The Next Year Studio Quiz!

Started by drblowthingsup, December 11, 2009, 07:42:02 PM

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Dave M

From a home / amateur studio angle...

I use a new iMac and it's quiet enough not to matter a kipper, over the sound of breathing during a vocal take it's not audible. Get an iMac from the apple refurb store and you'll save  20% which you can then spend on loads of ram from crucial memory, who are cheapest for compatible chips.

I have an maudio fw410 interface, my advice would be not to buy maudio as they are slow at bringing out new drivers to keep up with apple, I regularly have to reinstal the drivers due to the mac not seeing it. There are plenty of other good options for £250 from DV247

As for mics, there are many options, £130 will get you a Rode nt1a, which will do vocals and accoustic guitars. Again DV247 have some good offers on at the moment for an SE mic plus vocal reflector screen.

Software, unless you're experienced get Logic Express which will give you more than enough to play with and learn on and only costs a fraction of Logic studio, honestly it will be challenging enough to start with.

Good headphones are a must, then I bought a low wattage Cambridge audio amp and cheaper mission speakew to use as monitors .... Good enough to get me going.
... it was like watching a peach jelly f##k a steel drum ..  

Big Black Shed

My tuppence worth: My new iMac is silent compared to the G5. Stunning performance.

Have a look at Roland's Edirol line of interfaces and controllers. Good value.

Line 6 Pod all the way.

Reason Record. Value and less processor hungry.

Headphones: Beyerdynamics DT250.

Like I said, my tuppence worth. Ignore / delete.
It's not the winning or even taking part. It's the arsing about that counts.

SerFox

Record is good and a reasonable investment... it's not as powerful as a full fledged DAW, which Record certainly isn't. I plan to use Record for live demo and and sessions in the future however, as it seems a lot more flexible than Logic, and a lot simpler than an outboard mixer and data interface. And to get the full power of it you'd need Reason as well, as Record on it's own is a bit...bland.

Mouse

Serfox, that was some brilliant posting. Thank you, sir!  :D

This question is directed towards the good Doctor BTU - are you planning on soundproofing the room? Doing acoustic treatment? I've just done an essay on studio construction and, while I'm not confident yet with my own explanations, I could point out some sources that could help. For acoustic problems/solutions, the Master Handbook Of Acoustics by F. Alton Everest is essential and the HyperPhysics website has been a good friend to me over the past few months. It's such a deep and thorough website, really good stuff.

If you're not bothered about room acoustics and wotnot, then please ignore this rambling goon.  :)

MarkOneMusic

Some good stuff in this thread...

I would add one thing..

Acoustic Treatment.

Recording anything in the average bedroom generally sounds like farting in a tin.  There are so many reflections, and given the average domestic dimensions the room modes (the natural resonant frequencies of the room are slap in the lower mid...  spelling MUD in the mix)  Same goes for playback.  You can have gorgeous monitors and they can sound nasty, phasey (due to an acoustic phenomenon called comb filtering) and if you happen to be in the wrong part of the room, right on the null of a room mode, the bass will mostly cancel out.

Read a bunch of Sound on Sound studio SOS articles from their website, Invest in some slabs of rockwool (mineral wool) from the local builders merchant, and spend an afternoon with some lengths of wood and some fabric covering to make big 4 inch x4'x2' picture frame style absorbers, hang them at the mirror points and be AMAZED at how much better everything sounds, from tracking vocals to mixing a much more balanced sound.

DannySoisSage

Yeah, if you're planning on actually recording in the room (as in not just through direct lines) then a bit of acoustic treatment is necessary; you can have the most incredible equitment imaginable but if your recorded audio sounds like ass you're not going to get much out of it. Nothing needs to be expensive but just read through a few bits from SOS or all over the internet really, you can find really good advice on this sort of thing anywhere and its really useful.

Good luck though man! There's a lot of people in the same boat as you so you can always check the net for useful information from similar situations =)

Dave M

Quote from: "DannySoisSage"Yeah, if you're planning on actually recording in the room (as in not just through direct lines) then a bit of acoustic treatment is necessary; you can have the most incredible equitment imaginable but if your recorded audio sounds like ass you're not going to get much out of it. Nothing needs to be expensive but just read through a few bits from SOS or all over the internet really, you can find really good advice on this sort of thing anywhere and its really useful.

Good luck though man! There's a lot of people in the same boat as you so you can always check the net for useful information from similar situations =)


I think I've just had what they call a "light bulb" moment  :shock:

.... I've been onto ebay and bought some accoustic foam tiles .. thats a good start  :D
... it was like watching a peach jelly f##k a steel drum ..  

DannySoisSage

Quote from: "Dave M"I think I've just had what they call a "light bulb" moment  :shock:

.... I've been onto ebay and bought some accoustic foam tiles .. thats a good start  :D

 :mrgreen:

You'd be amazed at how much difference just a tiny little thing can make!

Drarok

Interesting, never thought of that.

Mind you, the only thing I record that would be affected by that is vocals, and the main problem with those isn't reverb from the room... ;)

Synth, guitar, (electric) drums all go over digital connections to the computer. :)

DannySoisSage

Quote from: "Drarok"Interesting, never thought of that.

Mind you, the only thing I record that would be affected by that is vocals, and the main problem with those isn't reverb from the room... ;)

Synth, guitar, (electric) drums all go over digital connections to the computer. :)

Thats awesome, saves you some pennies on the whole acoustic garb =) Still, you could consider some kind of vocal 'booth' such as you might have seen in such series as 'the Frost* Reports', nothing expensive but bearing in mind what Jem appears to have is a couple of pieces of foam coated wood with a duvet on the top and what he gets out of it goes onto the Frost* CDs, like I say amazing what you can do with just a little bit of stuff! I haven't read the whole thing but there's a question in this months SOS about recording 'dry' vocals in a bad room and there's a few handy suggestions there (hanging a duvet behind the singer for example).

Good luck with the rest, there's a lot of awesome advice in here =) Focus your funds on where you feel they'll be best needed!

Mouse

Of course, you could always build another room within the room to seperate it from the rest of the structure, which would help with soundproofing. That's a bit expensive, though...  :P

drblowthingsup

WOW this is the best possible reponse ever. lol
thanks very much guys!
I have christmas money to spend and my birthdays in march so il finish everything off then.
and inevitably, i shall blog the construction off the Rob Rideout ProgPit. woop woop.

i think if i do use a keyboard, however it'll be as a midi controller and il get synth patches on my computer. or something but il save this thread an use as much as i can!

and btw, serfox that was an epically helpful post thanks very much for it. it's proper appreciated! :)

i'm-a-gonna ask if Mr G is throwing anything out i could sneak off the scrapheap for peanuts. hehee.

xxx

drblowthingsup

hmmm...
twitter will not even let me send a direct message thats more than 140 characters long...

So sorry about the publicness of the request but i cant find a way to get my email off without several twittery messages put together, im hoping it will be viewed on here before all the stuff is thrown away and gone. so heres the message i tried to send:

Hullo :),
seeing as how your redoing the studio if you have anything youre throwing away that could be useful in a beginnery studio would you be willing to sell it?
Cheers, Rob

Jem

There is definitely stuff headed for the skip like my Omnirax NT workstation thingy.

http://www.omnirax.com/index.php/DisplayProduct/0-96

I also have a semi trashed DX7 that just needs a new battery soldering onto the motherboard. You could have both of those for no pounds and no pence. I've got a Roland A37 that I'm not using which you could have for £100. I've also got an Axiom Pro 61 that got about a day's use which you could have for £200. Also for £200 is my Monome 64.

I'm also going to sell my Yamaha VL1, but I'm after a grand and half for that.

Whereabouts are you in the world?

rogerg

so sad the ocean is so wide, that Omnirax is awesome!


Happy New Year, all!