Home studio recording - help!

Cafe Society
1

I have a fresh new copy of Cakewalk burning a hole in my metaphorical pocket, and I can’t wait to set up my home recording studio. I’m trying to cover the basics, and I have a few things already. I was wondering if anyone had any other recommendations.

Here’s what I have:

[ul]
[li]One plain-jane dynamic mic - old model. Not the greatest, but it works. I might well update soon, but for now I’ll make do. Any reasonably priced, “lotsa bang for the buck” recommendations?[/li][li]One new Marshall Electronics MXL 2003 large-diaphragm condenser mic (with shock mount) for a wide range of purposes. I read several good reviews of this and got a good price at Zzounds, so I went for it.[/li][li]One new Behringer MX-1604A Eurorack 12 channel mixer. Also just picked this up at Zzounds for a good price.[/li][li]Various stands, pop filters, etc. Accessory stuff.[/li][li]Various noisemakers (guitars, basses, harmonicas, slide guitars, etc.) Stuff my neighbors would like to wrap around my skull. :)[/li][li]Cakewalk Pro Audio[/li][li]A decent computer[/li][/ul]

I figure I’m missing at least one important “basic” item, and that’s a compressor/limiter, for consistent signal levels. Now, I’ve read one or two good reviews of the Alesis NanoCompressor, but I’m kinda out of my depth on this one, since I’ve never actually used one before (although I’m told it will make a world of qualitative difference.)

Any advice?

I’ve considered getting a tube preamp for the mic as well, since the mixer preamp and the mic itself are both solid state, but I’ll reserve judgement on that until later. I know “tube” does not necessarily equal “better,” but I must admit that I’m a big fan of that fat tube sound. Anyway.

Is there anything else that would be considered “essential” or that I’d have a hard time without (or even that would make the experience easier and more fun?)

Caveat: I’m not rich by any stretch of the imagination, so recommending that sweet new microphone made out of pure Dwarven Mithril isn’t going to do me tons of good.

I’m not looking for a super-professional sound here (not that I’d get it in my living room anyway) but I would like a nice, clean, true sound that would be fit for some nice demos.

Thanks, guys.

2

Ah, and one other small matter. I’m using a SoundBlaster Live! sound card…standard Dell model. Should I put some thought into upgrading? Any good recommendations for it?

3

SM57. Maybe two or three.

I love the Alesis 3630 Compressor, but maybe that’s just me.

4

You will want to change your sound card to one that can plug regular mike/instrument jacks into. The large to small plugs and adaptors both produce lots of extraneous noise. Sound blaster (has a face place “adaptor”) makes one and it sells at Best Buy for about 200 bucks and in my opinion isn’t as nice as a similarly priced one at a music store. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the brand of the ones at the music store at the moment. They even have “adaptors” that plug into the faceplate. When I went to pick one up, the music guy just tried to sell me the most expensive one but couldn’t explain why the other ones wouldn’t suit my needs. His responses were “because this one is better.” I still don’t really know why. I still can’t figure out why I need all the extra bells and whistles.

5

Spend as much as you can afford on a good set of reference monitors. This is the key to getting good mixes that translate well to other systems.

We use Genelics in our studio. Probably way out of your price range, tho. Carvin makes some decent quality, yet inexpensive ones.

6

Agreed. That is the bang-for-the-buck microphone.

7

No expert here, but I think you’d definitely want to upgrade your soundcard. M-Audio and Echo make reasonably priced soundcards ($200-$250) that’ll fit the bill for a home studio - I’m quite fond of my M-Audio Delta 44.

You might consider forgoing the rackmount compressor and instead buy a suite of plugins (such as those made by Waves) instead. I think some of them you can get demos of online (usually with a ten day expiration or some such.)

Also, I think you should probably consider getting a subscription to one of the home recording magazines. Lots of good info that’ll simplify the learning process.

8

I used to use the old DOS Cakewalk sequencer, and it was a great tool. I played around with Cakewalk Pro Audio but it was years ago and not very extensive.

Here’s the bottleneck in your system.

How many “ins” can you plug into your soundcard inputs at once. This really isn’t an issue if you are doing sequenced stuff or are content with recording one track at a time.

but if you want to record a whole band performance at once yes you can run all the sound into your Behringer board but then what ? send two outputs ie a single stereo out into Cakewalk isn’t going to do you much good. You need the multiple tracks in the software, not your hardware.

also, how are you going to record a drum kit without multiple inputs into your pc without being stuck with the static mix that you can get out of your board. Drums are one of the most important things to tweak during mastering and if you are stuck with a already mixed kit all you do is EQ tricks etc…

I was looking into all this a couple of years ago and had decided on a Yamaha sound card. IIRC you could get 8 inputs into your pc AND it had it’s own DSP, which Yamaha is known for…

I’m curious now, I might go Google.

hope this was some help.

oh and I agree you shouldn’t record bass or vocals without compression and the Alesis 3630 is very inexpensive and it’s 2 compressors. Great unit for the price.

9

Thanks for the help, everyone, especially about the SM-57 mics.

Skillet38, for right now, I’m content recording one track at a time, as I’m using the studio set up as an aid to songwriting (i.e. I’m cutting a bass track, acoustic track, electric track, and vocal track to seed ideas and sending them off to collaborators.) I might get into live drum recording, but that won’t be for a little while yet, as I have no space that I can use to rock out. I live in an old apartment, so huge noise levels are waaaay out of the question.

And forgive me, but a DSP? Was ist das?

I’m really not a gearhead,folks (although it appears I may have to become one to some extent.)

Many thanks, and please continue with the links/recommendations/advice. I’ll be printing this out.

10

Nah, dwarven mithril hasn’t been any good since the 50’s. Now, if you could scare up some vintage Soviet NOS mithril, you’d be in business.
DSP = Digital Signal Processing; it generally means that a mixer or soundcard or what-have-you has its own built-in chip to handle effects so that your computer’s processor has that much less to worry about.