually learning to play instruments. No wonder there is so much crappy non-music out there.
The real sad thing is that people are actually buying this stuff!
eMelody Web Directory add your site today!
So we've got the average joe recording albums in his bedroom. There is a trend towards amateurism in every field, enabled by the web and technology. Fan Films in the world of video, blogs in the world of literature, heck in the world of acting we got these reality tv shows. Soon there will be no need for professionals in the arts; we'll just find our entertainment in the flood of mediocre material and hope some of the cream rises to the top. And the best part: a lot of it will be cheap / free. Just the right kind of entertainment where nobody can get a decent job anymore since all the well-paying ones are moving to india ...
I did a little sound work with some bands in high school, the one thing i learned was that mics, in terms of size/price, are hands-down the most expensive items in the studio. makes sense, anyway - you can get ok results with shitty gear and a great mic, but the best studio and hardware in the world ain't gonna help if you're using a cheap 57 or something (not that 57s are bad, those things can take some ABUSE...).
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Well, the movie studios are doing the same thing, or what do you think this thing is used for ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
At the end of it, I became tired of having to play sysadmin at home every night, and so we bought a digital music station. This station is not much bigger than a large laptop, and although it probably has nothing more than a 386 inside, there are no worries about what kind of sound card it has, whether the disks are raided - it was designed to work together, and it does the job admirably. The cost of the station was equivalent at the time to a low-end PC system, which ended up being a lot cheaper than upgrading everything to the high-end components seemingly required to run upper-end music software. My computer is now free for my use again (yay!) and my hubby can simply make music, without the hassle (and best of all, he can RTFM himself, without his computer-geek wife).
Pixie
don't mess with those geekgrrls
(I think PC's now account for almost 50% of musicians PC's)
Just remember that 79% of all statistics are made up on the fly.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
The biggest hurdle to getting your music listened to by the general public was that "HISSSSSSS", that background noise and sibilance which was the mark of the un-professional. Despite the inde "low fi" artistes, crispness in sound is something that is valued the world over- from style to style. Even your beloved "composers" preferred to have their compositions played by good musicians on world class instruments.
Now-a-days, I can quickly knock off some stuff, burn to a cd, and throw it in my car. And it sounds like my other cd's. Thats a huge plus. I'm not worrying about recording generation loss. I'm just worrying if the vocals are in tune.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Two 16 channel boards accepting either Mic or Line input levels (balanced or unbalanced) as well as gain controls, Analog-to-Digital converters and low distortion levels are essential. Add to this the ability to multiplex each of the digital signals so that they arrive at the computer in near-real time with no delays and you've got a real project on your hands.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
I have used my Powerbook as a recording studio and it has worked very well for me. They only thing I would caution others about is do NOT burn a master cd on it. All laptop cd burners have relatively weak lasers compared to their desktop counterparts and will not produce you as reliable of a disc.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
Yeah, and you just look sooo cool up in the booth diddling the keys on your glowing toilet-seat iBook while the lights dance behind you...c'mon man, the turntables aren't there just for sound ya know :P
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Still, I just love being able to lay down 8 tracks (at 24 bit, 48 kHz) at time (I think I can have 24 or 32 total tracks with ProTools LE 6.1) for about $800. And that was a few years ago! Now, you don't even need a PCI slot since FireWire has really matured to the point where it's all you need for connectivity. I believe most FireWire systems are still using 400 megabit ports, too, since 800 really isn't necessary unless you have more tracks.
Now the biggest problem we have to worry about is just where in the hell we're going to practice/record. We're kind of loud, so not just anywhere will do. So far I've been getting away with the cardinal sin of recording with the Mac in the same room, and it doesn't sound too bad as long as we're appropriately thunderous, but I must admit that a PowerBook would be handy for its near-silence.
Practice space is expensive where I live (Minneapolis/St. Paul), running at around $200 a month for a decent space. I'm poor as piss and I just don't know what to do. I'm glad I can record anywhere I can drag my Mac, but a band still needs space to play - my bedroom ain't cutting it. In that sense, I think recording studios still have a role to play, if only because they are designed for good acoustics, they're soundproofed so the neighbors don't get pissed, and they have full control boards, often with powered faders (sweeeeeet...). Still, they're too expensive for practice, and if you have some recording gear like me, why bother? I'm wondering if anybody knows of a new hybrid I've been lusting after - basically a recording studio style space at a practice space cost (preferrably with a small control room). That, I think, is what bands need nowadays; most of us are living in apartment buildings where recording live drums is just not an option. I wonder if anybody has any experience/ideas on this matter.
Electric Monkey Pants
Songwriting and playing talent is a lot more important than what mic you're using.
Songwriting "talent"? You mean pure dumb luck that you don't get sued by some songwriter you've never heard of? See my other comment.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I moved from the states to the UK and practice space over here is a nightmare in costs. $200 a month a would love that. But I have moved all my tape based recording to computer. I used to use analog tape on 8 tracks and bring that into the computer now I use the computer and with Cool Edit get 64 to 128 tracks for about $1000 not counting computer costs but compared to ADAT costs yes it is reasonable now that what is a recording studio is going to fade and it will just be acoustically sound rooms that are rented while the equipment to record comes in with the band. Most recording I do now is in practice areas or we can take from stage and overdub that way you get the killer live feel on a track and the polish of the studio sound. It cost us close to $10k to record our demo in a studio and now that money is better spent in getting your own equipment.
But it is not new many bands in the local scene in PA where I came from have been doing it since the mid 90's. It is that the pros are seeing it as less of a demo function and more as a standard practice.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
I've been doing music composition since 1996 on my old 68030 based Powerbook 150. I have since moved to my P4 Windows XP laptop, but you can do it. The onboard sound on a laptop sucks for recording, but for MIDI programming it rocks. I do my recording direct to Hard Disk through an Audiophile 24/96 (M-Audio) card. The sound quality is like night and day from a consumer based card.
Dormous
Why, there's no magazine *called* "Weird", is there?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
...two of the premier jazz guitarists of our day, have each recently released solo albums (solo in the sense that they play all instruments) that were recorded in their home studios. In Metheny's case, the studio is in a small room in his home, lined with books. There's no reason you or I can't do the same.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Just having access to the hardware and software isn't going to do it. How many new "van Goghs" do we have since the advent of Photoshop?
This really isn't a very valid comparison: you're quite right that having creative software on a computer doesn't make you any good at "being creative", but we're not talking about making the music, we're talking about producing professional qiuality recordings of it.
Preparing a great work of art for display was undoubtably a skilled process if done using traditional methods. Similarly I'm sure that a technician making an album in a traditional recording studio has to be very skilled, but the point is that computers and software have reached the stage where we can bypass the need for that skill, freeing the artists themselves to produce finished works of musical art.
Sound quality isn't the best, but it's not bad either considering the cost. They're also stereo.
I use my typical guitar setup, and use the line-out from my amp to go to my laptop.
I use Audacity (free, open, here) to record.. multi-track, fx, etc.
I need to reduce the noise of the entire system though.. Audacity's built-in noise reduction plugin doesn't work so well (harsh clipping and a digital buzz are left over). I think it's a grounding issue, but I probably need those iron cuffs for my cords as well.
Other than that, I think the whole setup is just rad.
Here's a mutli-track voice test song I did recently.
Laptops are cool 'n' all, but I don't think you can beat custom-built PCs for this kind of thing. I have a 10-track digital recorder (for real-time live recording) built into an aluminium photographer's case, using an Athlon 1.7GHz and 5 Audigy soundcards - there's just no way you're going to stuff that into a laptop :-). I also play Hammond Organ in a band using Native Instrument's B4 software running on another custom PC (a bit like this one I built earlier), and an Edirol MIDI controller keyboard to drive it. It sounds awesome, and even seasoned musos are impressed with how life-like it is. It sure as hell beats a $10k pricetag for a real B3, let alone not having to lug around a 400-pound monster to every gig I do :-)
It's too late for me to die young
This is the reason why new music absolutely sucks.
Troll. Flamebait... i know, i know...
100% Insightful
Just because you *can* record a rock opera, doesn't mean you *should*...
no one has pointed out what the most obvious response would be if this same post had been directed at a group of recording folks and musicians:
mostly every great record from the 60s and 70s to the present was recorded to analog tape, typically a reel to reel machine using tape 1 or 2 inches wide- compared to cassettes which are less than a 1/4" wide. These machines are often not made anymore, and still fetch an impressive sum of money because they are the pro tool- not a software program with proprietary hardware. check the value of older PT interfaces if you dont believe me.
professional recording consoles (er, no software does not duplicate this- most professional producers would walk out on your session if you told them this) of either the vintage or modern variety almost always start at new car prices into the new house prices territory.
Actually the production part of most music is a very small fraction of the overall cost. Most of the costs involved go in Marketing/Advertising and paying off the retailers to take your CD's. The problem with high prices is not production costs but the distribution cartel that controls the music industry. This is why the big companies are scared of the internet distribution model, piracy is a factor but not the major one. If you're a musician what difference does it make if you get 2% on 1,000,000 sales compared to 80% on 25,000 sales? That is the future, more artists accessible to the public, less sales per artist but with a much higher percentage of the sale price going to the artist.
I think it's just fucking wonderful how every comment that is not bowing down and worshipping the Mac gets modded as flamebait or a troll. Jesus CHRIST are you people so full of yourselves that you can't take any criticism? LIGHTEN UP and maybe you can pull your heads out of your sorry 3% marketshare asses.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Actually, BT was talking about the "stutter" effects prevalent throughout the vocals NSync's "Pop". He's actually written some homebrew software to automate this process now, which is pretty amazing. He used it on his current album.
The price of an item is NOT all about the cost of producing it. You're taking the simplistic view that the price "should be" cost plus X fixed profit. That's not reality. The price of an item is set by what the market is willing to pay. If the market is willing to pay $100 for a widget (because it seems worth that to the purchasers, for reasons of either utility or pleasure), it doesn't matter whether the cost of producing each item is $1 or $95. An item with a high profit margin will tend to attract competition and the price will eventually fall (possibly over a period of YEARS), and an item with a low profit margin will tend to be sold by an industry dominated by slow, lumbering companies that are not innovating. (Of course, if it's possible to produce a product for $100, but the consumer is only willing to give $95 for it, the product simply isn't produced at any price over the long term unless the cost or consumer demand changes.)
Even if your model of "cost plus" were an accurate way to model economics, the cost of the equipment for the recording studio is a tiny fraction of the real cost of producing, marketing and distributing music, so falling equipment costs wouldn't make a substantial difference for major-label artists. That's because they already have access to high-end equipment. The real value of the low-cost equipment for recording is that it brings that same production quality (or close to it) to people who don't have money, but DO have the musical skills and technical skills to make it happen.
Of course, the reality is that there aren't really that many people who have this level of musical and technical skills who will benefit from access to cheaper equipment (on a percentage basis). For most people who now have access to professional-grade equipment, it will be a way to do better recordings of bad music (because of lack of writing or playing talent) or mediocre recordings of bad music (because of lack of musical OR technical skills). It's the same way with digital video. The equipment is there to produce broadcast-quality productions very inexpensively, but the real barrier to producing good work is and always will be lack of talent more so than lack of access to equipment.
I can do 50 tracks simutaneous most with realtime effects with an Echo Layla (about $600) that provides the following:
Records 10 channels at once
Plays back 12 channels at once
Provides massive onboard DSP
Word clock/Super clock I/O for sync
24-bit, 96kHz
Balanced outputs
High-quality headphone output
ADAT Lightpipe and optical S/PDIF inputs and outputs
I wont get into mics, but with what I listed up there, I have a pretty sweet setup for just over a grand.
bring your own mics and cables, ect as this is about harware and software. That all adds quickly to the cost of recording. But I have built more than a few computers for recording.
The Zoom PS04, the sequel to the PS02:
a rt nr/100006441/sid/!06082002/quelle/listen
http://www.musik-produktiv.de/shop2/shop04.asp/
Tascam and Korg also have palmtops, but the PS04 looks like it could become the real winner in nigh-palm-sized recording devices.
Alex.
People around here LOVE to proclaim that the industry model is dead, yet it's still around and the prevailing model. Premature declarations makes you look fanatical.
"Sufferin' succotash."
A friend of mine actually did record a rock opera himself using a Powerbook, Apple's Soundtrack, his guitar and a cheap microphone. It was very odd, given that he played several parts all by himself, but the end result was very interesting. The CDs he sold have more than paid for the laptop.
Of course, he's got a very wacky sense of humour that really kept the thing interesting. But hey, it's plausible I guess.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
I'm a fairly avid guitar player, and the computer/music connection has always had me interested. Being a poor college kid though, I can't afford to spend 1000's on a sweet rig that lets me get the sounds I want, much less record them as well. Thats when I started looking for free software solutions. I've played with Stompboxes2 and Gnuitar, which were novel at the time, but now I feel that they just don't seem to give me the best controls to customize my sound, nor a decent gui to do it with. I wish I was a slick coder so I could help some of these projects out, but I'm really not that great. As for recording software, I really don't even know what to look for, I feel pretty overwhelemed just looking for stuff. I'm just wondering if any other Slashdotters can share their experiences and recomend any cool projects that are worth checking out. Does anyone have good experiences using open source software for recording or playing? Any good resources for getting your feet wet in terms of recording? I feel like such a n00b, but I just want to know what any other like minded people have come up with.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
I am always that guy who comoes on slashdot to shoot down these things. Using laptops to post audio is still the exception rather than the rule. Many people still prefer using consoles for their durability and reliability. Whether or not they sound better is subjective so I won't mention that. I suspect when they talk about creating an album they are talking about tracking and not mastering and mixing. While mixing is possible on a laptop, an external I/O box would be required to isolate the output from the potential interference of the motherboard and various other components of the laptop. Mastering still requires specialty equipment from specialty houses.
Remember, like with video tools, this is the exception and the average Joe will not get professional quality from their laptop. I look at stories like this like the recent one showing how the show Scrubs is posted entirly in Final Cut Pro... this is but one or two examples. Every non-event based show in the top twenty Nielson rating is still posted on an Avid, and most records are still mixed using consoles.
I remember reading something somewhere about bands recording live performances on a computer and selling live CDRs of the gig on demand immediately after.
If I were a musician, I'd do it. One more source of income for small indie bands.
How Pro Apple the entire article is, without ever referencing Apple itself. Every single one of the artists in the article use PowerBooks, and BT has even had his own PowerBook Ad for Apple ^^
Its a good thing that anyone (though I favor and root for Apple) can take technology and turn it into something useful for the non-techhead, though a musician is arguably more 'technically' skilled than unskilled.
GPL Deconstructed
Does this mean I can finally record that rock opera I've always dreamed about?"
Portability does not equate to talent. Audio applications tend to try and clone the controls you'd find in a recording booth, so you still have to know how to turn the knobs. It's not an instant musician in a box(tm) like your wording seems to emphasize.
If you can't separate the two, then you may want to go find a stone in the back yard and download a copy of Opera. =)
You might be interested in the following two-part series of articles I recently wrote on Core Sound's portable digital sound card and microphone preamp/phantom power/ADC unit.
p ?l ayout=article&articleId=CA300033
p ?l ayout=article&articleId=CA302242
l 20 03.htm
http://www.reed-electronics.com/ednmag/index.as
http://www.reed-electronics.com/ednmag/index.as
and here's a subsequent, to-be-updated-in-future hands-on report:
http://www.reed-electronics.com/ednmag/media/ac
Feedback welcomed
One of the most hideous by-products of the use of ProTools is the ubiquity of Autotune, which is a ProTools plugin. There are standalone Autotune outboard processors now, but mostly it's used in ProTools. You know that weird vocoded sound you hear on Cher's vocals on that hideous song "Believe" and the weird vocoded sound you hear on Madonna's hideous song "American Life" ? Basically that's Autotune being used at its most extreme settings.
m l . Sorry I didn't make the link clickable, I am a bit pressed for time and wanted to make my comment.
:P
It is used more insidiously and subtlely to make sure vocal intonation on a recording is dead-on perfect. It allows people who have sucky pitch sense to sing exactly, 100% locked-on, on key. It also adds a certain identifiable artificialness to the vocal track...it's like vartvart talking about something that "sounds digital." I know exactly what he's talking about...I don't care what anyone says, you CAN hear the difference between warm analog recording and cold, sterile digital recording. And Autotuning vocals only adds to the effect.
The thing that pushed me over the edge in my violent hatred of Autotune is a commercial using Roy Orbison's vocals on "You Got It," his last hit before tragically passing away. Some jerk with Protools, Ableton Live and Autotune remixed the song, and AUTOTUNED THE SHIT OUT OF ROY ORBISON'S VOCALS. All the quirks and flaws and waveriness that are part of the charm of an Orbison vocal track had been processed away. It literally made me nauseous.
Autotune is pure evil in bit form. Here's the URL for Antares' Autotune page... http://www.antarestech.com/products/auto-tune3.ht
Nobody's done an Autotune Sucks page but I might just get pissed off enough to do it. Process THIS, Antares...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Cool Edit Pro 2.0 is great multitrack recording software. I have a crappy 8 channel peavey power mixer run into a soundblaster live! soundcard and have been recording albums with live instuments (drums, guitar, bass, vocals, keyboards, various percussion) for a few years like this. When in need of some digital effects i pull out a copy of Fruity Loops (THey may have recoently changed thier name) which is a sweet program as well. I'd like to upgrade to a Echo Layla Sound Card so I could record multipal tracks at once, but I've gotten pretty good at my current process and don't have extra cash on hand for the new card. Here is a link to some songs I've done with my current setup for an idea of what kind of quality you can get with very little equipment and a tiny bit of training/playing around:
http://www.adventure-today.com/theblackpearl
adventure-today.com
As Butch Vig could tell you, having your studio on a laptop means you can grab it and run when you see a truck heading your way.
I don't agree.
Personally, I like to be in control of EVERYTHING that's related to my music. In fact, I usually record all the instruments and vocals (except the drums) myself.
There are several steps in the process of creating music, and recording/mixing is as important as writing lyrics to me.
The sales of hardware aren't what they used to be, and they're not going to come back. It adds up to big trouble for hardware manufacturers."
This is so typical of the music production industry. They sit by idle, over-charging us for equipment for the past 20 years, then just assume they are going to lose a lot of business. I think the word that all aspects of the music industry miss is innovation. A few companies are starting to make neat gadgets for the 'digital' musician, like those little motion sensor orbs for doing warping and scratching effects. Very nifty stuff.
Looking back, this industry, especially the synth side of things, really needs a kick in the butt. $3000 for a keyboard with a synth system inferior to an Audigy2EX card ($250). Yeah, um, those keys and switches must have cost a fortune, right? Not.
I understand that the production quantity is lower, thus each buyer pays a higher premium on the engineering that went into developing this sort of thing. But that's no excuse to keep prices artifically high for years and years. Especially when you've got companies like Fender who did a decent job of opening up quality instruments to the masses by relocating their manufacturing plant to Mexico.
I guess I'm just bitter because I spent my youth wanting to learn to play all kinds of instruments, but couldn't afford to get much of anything.
Friends don't let friends let Steve Vai use computers to make more "music."
Although this article is right on target in a lot of ways, there is one essential factor that it does not address. This sort of on-the-go recording is great when you are out on tour and living out of a bus, are severely limited budget-wise, and are doing mostly electronic music. However, if your music relies on the recording of lots of acoustic instruments, this sort of setup falls flat. Sure, you can cut decent demos in this fashion, but not discs that are IMNSHO suitable for release (unless you are Guided By Voices, in which case all bets are off).
Recordings that are cut straight into a system like this tend to be sterile, flat, and in my opinion, quite dull. To really bring out the best in ANY recording, there is no substitute for big bulky tube mic pres, big bulky compressors, and lots and lots of different microphones to capture all of the colors of the sonic pallett. The laptop, in this case, is an excellent scratch pad.
Don't Panic!
Satriani has finally got some hear. I hated the bald thing he had going on.
But I can do true 'professional music' (what is that anyway?) with my tiBook and Indigo2 here in my living room, and you personally wouldn't even know the difference, as a music consumer, whether it was recorded at Powerplant or what.
Bullshit. If anything, cheap pro gear makes the recording issue that much worse - if you record in your living room with a U87, it's going to sound for sure like you recorded it in your living room, with every little acoustic problem magnified (unless you have sound foam and floating walls in your living room). I'm calling "professinal music" anything that's recorded in a purpose-built studio and processed using "real" (read expensive) audio equipment and software - not placing any judgement on the music itself, just the quality of production.
I was way too general before - anything beyond the actual recording can be done great on a laptop - a TiBook with an 828 or an 896 would be a kickass porta-recorder/mixer/effects processor/etc etc etc on the cheap (well, excluding mics), and will most definitely deliver professional-quality results, but you need to be putting in good sounds to begin with. And to get really good sound, unless you want a specific effect, there's no place like a studio. Yes, I'm marketing that statment as a concrete fact; if you really think a living room is a better recording environment, I'd like to hear the argument. granted, I'm not a completely typical consumer; most of my family and friends are musicians, and I still play around a little with recording and processing so i have some ear for it, but i suspect even joe 6pack could tell the difference between a garage recording and a studio recording if all the rest of the equipment were the same.
ps. for sheer quality, NOTHING beats 2-inch reel-to-reel with a really good mic and tube amp, especially for really subtle stuff like vocals and piano.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I have an all digital home studio, with a multitrack, Mac, synths etc etc. I love the freedom it affords me to make music how I like and when I like. However, if I were putting together a big album project, I would still use a studio for at least some bits. Here's why...
1, You have a nice acoustic space for recording "real" instruments, like Drums, Guitars etc with nice mics (Neumann, AKG, B&K etc)
2, You don't have potential noise abatement issues like you would in an apartment. If I want to crank up that 'ol Mesa Boogie amp, it's much easier in a studio.
3, Studios usually have great monitoring systems and outboard equipment. The rooms are also designed to listen to music in, as opposed to the perfectly rectangular study in my abode. No standing waves!!!
4, You have the expertise of a sound engineer. This has enormous value, IMHO.
All these new tools are wonderful, and I make as much use of them as possible. They don't, however, replace experience and plain old skill. I didn't start playing with my own gear until I had been in a few recording studios and saw how it was done. I do love the fact that the entry cost of recording has come down dramatically with the advent of DAW's (Digital Audio Workstation).
Musicians have been using laptops for a variety of purposes for years now. Daniel Myer, otherwise known as German artist Haujobb, uses laptops live and in the studio. In fact, it's all he brings on tour, and relies on local acts and promoters for the rest of his stage gear. Tom Shear of Assemblage23 has a Powerbook Ti and a G3 at home, which he used to produce his last several albums, and a pletheora of remixes. Supposedly Kevin Cey of Skinny Puppy fame is working on new stuff entirely on a laptop.
My whole equipment list is here: http://www.staticengine.com/studio.html And that's toned down from the hardware monstrosity it used to be. The bottom list of equipment is all hardware I've sold since getting softsynths, Sonar 2.2, and Reason 2.5. More and more music production occurs entirely in the digital environment, because it just sounds cleaner and crisper. All those cables used to add noise. Now, it's just the CPU pressing bits. And that 2.4GHz P4 1GB RAM system that's my main music computer is VASTLY overpowered - I wrote, recorded, and mixed down a 40 track song entirely in Reason 2.5 (with imported vocal lines from the singer) and the CPU never once peaked above 30%.
The bottom line is that software and fast PCs have made the days of lusting over large analog (or even overpriced digital, D8B anyone?) consoles a thing of the past. Sure, you may still need a mixer to route some signals and use outboard effects processors (the MOTU line of zero latency audio I/O boxes can even eliminate this need), but aside from having a good recording environment and a modicum of talent, there's very little barrier to entry for anyone with $2k lying around to become a professional sounding musician.
The way to manage the mediocrity is to publish to a forum, where the readers (listeners) are also the editors or judges. The crap settles to the bottom and the good stuff is listed on the front page.
This would work for writing or music. Or any other kind of art.
Sig Applied For
"Does this mean I can finally record that rock opera I've always dreamed about?"
No you can't, you fucking tard. You need talent first.
I hate posts that end with stupid questions like this.
There is really no need for a record label anymore! You can record your music on your computer - it doesn't have to be a top of the line workstation to get good results, you can distribute the music on you website and through distributors such as CDBaby, and promote it on the internet.
I named my site "8x7.org" because my home office where I record is 8' by 7'. I think its symbolic of the shrinking hold that the big 5 record labels have on the industry.
Sound waves should be free!
check out BIG brother Music for my set up. The website is incomplete, small and will probably melt, what the hell. My system is completly portable and i've been rolling it out to several bands and recording them.
Or so it sounds. 386/20 with PC-Wave anyone?
The Mini Repository - more links
I thought Mac notebooks had a tendency to come only with built-in microphones and no mic or line in socket!? I found that to get a mic in socket you had to buy an expensive usb adaptor. Even with other notebooks im not sure how good the internal sound-card is going to be so it would be better do use an average notebook (come on its digital audio it doenst need that much power) and use a separate bit of hardware to do the digitising and send it thru firewire/usb
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Does this mean I can finally record that rock opera I've always dreamed about?
No more than it means you are suddenly Steve Vai. If you can record a rock opera now, you could have done so before - you just need to get off your butt and do it. Whether this will drastically alter the cost of recording is a moot point - I doubt it'll change very much due to the remaining need for a good physical studio.
But if you want to record your rock opera badly enough then you'll get the money from somewhere, whether it's from working shitty jobs 18 hours a day or just putting a little aside each month for a couple of years. I have friends who have gone out and made records and believe me, it's determination that gets things done, not cheapness. If it were free to climb Everest from tomorrow, would that mean you could finally go out and climb it? Perhaps, but for most people the answer would still be no - there's a lot more to it than cost, and you can always get round the cost problems if you want something badly enough.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Yeah, it's a bit off-topic, but there seem to be a lot of people with experience reading this thread.
The author of the article is wise to note that affordable equipment does not provide the user with the expertise to make professional sounding recordings. And there are a couple of things that still, and may always, cost money.
Instruments, for example. Any keyboard player worth their piano tie and ponytail is going to need an 88-key fully weighted controller to really play - you can have a vast array of soft synths and samplers but if your instrument is a hollow-plastic 61 key piece of junk your performance is going to be affected.
If you're recording a lead instrument that is not a piano, you will not find a synthesized equivalent to replace the real thing. So you're going to need a good mic. If we're talking professional quality recording, a good mic is going to cost a pretty penny. And you'll need a high quality pre-amp to run it through. And you'll need to build an acoustically friendly space to record this. This is true for wind instruments, strings, vocals... If you want to record a drum kit you're going to need an array of high quality microphones and a mixer big enough to bring them all in. Sure, you can use a drum machine instead - but the drummer in the band you're recording might have some objections to that, and rightfully so. Nothing sounds like a live musician.
For post production and especially mixing and mastering, professional monitors are essential. There goes another couple thousand. And if you don't have any education in sound engineering you're going to have to hire somebody.
The leaps and bounds we are talking about here do not apply to all genres of music, just those that lend themselves well to machines. Sure, one guy worked on NSync's "Pop," while flying on a plane, but don't doubt for a second that the vocals and any live instruments were recorded in a million-dollar studio. the Crystal Method's music is much more within the reach of the budget musician. Hiphop, Dance music, great. If you want to record a string quartet, folk music, funk, jazz, anything that relies on real instruments and musicians, you may not reap all the benefits of these advances.
All this assumes you want to make an industry quality recording. On the other hand, working on less-than-standard equipment can remove the "studio veneer" from music and make it sound much more real and personal, something I enjoy. After fifty years of million dollar studios creating our music, it's refreshing to "remove the plastic coating" and hear something raw and low-fi. It's all a matter of opinion.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
A lot of the producers I'm in touch with like to record onto -- get this-- analog first, then export the analog recordings to nuendo or pro tools. Lots of engineers think that 96k recordings are still too digital. Go to tape first, export to protools, voila, best of both worlds.
Pro Tools Mix Plus 24: Work of the Devil?
by John Vanderslice
Issue #18 (July/August 2000)
Note: If you've sold your car (and re-mortgaged your house) to buy one, stop reading and start chanting: "It's okay to record on a G4, it's okay to record..."
This is not another digital vs. analog article, I promise. This is a highly opinionated, anecdotal investigation regarding the uses and misuses of Pro Tools Mix Plus 24 in the context of recording electric/acoustic instruments. While I am stridently pro-analog, I have no problem with the possibilities and promise of digital audio. I am a great champion of MP3 (the little codec that could) and hold the heretical view, at least in the analog world, that CDs are a superior storage medium to vinyl. I will focus on the sound (or, more accurately, my opinion of the sound) of Pro Tools, not on the supposed by-products of digital editing (i.e., decrease in the overall performance level of musicians; slick, lifeless, quantized, over-produced records), nor will I consider the larger question of hard disc recording.
I was reminded time and again by the people I interviewed for the article (many of whom, by the way, did not share my negative feelings about PT) that hearing is subjective and wholly personal. Tony Visconti, the brilliant producer/engineer who worked on over half of Bowie's earth-shattering '70s work, reminded me that hearing is a chemical process of the brain. "The bottom line is that Pro Tools is just a storage medium, just like tape, it does it in a different way." He adds, "Digital recording is still in its infancy and is getting better and better."
My studio, Tiny Telephone, has PT Mix Plus 24, and I've spent countless hours in the past two years using it for looping, sampling, recording and mixing demos. As a result, I have overwhelmingly dour feelings about this soon-to-be studio standard.
There was a time when the only projects in my studio that requested our Pro Tools rig were doing club remixes, sequenced beats, or the occasional rock band seeking Eric Valentine-like sheen. But I've noticed a sea change in the past year: bands that have made great home recordings in the past (and who grew up listening to analog classics like the White Album and The Who Sell Out) started asking me about getting Pro Tools for their home studios. They not only wanted to do editing and sequencing on PT, they wanted to record directly into the computer. Indie bands that a few years ago would have been knee-jerk pro-analog would ask about bypassing the 2". "There's so much more we can do there, besides we don't want to buy tape..." And who can blame them? If PT sounded good it would be a dream come true, wouldn't it?
I should come clean: I have been hostile towards digital recording since buying my first ADAT (that I had to sell my Tascam TSR-8 only made it worse). I had no idea why it sounded bad (I mean look at the specs...) but I was thoroughly uninspired to record on that loser. When I started my studio, I bought the only 2" I could afford, an Ampex MM1000. That beast sounded wonderful, but I lost much sleep (and many sessions) dealing with its idiosyncrasies (i.e., breakdowns). So let's admit it, analog is a major pain in the ass, tape cost is a consideration for any budget, and the whole thing is going the way of the wax cylinder. But while it's here, it will provide us with an important benchmark: in my opinion, nothing sounds better than a properly aligned, well-maintained 2" deck.
For low cost recording, digital can be the right choice, but Pro Tools is another matter. A functional 24 Mix Plus system with 2 888s runs over 20 grand. The first thing people do when they spend that kind of cash is repress any negative feedback their ears are giving them; it took me years to admit that my ADAT was not right for me, and man I was depressed when I finally did. Let's not mince words: Mix Plus 24 is a supreme rip-off; you can start a serious analog studio for that kind of money, especially considering that MM1200 16-trac
We need to take this to the next level and replace the musicians. Better MIDI-like systems and voice synthesizers should, in time, do it. That's worth doing just to annoy the RIAA.
he brings up an excellent point. You fucking zealot mods should all take a loaded Glock, point it to your heads and pull the fucking trigger so that we can have a fucking conversation without your constant fucking opression like you are so much better than we are.
Moving faders around with a mouse sucks.
That's why I got a yamaha aw4416 instead of trying tu plug my stuff into my pc. But, whatever works. I hate the headaches of esoteric PC hardware, with bad or no driver support for linux, etc. On the downside, yamaha no longer makes the aw4416. But there are similar devices out there. A yamaha digital mixer plus an alesis or tascam hard disk recorder might be the way to go today.
by Walter E. Sear
As we approach the millennium, I thought that my overview of our industry as I have seen it evolve from the 1950s might help to counteract the negative directions that I have seen taking place in our industry. RANCOR AND RAGE!! What do you mean, negative directions!! With all of the new technology, it has to be better. Well, I don't think so. There has been a serious deterioration in the quality of recorded sound since the 1960s which continues to get worse to this day.
How many times have I heard people say, "I listened to an old LP, and the sound really jumps out at you." Why is this so, and why is so much vintage tube equipment being restored to use? I think that I can give you an answer.
THE PEOPLE. In the golden era of sound recording, recording was done in very professional studios, by a very professional staff. The training of the staff to learn the engineering art took a number of years. There were a number of prerequisites that were required for an entry level position. Often, an engineering degree was required and certainly, a very good knowledge of music was a must. You were trained in the studios in the various aspects of studio operation and you learned the studio philosophy. Yes, each studio had a point of view about the aesthetics of music and the recorded sound, usually reflecting the views and personality of the owner-engineer. Different studios, as a result of their point of view, produced different sounding recordings. There was a character and personality that could be heard in the product of each studio and each of the studio staff engineers.
Yes, in the olden days, there were ON-STAFF STUDIO ENGINEERS. In fact, the complete studio staff was on (believe it or not) salary. Freelance people were very rare and, as a result, if the client chose a particular studio in which to record, it was because of the philosophy of the studio, for the expertise of its engineers and the quality of its sound. The support staff was equally important. Everyone knew the equipment, the wiring, the sound of the rooms, the coffee maker and the monitors.
Today, the freelance engineer comes into a strange control room, has to guess at what the monitors sound like, has to work with a strange assistant engineer, has to figure out why the coffee tastes like it does, and he has to depend on the varying competence of the maintenance staff. No wonder the music suffers!
THE EQUIPMENT. There is a plethora of equipment available today that we could not have even dreamed of in 1960. Much of it is remarkable. Much of it is garbage. Although Western Electric was the source of much of the research that we applied to the recording profession, they were mostly interested in telephone-related equipment. When they developed the transistor, it was not with the audio market in mind. At this point, the recording industry became a fashion industry. Many people who should have known better decided to keep up with the "flavor of the month" instead of using their ears. "Solid state" (squalid state) became the catchword of the '60s, much as "digital" became the catchword of the '80s. The early germanium transistors were horribly non-linear, and they sounded terrible. However, the people who should have known better junked their old tube equipment and got into the era of transistor-generated third and 13th harmonic distortion. (The research that was done in my studio on this type of distortion was published in the Audio Engineering Society Journal in May, 1973).
As the new equipment got cheaper, lighter and easier to operate, the general quality of the recorded sound deteriorated. True to Gresham's Law in economics, bad product pushed out good product and unfortunately, the new, bad sound became established as the norm. It became easier to call yourself an engineer since you didn't have to know quite as much about signal flow, how the equipment operated or any of those other boring technical things. Since you didn't have to know as much, more people could call themselves
This ties in with the trend of virtual sound control in recent years. For example, Antares have the Microphone Modeller, which (I think) does a resonable job of turning your Shure 57 into a virtual vintage Telefunken U47. Line 6 have been doing amp modelling for years, and now they have the Variax, a guitar with built-in DSP to emulate the sound of other guitars. I can see session guitarists liking this, as long as the sound quality is up to scratch...
(this is not a
Well, I'm late to the discussion as usual, but hopefully this comment still gets seen by those that need to see it.
/. about how it is now possible to build your own home recording studio on the cheap ($10,000 gets bandied about often). While this is certainly true, I'd like to point out that this doesn't mean professional recording can be done by the masses, just that amature recording is much more affordable.
There's an awful lot of talk on
My friend is a professional sound engineer. The stuff he does just can't be replicated by a cheap computer program or a $10,000 setup. He has built several different sound rooms in which he records bands, each at enormous expense. He's got one room that is covered in egg shell-like foam that seems to kill sound the second you step into the room (at a cost of $10,000 just for the special foam I believe). Another room has special wood on the walls and floor to simulate a different recording environment (again, very expensive).
Then there's the Mics. Even a single pro mic runs in the thousands. Don't think a little sound blaster mic plugged into your sound card is going to give you the same type of results.
All of this is without considering the fact that he's a trained sound engineer while Joe Homeuser is probably not. Since most people probably will say that they could do it themselves, let me try to provide an analogy here: the pro sound engineer is like a Java programmer who is an expert in their field, while the home amateur recorder is the equivalent of someone who's just read "learn Java in 21 days." To someone who doesn't know anything about programming at all they probably won't see much of a difference, but within the field the difference would be easily spotted. For a band trying to move past the "garage" image and pose themselves as professionals, it's worth considering this.
I think my friend bills around $80/hour now. At that rate you could probably record a few songs professionally for less than $5000. That seems like a pretty small amount of money in the grand scheme of things.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
I guess we really will listen to Reason.
but actually recording all that audio is going to require owning/renting studio space. Laptops and desktops are great for editing and creating electronic music, but for music that requires audio recording of voices and instruments you will still need a bit of space and some good mics/pre-amps. As a producer I do everything on a g4 tower or g3 iBook these days, but I have not been dealing much with live vocals or instruments lately. I use Logic 6 on the iBook, probably the best editing/production environment available. I started out with cubase and moved on to Pro-tools later when I could afford it. Cubase was just crap in my opinion, many people use it anyway. Pro tools was much better, and has always been my favourite for audio editing and mastering. Logic has been the best all around, it was a bit buggy and had some usability issues in the 4.x releases, but by 6 all the problems I had were worked out. It is much more flexible when compared to Pro Tools. I still run Logic 4.7 on the Digi001 ProTools hardware on a G4, Logic 6 runs in OS X on my iBook. The iBook is a 733 g3, which is generally fast enough to start out, but after 10-12 audio/instrument tracks with plugins the processor is maxed out. This is no problem, Logic 6 allows you to 'freeze' tracks, essentially rendering them transparently, which frees up the CPU and memory for more tracks/plugins. This makes the laptop feasible as a production environement, even if it is a G3. My studio has definately shrunk in the last 2 years, the portablity is nice and I no longer own big old unreliable analog synths or big crappy, limited and expensive digital synths. All the synthesis is done in software, and the soft synths are pretty limitless and never break or go out of tune.
TallGreen CMS hosting
It might hurt your ears for a couple of years, but just wait until the technology has soaked in a little. In a few years, first graders will be learning how to loop tracks, and when those kids hit high school, then you'll hear some good stuff.
Information wants to be $1.98/lb.
The article talks about using laptops for post-production editing and mixing. It doesn't claim people are recording tracks directly to their pcs for professional studio work.
Oh by the way, STEVE JOBS RULZ MAC G5 IS BACK FIRST 64-BIT DESKTOP OSX IS UNIX ALTIVEC WUZ DESIGNED BY CRAY AND GETS HIGHER PHOTOSHOP FILTER SCORZ Will that get me a Karma Bonus? Or perhaps modded "insightful" or "informative"?
I howled in joy after reading the article. Why you may ask, because computers have become the great equalizer. The only thing you need is a computer and kazaa and you can learn and accomplish anything you want... digitally of course. 10 years ago you couldn't be a poor kid from the ghetto and produce a full length feature film from your junk PC using software and tutorials you downloaded from the internet. Maybe I should say computers and the internet are the great equalizer.
Coming from a financially underprivileged family this just makes me howl in joy.
So that's why that track sounds so bad... 3000 edits on a plane? BT's early stuff was ok, but I wouldn't agree that he is a great producer and let's face it - most producers turn out at quality product with the talent he works with.
Have gone the laptop/software route.
Plusses: Portability...uhhh...Portability...and yeah, Portability. Nothing beats it for doing so so work in remote areas.
Drawbacks: Sound/Ease of Use/Screen. Really. Go play with some quality hardware before you say you can get the same results with your software. I find 21" displays really distracting and prefer to use my ears as much as possible.
Almost every young music producer I know disses hardware...until they actually use some. A combination of both is the best. For me that means I record and master on a pc but for the rest of the creation/production process I use dedicated hardware.
Work on your skills with whatever you have, and don't get caught up in the endless upgrade market.
Now if only these talented artists using these cheap studios could get some airplay from the giant Clear Channel in the sky instead of the big studio cookie cutters that are being shit out for us. The advent of more people having access to quality recording hasn't lifted the talented home recorder out from the musical underground. They have to be searched for, as apposed to the production puppets being forced down our throats 12 times a day.
Do I sound bitter? I can't tell any more.
P.S. FL Studio rocks.
free online diet tracking.
What this simple 6 paragraph 'story' fails to mention is...
1. These guys are PRO's. They mention Berklee school of music requiring laptops. That should be a clue.
2. They fail to mention the THOUSANDS of DOLLARS in PLUGINs these pro's use. Please... this is not SoundBlaster.
3. They fail to mention the RECORDING PROCESS. You know those little details like PRE-AMPS, A/D convertors, compressors, EQ. TENS of THOUSANDS of dollars invested here.
4. No mention of the PRO mastering house. Invaluable.
5. Did I mention these guys are PRO's???
What does this help? Guys like me who want to cut some basic tracks in ProTools and then take a ZIP disc into the studio and finish the project. Or after recording, using the plugins to finalize the project before the mastering process.
...who don't know it's spelled "Technics" ;-)
Chuck McKinnon
(for the record: 12 years as a mobile DJ, using 1200s, Denon DN-2000, Pioneer CDJ-500 and -100...)
Who do you know gets 4% royalties? something more like 12-18% is standard. Of course you may get screwed elsewhere in the contract, but i've never heard of 4%. I mean, hell since everything's all-in, the producers gets about 3 points, and sometimes the mix engineer 1 or 1/2 points.
TLC got screwed for other reasons. People dont' understand crosscollaterization and recoupment. TLC wasn't driving around in a Pinto to their shows or living in shacks (hell one of them burnt down a mansion). The record companies gave them money, and they spent it. They had to pay it back. DUH!
Tibbon
tibbon.com
I have been working as a professional recording engineer for many years now,(since you only used the computer for 2-track editing and midi). Portable studios are in some sense to pro recording like warezed versions of photoshop are to graphic design. Suddenly everyone's an expert. The portable laptop studio has it's place.. It's great for overdubs at home/on the road etc, but the signal path suffers a bit(no matter how "pro" musicians friend says the focusrite pre's in the mbox are). the highest quality I have seen on portable audio interfaces is 24 bit 96 khz. Pro tools HD records up to 24 bit 192 khz. There is a notable difference, tho maybe not through $300 speakers. Also disk throughput on laptops is a MAJOR issue when trying to work with these higher sample/bit rates. My point is this: Just because the magazine or sales guy at guitar center tells you it's "professional" doesn't mean it is. For now I will stick with my NEVE,Neumann,MCI 2" etc..
I've been doing this only recently with a laptop, but have been at it for a while with a PC.
A great example of an amazing project recorded with this type of tech is 1 Giant Leap. There's performances with Brian Eno, Michael Stipe, Michael Franti, and some dialogue with Kurt Vonnegut and Dennis Hopper.
After a two week, break my music instructor and I hooked back up and we had both independently purchased 12" G4 powerbooks. Synchronicity! I ran him through a crash course on Reason and he's now got an external firewire sound card. With a couple of mics, soundcard, and his laptop he takes trips to the coast to record his exceptional acoustic guitar playing.
Listen to Reality!
There is this one guy I've heard of who actually walks the crowd and through the dancefloor with a wireless laptop setup, mixing while he moves around. I can't see doing that, but it is kind of interesting.
AFter a couple of years dj'ing i started to want to make your own music. With the success of the home studio and the new software, it's getting easier and easier to do so. I personally use os X on a g3 using protools digi001. I've loved the thing since i've bought it. Defintiylylyl worth the $1000. If you wanna check out some sample songs... check out my stuff at www.beatclubphysics.org . all music is made on hardware synthesizers and drum machines but recorded/mixed/mastered on protools.
Maybe someday we'll be able to do this with Linux... Too bad all we have currently is vaporware.
With Photoshop its too soon to tell, but how many Van Goghs did we have after the invention of tube paints?
There are a lot of students, deadbeats, or casual users of expensive art/music/modelling software who aren't going to buy the software if it can't be cracked. You call this irrelevant, but it goes to poke holes in your numbers. If I sell a CAD package for $10k and along with my thousand registered users, ten people pirate it, or a million people pirate it, I still make $10M. The percentage of pirates changes, but because the copies don't cost me anything they don't cut into the bottom line. The only way you "lose" money is if that person would have bought the software. Most of those 95% wouldn't/couldn't so while immoral, they aren't an impact on the bottom line. They aren't a lost sale.
If businesses or pros working in the industry who could buy just copied software instead you'd lose a sale, but I think most businesses are going to buy because they're afraid of being reported, even if they don't care about the ethics. All the pro shops I've done any consulting for have paid for all the main software they use, like Photoshop and Illustrator.
I think part of what you're missing in this equation is that many people aren't going to have the recommended system, when I was a student I had a $400 (at a best guess) PC, not the $2000 one you'd want if you were going to run Photoshop properly. Also, even when someone does have a $2000 computer and they pirate Photoshop they probably didn't buy the computer for that purpose. It's a general use computer and use of pirated copies of Photoshop are merely an incidental benefit.
Now it's available to a home studio for about $1000.
That's at least 50 solid days of flipping burgers after federal and state income taxes. You can see why poor musicians improvise.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Distribution: Website
So are you going to make your customers go to a public library to gain access to the Web in order to order your records through cdbaby.com?
Promotion: Consultant
How will promotion other than through commercial radio's so-called "indies" reach listeners in moving vehicles?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I wrote, recorded, and mixed down a 40 track song
When you wrote the song, how did you make sure that it was in fact original and not "substantially similar" to some other song that was popular 30 years ago? Subconscious copying is infringement ( Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs ). What do you do to prevent yourself from making the same mistake George Harrison made?
Will I retire or break 10K?
pro or anti music theft, most agree that with current technology there is little need for the bloat of the recording and distribution middlemen. I would argue that most software falls under this situation as well. I would much rather pay a smaller middleman who is really a distribution and marketing service (i.e. online) where I have the choice of choosing payment methods like up front fees, subscriptions, flat per release fees, or a scaling percentage (scaling down as sales increse).
The distribution would be a replacement for CD's in retail stores, not for radio play. The radio end of things would be handled by a marketing consultant. The point of the consultant is to promote awareness of the album through traditional means, you misunderstood my intial post, I was not looking to replace radio.
I use a nice big studio mic, but its just a CAD. It is nice to be able to vary the pickup pattern. Mackie mixer. Digital tape. I recorded a cello and violin piece last week and It sounded good. Playing with a computer while you are recording is a pain in the ass.
However, no matter how many computers I get, the studio is the same size! The fans are noisy and the people playing games on them make too much noise.
It's fun to charter an accountant
and sail the wide accountant-sea
Computer: "For my first trick, I shrank the recording studio so it fits in a small little box, and only needs one person to operate it. For my NEXT trick, I will make the need for music distribution cartels disappear!"
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Crispness is sometimes the description given to stuff that has no resonance or harmonics evident.
Just because people have been trained to listen to compressed music doesn't make it good.
Just like software that trains you to reboot once a day.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
The point of the consultant is to promote awareness of the album through traditional means
How will a home recording artist be able to afford hiring such an agent?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Was that from "Bored of the Rings" ??? back in the 60's??
I used to have a copy and wish I had never tossed it.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Shameless plug of my band (all recorded on PCs)
How did this crap get modded up?
Not only does it have little do do with the article, it looks more like an advertisement for a particular piece of software to me.
No, you paid me for knowing when to push it.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
You can find my new material, recorded on PC at the link below, then follow the news page.
They did a music track with a lot less than 2000 edits. Probably more like 10.
Just think how much *better* they would have been if they could have had thousands of edits and weeks to make their tracks stale. UCK!
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
One of my students posed an interesting question today. Could I play a swing beat using just eighth notes.
Try that with your computer.
It was evidently a part of somebody's required exercise to get into New England Conservatory.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
How does an instrument that collects a small and distorted amount of information get "dithered up" into high granularity input?
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Same as the film or digital camera question. Film has a finite resolution, so does tape, so does your memory of the event.
Lots of Cinematographers said that film was the ultimate medium until someone pointed out the fact to them. Now NOBODY is stupid enough to say it a second time!
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
What happens when you want to listen to the forty to sixty foot waves from the pipes? Weenie little guitars and drums, you can amplify 'em but you can't take them home like a gut fluttering low cycle boom at the threshold of hearing.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
to pick a track made with reason?
i get to hear lots of them, and they all sound the same.
i was given a track to remix the other month, and realised that one of the parts was the default rebirth song.. unaltered.
please people.. resist the temptation to think you're a musical genius just because you can start up a program. you have to do something creative with it before ayone else will beleive you.
Why was my post deemed offtopic?
when i was in college (a long time back) i took part as a grunt level "listener" for aome music contest where you had to send in demo tapes. every day for an hour we would sit and listen to amateur music.. some of them were gems.. most were mediocre.. the rest of them.. lets just say that i STILL have nightmares about them.. sheesh..
Suchetha
< do you REALLY want to hear a "well produced" recording of someone essentially doing karaoke?? >
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
You've been able to make "pro" quality recordings with a PC/Mac for a number of years now. ProTools, Cubase VST, Logic Audio, and Cakewalk Pro Audio have been around for a while now and so has pro-quality audio cards. I sold this stuff from 1996 to 1998, and while the quality and capabilities have dramatically improved over the years, the basic functionality has always been there.
Personally, I use a PC for my music. I have a custom built PC (Duron 1.1GHz, 768MB RAM, 4 ATA100 drives, CDRW, etc...) with all of my software installed for music (Cubase VST5.1, Reason 2, Rebirth 2, etc...) and a Dell Inspiron 5000 (P3-700, 384MB RAM, 12GB drive, internal CDRW) for mobile music work. I have the same applications installed on the laptop as I do on the desktop so that work I start on the laptop can always be finished on the desktop.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.