Alright so as most once were, I am new to recording and am trying to figure out some very beginnerish things.
First off I know the sound that I will be getting out of a home studio is no where near as good as it would sound out of a professional one, more or less because of my experience, room settings and such.
I want to know what extra obstacles I am working with when recording in a bedroom. 6 walled bedroom, got a tv, bed and all that kind of sh*t in it. Due to this, acoustics are most likely sh*t, but is there any way around that. Recording in the garage? Putting egg cartons (if that trick even works) on the walls.
Also, for my setup I have a mic running through an interface then to WaveLab LE. Would getting a mixer be a smart idea, or what is the next best step to take in expanding my home studio? The mic I have isn't the greatest so I have been thinking maybe investing into a new mic, but if so what kind and does that even make sense with such a poor acoustic environment.
(y) Thanks for the help.
Comments
It's not all that bad. First, you CAN create some very nice sou
It's not all that bad.
First, you CAN create some very nice sounding recordings at home but it takes a bit of time and money to get things started at a decent basic level.
One very important issue that you have touched on is room acoustics.
Forget the egg cartons! They don't work and will eventually get old and smelly.:rolleyes:
As I have read, if you are recording in a smaller room it is generally best to install a goodly amount acoustic panels (such as ones made of Owens Corning 703 Compressed Fiberglass) to make your room acoustics lean more towards a "dead" space.
If you can get a hold of some Sound On Sound Magazines, they almost always have a "Studio SOS" article where they go into someones home studio and work on acoustics, equipment/speaker/furniture placement and so on.
Ethan Winer has a ton of acoustic related info on his "Real Traps" website, much of which I have used for my own home studio.
In my case, I bought a box of 6 "Raw" Owen Corning 703 Panels for about $70 at the time, wrapped them with appropriate fabric and mounted them on either side of my workstation/desk and it made an incredible difference.
However, I had already built a 4ftX4ftX8inch deep and two 2ftX4ftX8 inch deep compressed fiberglass baffles which are in front of my workstation and with the addition of the 6 new panels, my room has a very nice sound.
Beyond that, a good microphone or two or three and a pair good active (powered)audio monitors would good things to consider.
The CAD M179 is a good beginner large diaphragm condensor mic but it does require your interface to have "Phantom Power" .
Of course, you can always buy a small external phantom power unit if your interface doesn't have it.
KRK (Rokit) and M-Audio make some nice sounding low cost monitors as do other manufacturers.
I personally recommend getting ones with 8" woofers but it would really be best to go somewhere and listen to them ie Take a Music CD that you really like and/or a CD that is representative of the type of music you want to create and listen to it/them through a number of different monitors then choose the ones that, aurally, make sense to you.
As far as an interface or mixer is concerned, that depends on how and what you plan to record (which you haven't clarified as yet).
If you are recording yourself a track or two at a time, your current interface may be perfect for that.
However, if you want to record more than 2-tracks at a time I'd suggest a mixer with Firewire such as one of the the Mackie Onyx (820i=$399.00) Mixers as a good starting point. They work with quite a few DAWs such as ProTools, Cubase, Sonar, and so on ([[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.sweetwat…"]Mackie Onyx 820i | Sweetwater.com[/]="http://www.sweetwat…"]Mackie Onyx 820i | Sweetwater.com[/]).
I hope this gives you a little more guidance and food for thought.
Oh! I almost forgot :confused: . READ READ READ.
Go to the Sweetwater Music Website and look at the different microphones and interfaces and mixers and preamps etc to get an idea of what types of recording equipment is out there, what each does and how.
Read magazines such as Sound On Sound, Recording, and Electronic Musician.
Another good magazine you can get is called Tape Op. If you go to their website/Forum and register, you can actually get that magazine for free.
Nuff said for now. Time for bed.
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