Need Home Recording Help Please

Whistle
1

Hi guys; we’re moving and I’ll have an opportunity to set up my own room (yes, I’m getting my own room) as combo office/music studio. I want to set up a relatively simple moderately priced system to enable me to:

  • play music from CDs
  • record music from various sources, including my live whistle playing
  • lay the live playing over other music
  • monitor and make adjustments to what I’m doing
  • playback live recordings with some limited effects
  • headphones
  • tuner
  • metronome

I currently have a Shure 57 mic, some sort of pre-amp (that I never figured out), and an Edirol-1 portable recorder, Kwik Tune chromatic tuner, KORG MA30 metronome.

I saw a recording bundle at Musician’s Friend that included MXL 990 condenser mics, NADY CYM-2 dual condenser mics, 20’ cables, tripod mic stand w boom AKG66 headphones and M-Audio DX4 monitors (speakers, right?).

I’m trying to separate this from computer use a bit as that always seems to have its own set of concerns and problems.

Any ideas, suggestions, experience would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Philo

2

Hi, PhilO: Maybe it is a bit of payback time for the good whistle advice - and thoughtful C+F analyses - you have given in the past.

A stand-alone multi-track digital recorder may be for you. They do use computing power, but the CPU is internal and built for the job. These units range in price from about $300-$3000, new. Used ones are available, all the time. My studio is based on older Yamaha stand-alone units - 3 of them - and they have served me well. For a small sampling of different units, go here :

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/search.php?s=digital+recorder&tt=1

The bundle you are looking at is truly the low end of the home recording food chain. If you wish your recordings to be more than simply acceptable, the next step up on the 'economic point of diminishing returns ’ list, would be better. If I had an idea of your budget, I could truly help you.

If you have questions or wish suggestions, stay on your thread, or take it to e-mail or PM.

Best to all.
Byll

3

Byll, as always, thank you. I sent you an e-mail.

Best,

Philo

4

Hi PhilO,

If you have a PC you already own much of what you need.
Add a fairly decent sound card SB Audigy if fine @ about $50 or less,
a small mixer unit Behringer etc again about $50 -60, wired to the
line-input of the sound card. And most importantly some good
recording and editing software.

A couple of half decent mikes plus stands etc. goes without saying.
Large diaphram condencer for really clear sound. Samson, Behringer
etc. all do basic ones at,yet again, - $50! or even less.

Cool Edit is what the professionals in my local radio station use.
I have the same software. You can get a secondhand copy or
an older version at knock down prices is fine. It is about the best
and easiest to use. For FREE is Audacity recording and editing
programme - it will get you started - but it is limited.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/screenshots.

There is also CooEdit (2000) a cut down version at about $69.
To use this one you would have to install Faraunhofer MP3
codecs and other add-ins. But if you were happy to go fishing
around the NET you most probably would find what you need for
free.

The PC will have all the storage, editing, and sound playing
facilities you’ll need. Just add some really good loudspeakers
for sound better than many Hi-Fi units. I have two stereo units I
hardly ever use now. Most of my listening is on my PC. When I
get a new CD the first thing I do is rip it to MP3 format at 320 bps
and store it on my hard drive. From there I can burn CDs, listen to my
favourites in libraries, play songs with slow downer for learning, burn to
CD, DVD or SDcard or put on MP3 players, or send as attachments to e-mails.

Have fun - but be warned - it takes a bit of setting up and learning!

5

I currently have the PC-based USB recording setup with a Boehringer mixer and a 2-channel USB sound card . Compared to the old home recording standard (a Tascam 4-track), it produces a much better quality of sound, and editing and applying digital effects to the tracks produced are much easier with no effect upon quality (unlike the tape setup where you get a really lo-fi effect with enough effects tracking… nice if that is what you were aiming for, annoying otherwise). I am using Audacity plus a variety of plugins. I’ve used Cooledit and nTrack Studio in the past but Audacity has gotten much better compared to where it used to be so I didn’t bother updating to new licenses of Cooledit and nTrack Studio. That said, I’m not completely satisfied with my setup, but mostly because it is Windows-based and it’s a PITA to get good sound quality from a USB sound system on Windows especially with all the annoying nonsense that Microsoft insists upon running in the background on later versions of Windows, annoying nonsense that results in pops and crackles unless you use undocumented tools to disable them.

If I were setting up from scratch:

A pair of boom-type microphone stands (one for vocals, one for guitar, at least for me – I must record both at once or else I can’t stay in time, though I usually need to come back and lay down new vocals tracks).

A Shure 58 and Shure 57 type dynamic mike for vocals, percussion, and guitar recording. Actually, an Audix OM-? works fine for recording acoustic guitar for even cheaper than a Shure 57 (if you have a good steel-string acoustic you are putting out sufficient dynamic volume with sufficient quality that it would take a very lousy microphone indeed to do a bad job).

A good quality condenser mike for flute or whistle recording (sorry, a dynamic microphone just does not have sufficient dynamic range to properly record these). Mine is an Oktava
MK012A but I don’t know whether to recommend it (very variable Russian quality, you may get a good one or a cruddy one depending upon how much vodka the assembler had drunk the night before, I understand that The Sound Room does do some hand-picking to discard the really bad ones though). I’ve used my Oktava with a home-made puff filter (coat hanger and stocking) to get a slightly smoother vocal sound on occasion, but really, my vocals are so cruddy that just applying effects to the '58 is good enough without the hassle of setting up the Oktava for vocals. BTW, I cannot tell any difference using the Oktava for recording guitar. But the Oktava sure does a swell job of recording softer instruments…

High quality studio headphones, sound-isolating, for use while recording new tracks to a mixdown (mine are Labtecs but any good quality studio headphones work well). I do find that I generally end up with the headphones only on one ear so that I can hear myself properly, much as with Sinead O’Connor in this YouTube video with the Chieftains. So it goes.

Now, for the recording gear…

Apple Macbook. $1200 gets you 120gb of disk space, the excellent Apple recording software, and an OS that will not cause pops and crackles in your recordings unlike Windows (where you must carefully use undocumented tools to disable portions of the operating system in order to get consistent results especially if you have antivirus or firewall software installed).

Lexicon Omega Studio USB audio system, $199. Has two microphone jacks, four plug jacks, will do four-track recording, comes with Cubase recording software and the excellent and legendary Lexicon reverb plug-in. Has provisions for putting an external effects loop between a microphone input and its recording channel. This basically is a combination mixer and sound card and hard drive recording studio.

Bookshelf-style stereo system with RCA inputs and RCA “recorder” outputs. Really, any cheap Japanese brand will do here. The goal is to get good sound output from your computer. “Computer speakers” simply do not do it. Mine is an Aiwa 100 watt unit, I think it cost me $150 at Costco. If for some bizarre reason I needed to record down to cassette tape, it has a tape deck for doing so, but I haven’t needed to do that for eons (much easier to simply mix down to CD nowdays, especially with Apple’s iLife software, which comes with every Macbook).

Then you need assorted cables to hook it all up, but you already knew that.

At this point we’ve spent approximately $2500 and gotten a setup that Sir George Martin would have killed for in 1967 when he was recording The Beatles. Eventually you will fill up your hard drive and need to shuffle your source tracks off to DVD. The Macbook comes with software to do that, unlike most Windows laptops. Same deal with mixing down a CD master. A Windows system is just plain annoying as a hard drive recording system, while the Apple just makes it simple. And I say that as a computer professional who writes operating systems software for a living. But when I put on my music hat rather than my OS writer hat, I just get irritated by Windows while my friends with MacOS don’t have any of the irritances that make me record far less often than I should.

6

@ Egreen

While I would agree that if money was not an
object a MAC based pro system is certainly the biz,
I have been more than happy with my poor mans
PC home studio for a couple of years now.

I used to get digital “mush” - extraneous noises in the
background of recordings. I discovered much of this was
being picked up by open inputs on the soundcard. I
found that by muting all but the needed input/ inputs,
the sound cleaned up very well. I also disconnected
the internal audio lead from the CD/DVD to the sound
card, as this was also bringing in some digital “hum”. It
is not needed these days if you use a software player.
My s/n ratio is now to my complete satisfaction.

I do believe you can get excellent sound on a budget
these days.

7

Um… I have never had this problem. I routinely record in multi track sessions and bounce to multiple stereo buss channels before mastering and it all stays perfectly clean.

I’m using a an HP-PC with 1GB ram, two 160GB hard drives (1 for recording, 1 for system stuff) and a 3.2GHz processor running XP (without service pack II)

I’ve got a 16x4x2 channel sound craft mixer running through an RME hammerfall interface (though it is Firewire not USB). Hardware ranges from 5 outboard synths submixed to a stereo in on the soundcraft to save channels, various guitars running direct, or direct from an amp, and then any acoustic sounds mic’d from a CAD equitek E-300, two sm-57s or an sm-58. I also use lots of sound libraries. All of this is managed in Cubase 4 with parts rendered for “live” musicians in Finale.

If you are getting clicks/crackles from your rig, it is more likely from a slow hard drive, insufficient ram, or a crappy sound card (even bad cabling). Windoze doesn’t really play into the mix that much in my experience.

PhillO - I agree with Byll. For a simple one step solution, a black box (stand alone) recorder may be the best route to go. I would suggest one that takes removable media like CF cards. Too often there are proprietary drives in black box recorders so if it ever goes south, a drive that could be replaced for $70-90 in a regular PC, may cost as much as the original unit if you can find one at all.

For a more flexible solution, computer based recording is the way to go. Mac or PC they perform about the same. PC seems to have more options for DAWs (digital audio workstations like Cubase… think Audacity on steroids) these days. This competition means lower prices on software. Computer recording costs more overall though, but will far out perform a black box any day with editing, control, ease of export to disc and universally transportable and readable file output. Though I think these days, they are all using standard .wav files.

One last caveat… Don’t skimp on the headphones or the monitors (yes, speakers) Going cheap here could result in you coloring your sound to compensate for what your speakers are doing (or not doing). Try to get some that have a “flat” frequency response across the range of human hearing. (20Hz-20KHz), meaning they will not tend to be better at reproducing one range of frequencies over another. I spent $650 on a pair of Yamaha NS-10 monitors 17 years ago and I wouldn’t trade them for a new set of pipes. Ya, your speakers are that important.

Good luck and enjoy the new “studio”! :slight_smile:

8

Thanks very much to all of you. Korgs, and Tascams, and Fostex, oh my…I read the specs and they make everything sound so good and so important, but it’s in a different language I fear.

Best,

Philo

9

I would go with a PC based recording studio so you can start ASAP for very little money. I think you’ll like what it can do. You’ll be able to record, mix, edit and tweek to your hearts content. If at a later date you still want a stand alone recorder go for it. Our radio stations run on windows based automation software, and all recording is done on a PC. We’ve never had windows hurt our sound. We use Cool Edit Pro 2, which is the same as Adobe Audition 1, for recording and editing. I’d look on eBay for a deal. Audacity is a free but very powerful digital recording and editing software. It’s also easy to learn and small, only 2mb. You can even get a version that runs on a USB Drive. Combine that with a microphone and your computer and you have a recording studio that would have cost many thousands of dollars just a few years ago.

http://www.download.com/Audacity/3000-2170_4-10058117.html

10

My suspicion is that you are not using your computer as a general-purpose system with full firewall and virus protection and assorted end-user applications running in the background. The easiest way to disable Windows software components is to never install them in the first place (heh!). But I’ve found that even leaving the wireless LAN manager on my laptop running will result in snaps crackles pops. The virus protection software also must be disabled because it checks each disk write to make sure it’s not a virus. The firewall must be disabled because it puts a delay into every network request and Windows makes network requests for operations where you’d think it doesn’t need to do so, due to its internal architecture.

My laptop is an HP Pavilion with 1GB RAM, a 1.8Ghz Pentium-M processor (roughly the equivalent of a 2.8GHZ Pentium IV), and an 80GB 5400 rpm 2 1/2" hard drive (same data density as a 7200 rpm 3 1/2" hard drive). The sound “card” is a Creative 2-channel USB sound system which works perfectly under Linux under all circumstances (it is auto-detected by the Ubuntu Linux installer and Audacity runs out of the box) and under Windows if I disable things that regularly hit the network or do hardware scanning or otherwise put locks on the system and block orderly retrieval of data from the USB subsystem. I do not have, and cannot afford, a computer dedicated solely to hardware recording. Like most folks here, this is a hobby for me, not a profession.

If you are getting clicks/crackles from your rig, it is more likely from a slow hard drive, insufficient ram, or a crappy sound card (even bad cabling). Windoze doesn’t really play into the mix that much in my experience.

What antivirus and firewall software do you use? In my experience that is the biggest culprit, especially the really anal software that examines each write to make sure it’s not a virus being written onto the disk.

For a more flexible solution, computer based recording is the way to go. Mac or PC they perform about the same. PC seems to have more options for DAWs (digital audio workstations like Cubase… think Audacity on steroids) these days. This competition means lower prices on software. Computer recording costs more overall though, but will

I would contest that. Most of us already have computers. You can buy a $200 USB sound system from mBase with two XLR inputs for your microphones and two regular plugs for e.g. guitars and do two-channel recording immediately using Audacity or the software included with MacOS (Garage Band). Add another $100 and you can do four-channel recording with Cubase (which has both a PC and a Mac version, BTW) using a higher-end four-channel box. As for Mac vs. PC, in my opinion the difference is user interface. I can do everything with a PC that can be done on a Mac, but it’s a PITA for me to do them on a PC, while the Mac guys just do it. We might make lofty statements but in the end reality is reality, and if reality is that stuff that’s easy for Mac people to do is hard for me to do on the PC, either I’m really incompetent at using computers (unlikely, given that I design computer operating systems software for a living) or those Macs are actually easier to use.

11

That would be an incorrect suspicion. Only one machine handling multiple tasks.

The single drive is a major culprit. That’s why I run two drives, One for system stuff, one for audio recording. You’ll need lots more ram and a faster frontside buss if you are going to do this on a single platter.


Another item I pointed out earlier… This could be the weakest link in your recording chain.

Seems you are making things harder than they need to be… Dual OS… Kind of taxing on a little laptop imho, but then you do that stuff for a living so…

Even a busy project studio doesn’t need this. It’s nice but not necessary.

I make money doing this… Perhaps I can offer some insight here.

If you are getting clicks/crackles from your rig, it is more likely from a slow hard drive, insufficient ram, or a crappy sound card (even bad cabling). Windoze doesn’t really play into the mix that much in my experience.


I use the 2006 version of the Norton suite.

For a more flexible solution, computer based recording is the way to go. Mac or PC they perform about the same. PC seems to have more options for DAWs (digital audio workstations like Cubase… think Audacity on steroids) these days. This competition means lower prices on software. Computer recording costs more overall though, but will


Not really sure what you are contesting… You seem to be making my point. For the cost of a computer, low end interface, and low end software, you are going to be double or triple the costs of a good stand alone recording unit. The PC based stuff will give you more control over editing, (none the least of which is provided by the user interface you mention below, regardless of platform) but will cost more.

Just simple economics I was referring to earlier… More software is written for PC, because there are more PC users. This competition reduces software prices. It’s why you can buy the low end Cubase for $400 and why Pro-tools doesn’t have a low end offering and costs $9,000/seat (the last I checked)

I don’t really know what to tell you, we’re really comparing apples to oranges here. Your system is not my system. I have not had the problems you have had. Given the number of components that go into getting a good sound, I don’t think you can pin it on the OS, even if you happen to like the Mac better.

12

It’s not so much that a Mac is better that a PC. It’s more of a compatibility issue. Since there are almost limitless combinations when building a PC, it is a bit more difficult to nail down what will work with your system. Since there are a finite number of Mac systems, it’s a lot easier for developers to create hardware/software that works well with it.

I work as a freelance musician and audio engineer. I can tell you with honesty that neither PC nor Mac is better. It all depends on how much research you want to do and how much money you want to spend. PCs are cheaper but require more research. Macs are more expensive but easier to find compatible hardware. I myself use both (G4 Powerbook and a AMD64 PC).

My first recording rig was an M-audio 2496 PCI card, a little Behringer mixer and a Studio Projects B1 microphone. That basic set up still works quite well if you have a desktop. If you have a laptop, I’ve been told by a friend of mine that the M-audio Fast Track Pro works pretty darn well. Your mileage may vary, though, depending on your computer. These days I own a Digidesign 002r mostly because I work a lot in Pro Tools.

As far as microphones go, there are a lot of good mics out there that don’t cost a heck of a lot of money. Here are some that are less than 200$ that work well.

Studio Projects B1 - Works well for just about anything.
Kel HM-1 (http://www.kelaudio.com) - Works well for just about anything but has a little bit of a darker sound.
Sure SM57 - Great instrument mic
MXL 990 - Fairly good mic but also has a darker sound

I own and use these mics (as well as others) and they all have performed rather well for me.

13

Good points, all…

Is Pro Tools still that expensive?

14

You can get a Digidesign Mbox 2 mini (which comes with the latest version of Pro Tools) for about $300. That’s about as cheap as you can get with it these days.