get good monitors and treat the room to accomodate them. then listen to some well recorded cds for a month or two. ask for help if in doubt.

If you do that you will save yourself at least a year of audio pain.

learn from my mistakes pal :

room -> monitors -> daw -> toys -> mics -> instruments

that is the correct order in my opinion and my experiance.

of course you need healthy ears and some money too :D

could you define toys?

ups.

sorry for not saying it clear enough: I meant anything between mic and daw :D

I think at least one good mic/DI preamp and one good eq is a must. but to be able to judge what a good toy is you really need to hear it correct as possibile - therefore room and monitors go first.

of course if you build a studio to work only with samples or soft synth instrumental music you could stop right there - no need for toys or mics or instruments at all. but that is not likely.

if you plan only to edit,mix or master and do none of the recording process then you really should invest in great room/monitor.

to listen critically other peoples recording trough great room/monitor setup is the most important way to get knowledge and get the "sharp ear" so to speak.

in my opinion mics today are quite good and cheap (not talking about sm57). also any high quality mic pre is in most cases perfectly capable of great resoults if you use them properly. daws and contverters are amazing in my opinion - fast and excellent sounding and very usable.

but the real evil is room/monitors/knowledge combination. as I see it (hear it) this is THE difference between pro and amateur recording place.

by room I mean the acoustic space, listening position and treatment.
by monitors I mean speakers,speaker placement, cabeling, amp and DA conversion
by knowledge I mean the theory and experiance of knowing why would this mic work well with that compressor setup through this preamp on particular snare drum in this song :D

I've learned that a hard way (and still learning). :wink:

Lofi...

I really like your approach to avoiding audio pain. Can you tell me what your monitoring environment is like? Speakers & placement, room dimensions, etc.

well right now my control room is approx. 4m x 5m x 3m and is being rearranged because I could not stand the audio pain anymore :)

lucky me that I have a friend who works at local universitiy and we can borrow VERY EXPENSIVE measuring equpment to get the job done right (nordsonic I think is the name).

personaly I do not belive in working with two,three or more (belive me I have seen it and done it) speaker pairs to "check how they translate". I think it is better to learn one speaker/room combination and learn it right. swithcing between different speaker pairs (and levels) is CONFUSING IMHO !

of course if a project is very important is should be mastered by a pro master guy. if not you are on your own.

right now I am adjusting my space (and ears) to skysystem one active monitors (I have asked opinions on them but noone replied yet).yesterday just finished one nu-metal project - no complaints. but I know my place. right now my room is BAAAAAAAD. I took everything apart to build floating floor so right now it is far worse than it was a month ago :cry: . but I have great plans and my humble client list is still expanding so... it just takes time and patience and RTAs and bass traps and great reference recordings :D

I am just trying to help but beware I am no BIG FISH like some other posters here. I could easily be wrong. :(

(ok there are few things that I am sure I am right :
1. always close your eyes when listening/mixing - an eye is ears worst enemy
2. always compare your work with the reference recordings
3. if your hair goes up - you just finished your mixing :wink: )