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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...
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.
...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. --
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
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?
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
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.
(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?
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.
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 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 ...
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.
I may answer if it can be of any help...
... just not the same. I use digitals one to, but I prefer a combination of both then only a digital one.
;)
I am nowhere near a professional sound engineer, I am a programmer and I had been playing the cello for over 15 years so lately, I wanted to try to mix both my taste for music and my taste for computers...
What I bought is an Audiophile 2496, it is a very good sound card (use the ice1712 chip), does 24 bit recording / at 96khz which in my case is quite overkill.
I also bought an external mixer, a Behringer ub1204-pro. It is a fairly inexpensive mixing console but it is quite a good one for my purpose, for the price, it is unbeatable. The reason I got an external mixing console is because while you can use a digital one, there is nothing like moving real buttons, it's faster, it's
Now, because my cello pickup is using a piezo pickup, which have a very high impedance, I also needed a very good DI-Box/Preamp, but this is not needed depending on what your son is playing. Also, some person just prefer to mic their amp (use a microphone to record the output of the amplifier).
For about 800$ CAN I bought the cables, the DI box, the mixing console and the sound card, remove 280$ of that if you do not need a DI box (it was an expensive one, almost as much as the sound card AND the console together, but with those, you really got what you pay for).
On the software side, I use Jack and Ardour, with Hydrogen for my drum needs (it is a drum synth).
Well, I am not the best one to talk about all this stuff as I am only fooling around with this stuff. One good place to learn about this "hobby" however is to read all of Tweakz tutorial on www.studio-central.com . He explain EVERYTHING you need to know, about soundcard, mixers, everything. It is totally windows-centric, but the audio hardware part is pretty platform neutral (except the audio card, but a cheap Audiphile is quite good, tcheck the Alsa website to see what is supported) linux-soung.org is very informative for the software part, if you would want to run on Linux. For my part, I run on linux but I could not care less. It is only because I have no Windows installation. Software on windows are quite good but I have been able to get much lower latency on my linux box then on windows. Jack and Ardour works very well together also but Ardour is not very well documented yet... Things will get better on the software side I'm sure. I also had much less problem recording thru the audiophile with alsa then on windows using the maudio (the company's) drivers, don
Anyway, I was just giving you my experiences, the best thing you can do is to make your own! The best advice I can give you is to take a month or two to research what you are buying. This kind of hardware is getting cheaper but it is still quite an investment to do so you better be knowledgeable about it then to be disapointed. Be an informed customer
Hope this helps a bit, sorry about the formatting or any spellling errors, I do not have much time to proofread my post this morning...
Ciao!
I'd rather be sailing...
You're clearly baiting me, but yes, I actually am a professional music system developer.
In addition to this, I am responsible for founding a large community of musicians from around the world, and frequently deal with pro's and amateurs alike.
So, Mr. Karma Sucks, bully for you...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
...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.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
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 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 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.
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
As a former recording engineer with plenty of live classical recording experience, I would strongly advise against using *any* sort of pickup on a stringed classical instrument. Use a mic - any mic is better than a pickup for this.
pickup: noun; a little gadget that you put beneath or attached to the strings (if attached to, it goes behind the bridge...) of an instrument. It "picks up" (geddit?) the strings' vibrations and, through electromagnetic induction, converts them into tiny little voltages. Those voltages get sent on their merry way to become big, loud voltages, etc.
The problem is this: all they pick up is the strings. Most of what sounds "good" about a stringed classical instrument comes from the hollow wooden body. None of that is captured with a pickup.
The moral of the story is: always, always, always use a microphone (pointed at the instrument, not at an amplifier) to record classical instruments.
@sshatrack