The truth is that you can spend $500k or more on a recording if you so wish, but with the development of digital recording capabilities it is cetainly no longer a prerequisite for a great recording. Many successful bands these days find a compromise between expense and all out production. In many cases this means tracking drums and bass in an analogue studio with a good large recording space, tracking everything else in a smaller, generally digital studio, and then mixing somewhere with a large analogue console, generally an SSL, or Neve.
Furthermore, with the rise of many digital studios, the large analogue studios can no longer charge what they once did. In my opinion as a sound engineer and musician, no band needs to spend more than AU$10000 to create a very professional album so long as the money is spent wisely. Any costs associated with duplication, marketing etc. being extra.
Often high recording costs are not borne by the record label anyway, they are recouped from the advance given to the band upon signing. I know of one band from my home town who are signed to sony and getting national airplay, but before recording the album they owed they're record label AU$26000 after recording 3 EPs and doing fairly well in terms of sales. The record labels are really just venture capitalists in a particular industry and as such they try to reduce the risk to themselves as much as possible. They must therefore be treated as such.
As a professional sound engineer, I know there is a very good reason for the main choice of software being ProTools. ProTools is not just software. When you buy a mix plus system or similar you're getting dedicated DSP hardware to run digidesign software on (mostly) digidesign i/o hardware. In my studio I run a G4, but ultimately the computer configuration is beside the point because a majority of the processing is done on the TDM hardware. As much as I love open source, i can't see professional studios charging $1000s a day risking it. Open source simply can't release DSP specific software packages like Digidesign does.
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The truth is that you can spend $500k or more on a recording if you so wish, but with the development of digital recording capabilities it is cetainly no longer a prerequisite for a great recording. Many successful bands these days find a compromise between expense and all out production. In many cases this means tracking drums and bass in an analogue studio with a good large recording space, tracking everything else in a smaller, generally digital studio, and then mixing somewhere with a large analogue console, generally an SSL, or Neve. Furthermore, with the rise of many digital studios, the large analogue studios can no longer charge what they once did. In my opinion as a sound engineer and musician, no band needs to spend more than AU$10000 to create a very professional album so long as the money is spent wisely. Any costs associated with duplication, marketing etc. being extra. Often high recording costs are not borne by the record label anyway, they are recouped from the advance given to the band upon signing. I know of one band from my home town who are signed to sony and getting national airplay, but before recording the album they owed they're record label AU$26000 after recording 3 EPs and doing fairly well in terms of sales. The record labels are really just venture capitalists in a particular industry and as such they try to reduce the risk to themselves as much as possible. They must therefore be treated as such.
As a professional sound engineer, I know there is a very good reason for the main choice of software being ProTools. ProTools is not just software. When you buy a mix plus system or similar you're getting dedicated DSP hardware to run digidesign software on (mostly) digidesign i/o hardware. In my studio I run a G4, but ultimately the computer configuration is beside the point because a majority of the processing is done on the TDM hardware. As much as I love open source, i can't see professional studios charging $1000s a day risking it. Open source simply can't release DSP specific software packages like Digidesign does.