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?"

Comments

Oh god please no...

[MosesJones]

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.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

[GillBates0]

but I think one of the reasons artists turn to the RIAA companies (in addition to promoting/distributing their stuff, ofcourse) is that the RIAA helps finance their sophisticated and expensive recording and on-stage equipment.

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.

Re:Yes, you probably can!

[seosamh]

From the article, [Mike] Caffrey said "People are paying for my skills and expertise, and get the studio as part of the package."

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?

One thing: hardware is *not* dead.

[torpor]

Oppenheimer said this:

"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) ... 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 ...

Songwriters have a lot to fear

[yerricde]

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".

Only partially true

[tigeba]

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.

Happens all the time

[Logic Bomb]

Just to add to the anecdotal evidence: I work for an Apple Store. I get questions about this sort of thing every day. Setting up a true equivalent recording studio can still cost an enormous amount of money. You can replace a lot of the typical studio equipment with a single computer and a couple major pieces of software (like Digidesign's Pro Tools and Propellerhead's Reason). However, high-end plugins can cost thousands more. And you still need a proper physical studio to insure a high-quality recording. Not to mention an old truism: "garbage in, garbage out." Most of us aren't really talented enough to make music other people would bother to listen to. :-) And these programs are not particularly easy to use. You need the same set of skills as before. The only advantage of all this technology is that once you've done any live recording you require, you're done paying studio fees and you can work on your project whenever and however it's convenient.

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.

Re:Yes, you probably can!

[barleyguy]

Why did you buy 3 lynx 2's? A single lynx 2 is expandable to 12 channels (20 channels if you go down to 48k) using a Lynx ADAT (or TDIF) module and external convertors. And you don't have to worry about all those PCI slots, getting the cards to co-exist, etc.

Obstacles to serious mobile recording:

1. Sound cards. This really isn't a problem. One option is go firewire; almost every prosumer sound card manufacturer has a firewire solution. Another option is PCMCIA, RME is a popular choice in that camp. You can use the same outboard interfaces with PCMCIA that you can on a desktop.

2. Hard drive speed. Most laptop hard drives are 4200 RPM, which really isn't fast enough for serious recording or mixing. I have a desktop/rackmount DAW, and I'm running dual 7200's on RAID 0. That's about where you want to be for hard drive speed.

3. Microphone preamps. Most small interfaces don't have very good mic preamps. So you'll need to either have a mixer with better preamps, or outboard preamps.

4. Microphones. Choosing the correct mic for an application requires having good mics, and possibly a fair quantity of them.

4. Engineering skills. Are your mics placed well placed and in phase with each other? Is your gain staging good? Unless you are extremely lucky, it takes years of learning and practice to be a good audio engineer. A good engineer can do a lot with cheap equipment, but you can have great equipment and still be a crappy engineer. Of course, this in true in a home studio as well, but I had to mention it because it's the real barrier to most bands that try to record themselves.

Other than that, a laptop works just as well for recording as any other computer. And all of these issues are solvable. But really, for the same amount of money, you can build a rackmount PC that's almost as portable, and has better performance and features.