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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 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. --
I would recommend the Digdesign MBox, it comes with Pro Tools LE and the MBox itself has two mic pre's, all interfaced via USB into your PC.
Of course, if you need more inputs... the Digi 002 may be an option. Of course M-Audio (if you don't want to go the pro rools route) makes some damn fine USB/Firewire interfaces.
sad robot making broken music
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?
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.
Actually, professional recording studios still cost quite a bit to build. Isolation booths with different kinds of hardwoods for different timbres, extremely high end consoles, seperate mixers for each musician in the grandroom for their own monitor mix, etc... all adds up. If I were to show up for session work in somebody's garage, I would expect garage quality, and be pleasantly surprised by anything better (which is what this article eludes to). But if I were to pay $85+/hr for a studio, and $85+/hr for an engineer, I would expect an extremely professional studio with all the trimmings. Just expereince talking...
That being said, there is still no reason for the high price of CD's these days, but this article isn't justification to lower them.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
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 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).
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