DIY Recording FAQ

look at this.....

www.speakeasy-digital.com

this is where i work, in commonwealth, singapore

the toys and the space make it a pro studio. the skills of the people you work with and the quality of the end result also make it 'pro'

i am not in the pics but you can see lion here and others in china and thai land. look at the wooden room, but only half wooden. the other half is carpeted. the walls and roon are all at diff angles to give a diff result too. all the echo/reverb styles in one room and some dead spots too.

my boss has been doing studio sound for well over 35 years, that helps alot too!
 
seriously... nobody will doubt speakeasy/lion studio as a amature studio, it has well tuned rooms. :) well, i'll be waiting to hear your stuff. :) for me, professional is the end product you deliver, not the tools you use. ;)
 
true but..........

you need the right toys to get the right results. using behringer fx and mixer cant deliver the 'pro' result.
 
sorry... my bad... pro studio that is.

like i say... professional is people who deliver results and know their craft.
 
hmm blueprintstudios, i dont know if this is relavant..
But im abit confused abt something.
I am trying to set up a home rec studio to record a whole band basically.
So let's say i do it up like this.
The guitars are plugged into the amps and mic-ed up
The bass is plugged into the amp and mic-ed up
Vocals have the mics are the ready
The drumset is mic-ed
And everything is connected to a mixer.
Here's the part. Does the mixer go into the pc? Or does it still have to go through another medium so as to get everything recorded.
Im using audacity btw. i need a bit of assistance in this area =x
The PC used is a fujitsu with a 2gb ram in it.
 
Ron Rocks!

Hey guys, trust me, Ron may not have gone thru any formal course, but he's a kickass recording engineer... you'd have no regrets!

Take it from someone who's had personal experience asking him to record!
 
Recording Live In The Bedroom???

LOOK AT THE PHONIC RANGE OF FIREWIRE MIXERS.

these mixers will record all your channs into the mixer separate so you can edit them as separate chann after. this will make your end production far better as you can work on the drums separate to the vocal and so on.

the only thing that will cause you a problem is that if your room is small you will get 'spill'. this is the drum mics recording the guitar and so on. when you get too much spill editing can be very hard. i would suggest doing the band with no vocals and adding the vocals after. or even better would be to run the cables into different rooms of your house and using earphones.

the 32 chann one is only about $1100 net from 'esdon trading' in sim lim. the number is 63339745. there is a 24 and 16 chann version too. there is also the alesis fire wire 16 which they dont make any more so may be selling at a good price on ebay.

the quality of the phonic is about the same as a behringer but the alasis is very good. i have used 3 alasis to record live before.

if you want i am selling a MOTU 828 mk1 at the moment. its only 8 chann though. the full spec is in the for sale forum.



whats the name of your band?
 
Hi Avidaxis,

You mix everything on your mixer or are you thinking of recording multitracks? if your bands is tight and you got a sweet room. you can just mix everything on your mixer and record a stereo tracks to your PC. if not, try multitracking and mix it later. maybe tell us more on what you want to get. :)
 
avidaxis : hi sorry for the late reply , i'm getting married tomorrow, been really busy haha.

to first assure you, your PC is fast enough as long as it's a pentium 4.
HOWEVER , there's 2 kinds of recording we're talking about in this situation

Live :
All instruments > mic/line in > mixer > PC's soundcard (earphone jack input). = voxbassguitardrums.wav (stereo)

Multitracked :
All instruments > mic/line in > mixer (YOUR MIXER MUST HAVE INDIVIDUAL DIRECT OUTPUTS LIKE ALESIS STUDIO32 FOR EXAMPLE) > into a multitrack recording soundcard > PC
which is not cost efficient because you're only using the Mixer's Preamp (read 1st Post)

so yes thats why I recommended the Presonus FP10 on my FAQ cos it's a "preamp + multitrack soundcard/midi" all in one. cheaper, smaller/space saving. comes with cubase etc also. so don't worry about using audacity by then.

in your current situation you can only use from Mixer > audio cable (most likely from the headphone outputs) > adapter 1/4 to 1/8 STEREO TRS!! > your 16bit soundcard.

so basically thats what bernardgoh is asking

on what Otpp said, yes there will be drum miking spill / "mic bleed" , hihat.wav has snare sounds, snare.wav has hihat sounds. toms.wav have hihat and ride sounds. depends how you look at it, it's called "real life/feel" , good bleed or bad bleed, depends how you mix your music. for example, I sometimes bleed the tom mics aiming slightly to the snare on purpose. why? I mike the snare aiming center to pick up the attack, but the impact resonates the toms also, and it makes the snare sound more fuller (Make sure the toms are in tune though). i even hear other local studios mike up the drums and have about 6 snares surrounding the drums and mike up the surrounding snares. or put another kickdrum infront of your active kick drum. it's endless, it's crazy , but if it works and it sounds good. go for it.

Scorpion : haha thank you for flattering man. btw who are you? basically sharing knowledge and the passion, the art of immortalizing sound.cos unlike photos and videos of ourselves. we age, we start to look like crap as we get old. but the way you musicians play music, we sound better as we age. guitarists play better, drummers have more control and technique, and vocals mature from kiddy teenage voice to that charming male/female vocal.
 
hey.. sorry to hijack.. but could i know wat would the setup be like if i had 2guitars, 1 bass guitar, 2guitar amps, 1 bass amp, some mics and a mixer?? do i plug the amps into the mixer or wat?? im confused, pls enlighten.. thanks lots.. :)
 
Depends On Loads Of Things.......

you have to get the mics into the mixer if you want them to record of play out of a pa system.

you can 'mic up' the guitars or 'DI' (direct input). start with low gain on the mixer and low volume on the pa first so you don't blow any thing up.

gain is the input level before it gets to the volume fader, almost like a second volume. you need the input level to be at about -2 or -3 for each instrument then use the main volume to mix it.

what mixer do you have? make and model?
 
What do you want to do? Record them onto a computer?

You could plug all the mics into the mixer and feed the mixer output into the computer. This will give you to play a live mix of all the guitars and bass together and record on to a stereo track. Trouble is you wont be able turn the bass up or the guitars down once it is recorded.

You could record each instrument one at a time so you get separate tracks in the computer. You only need one mic to do this.

You could record one bass and one guitar at the same time. If your mixer has pan controls then you could pan the bass hard left and a guitar hard right. You could then overdub the second guitar. If your mixer has an inbuilt reverb or fx make sure you turn it of otherwise it might effect the separation of the left and right sides.

If your soundcard has more than 2 inputs you can record everything to separate tracks at the same time. How you do this will depend on what features your mixer has....

1.) If you mixer has a pre-fader auxillary bus (have a look in the mixers manual) you can turn the aux knob up on one channel and the fader down. This will send the mic plugged into that channel out the aux out and not out the main output. This will let you get three seperate channels into your sound card (Main out - Left, Main Out - Right, and Aux Out).

2.) If your mixer has inserts on the mic channels you can use these to get another output. Insert a cable half way into the insert socket and connect it to you sound card. The signal coming out of an insert wont be effected by the channels eq or fader though.

3.) If your mixer has a sub-mix you can get two more channels here as well. Some mixers have a button for each channel that lets you select between a main mix out and a sub-mix output. Once again you can pan these hard left and hard right to get a total of four outputs.
 
oh ok.. i see.. thanks for ur info.. im plannin to record onto computer in the near future.. and anyway wat abt speakers?? do i need a speaker or anything like tat??
 
You should be able to get by with just headphones or multimedia speakers plugged into your soundcard. Once you finish mixing a recording make sure you play it on a few different stereos to check that it sounds OK. Often people have trouble getting the bass frequencies mixed at sensible levels, especially if you mix with headphones. So do a mix, burn it on CD, play it in the lounge, in the car etc. then go back and adjust your mix if there are any problems.
 
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