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

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?

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".

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.