Everything you need to know to set up a home recording studio

What do you need to know to set up a home recording studio? How can you make your studio capable of professional results? How can you avoid expensive mistakes?

By David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass

Everything you need to know to set up a home recording studio...

'Everything', in this sense, is a bit like 'infinity' - it's difficult to gauge its extent. But Record-Producer.com is here to help. Undoubtedly you would like your home recording studio to be capable of professional results. But the very fact that the studio is in your home adds further difficulties.

Here are just some of the issues facing would-be home recording studio owners...

• Soundproofing. If your studio disturbs others, it is not going to be a practical place to work in. Also, if sound from outside disturb your monitoring, or get onto your recording, then you are not going to achieve successful results.
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• Acoustics. The smaller a room is, the harder it is to achieve good acoustics. You need good acoustics for two reasons - firstly so that sounds you capture with a microphone sound good. Secondly so that your mix will sound great wherever it is played.
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• Traffic. This doesn't affect everyone, but if you have ever tried to record a rock band at home, you will know what impact the simple coming and going of people and equipment can have. Also, imagine if you had an expensive session booked with a pro singer. How would it be affected if other people were coming and going around the house? One of the key features of successful commercial studios is that they can handle traffic of vehicles, people and equipment. And once in the studio, they are a calm place in which to work.
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• Interruptions. Sessions in successful commercial recording studios never get interrupted for any reason - there's a story about Bono from U2 not wanting to be disturbed by a persistent caller. It turned out to be the Pope! Achieving a non-interrupted state in a home recording studio is much more difficult.
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• Equipment. Home studio owners can rarely afford the same equipment as commercial recording studios, although items such as microphones can sometimes be hired in, depending on where you live. Also, people who work around commercial studios gain insider knowledge - they see people coming and going with different equipment and get to learn what works, what doesn't and which equipment is good for which purpose. Manufacturers schmooze them too and let them borrow stuff to try out.
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• Practicality. Commercial studios spend up to 10% of their budget on installation and wiring. How many home recording studio owners spend as much? The result of a neat installation is a studio that is slick and versatile, saving vast amounts of time and energy.
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• Cost. The cost of providing all of the above is significant. Any home recording studio owner has to balance out how much income they can make from their studio, or how much they are willing to spend on their hobby.

You may have realized that to cover everything you need to know to set up a home recording studio is too large a concept to fit into a single feature.

But Record-Producer.com would like your input. What are your concerns regarding setting up a studio? What questions would you like to ask?

Record-Producer.com plans a major exploration of this topic, with much of the information being sourced from people who are successful in the industry.

Please send your one most burning question about setting up a home recording studio to david.mellor@record-producer.com

The ten Record-Producer.com visitors who send in the most searching and practical questions will receive access to the eventual fruits of our labors free of charge!Submissions for this offer have now closed.

 Publication date: Saturday November 05, 2005
Author: David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass 

Sony Movie Studio Platinum 12 Suite

What is a condenser microphone?

Description of the condenser microphone and explanation of its relationship to the capacitor microphone

 

Microphones can be separated into two basic types - those that work on magnetic principles and those that work on electrostatic principles. The former are known as dynamic microphones, the latter as capacitor - or condenser - microphones.

Internal view of the Neumann BCM 104

A capacitor is a device that stores energy by separating positive and negative electrical charges. 'Condenser' is a old word for 'capacitor', so a condenser is a capacitor, hence a condenser microphone is a capacitor microphone. In common usage however, it is not uncommon to call a large-diaphragm, vintage vacuum tube microphone (or its modern retro-designed replica) a condenser microphone. It is however rare for a small-diaphragm capacitor microphone to be referred to as a condenser microphone.

In technical terms...

The capacitor in a capacitor microphone (or condenser microphone) consists of the diaphragm, which picks up sound vibrations, and a fixed back plate separated by an air gap. A 48-volt 'phantom' power supply (or a power supply unit dedicated to the microphone) separates positive and negative charge between the diaphragm and the back plate, thus charging the capacitor.

Sound vibrations picked up by the diaphragm cause the distance between the diaphragm and the back plate to change in proportion to the movement of the air molecules in contact with the diaphragm. Since the value of the capacitance of the diaphragm/back plate system is related to the distance between the diaphragm and back plate, then the capacitance of the system will change in proportion to the incoming sound wave. Also, since the voltage between the diaphragm and back plate changes in proportion (actually inverse proportion) to the value of capacitance, the system will produce a voltage in response to the incoming sound wave.

In practical terms...

The essential difference between the capacitor microphone and the dynamic microphone is that the diaphragm of a dynamic microphone has to be attached to a coil of wire that moves within the field of a magnet (or it could alternatively, in principle, be attached to a magnet, the field of which passes through a coil) in order for the microphone to function. The diaphragm of the capacitor mic has no such burden and is therefore much more free to move in response to the incoming sound wave.
A capacitor microphone, or condenser microphone, therefore has a sound texture that in most cases has a higher degree of clarity than a dynamic microphone. Capacitor microphones will pick up the overtones of metallic percussion instruments very much more clearly than a dynamic microphone would. They are also noticeably demonstrate crystal-clarity on most other acoustic instruments. The differences between the capacitor microphone and dynamic microphone are less marked on membrane percussion instruments (drums) and electric instruments such as the electric guitar.
One small additional point is that because a dynamic microphone works on magnetic principles, it can pick up hum through magnetic coupling when positioned close to the transformer of an electric guitar combination amplifier-loudspeaker cabinet. Moving the microphone away from the transformer will usually reduce the hum to near-inaudibility. However, a capacitor microphone works on electrostatic principles and is not sensitive to this source of hum at all.

Phantom power

Capacitor microphones need electrical power to function, firstly to charge the diaphragm and back plate, secondly to power the essential internal amplifier. The signal from the diaphragm is extremely weak and has to be amplified within the microphone, before sending it down the cable to the preamplifier, audio interface or mixing console.

Some types of capacitor microphone, known as electret, or back electret, have a permanent electric charge, but they still require power for the amplifier. Many electret microphones can however operate from an internal battery.

Power is normally supplied directly from the microphone preamplifier, audio interface or mixing console. Power in this form is known as phantom power, because no power supply is visible.

However, vacuum-tube microphones, of the type that may archaically be referred to as condenser microphones, require higher voltages and thus normally have their own power supply.

Korg All Access: Backstage with keyboardist Mike McKnight

Why distortion techniques MUST be part of your recording vocabulary

 Do you hate over-mastered, distorted recordings? That might just be why your work isn't selling.

By David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass

Please take a quick read of 'The Worst-Sounding Hit Record Ever' and listen to the audio. You might care to read the comments too, many of which are insightful.

The song is Firework by Katy Perry and clearly it is massively distorted. I had heard the song many times on TV, radio and my car stereo (courtesy of the car's other occupants) and I had always enjoyed it, although the strings - to my mind - are a little harsh.

But I didn't notice the distortion until I listened to the song from CD, on my favorite pair of extremely hi-fi headphones. Then I listened on my hi-fi speakers and again on my near-field monitors.

Distortion. Intense distortion.

At first I blamed the mastering process. Generally I find the effects of mastering for loudness merely unappealing. But this was appalling.

But I listened more closely. My feeling is that it is the kick drum sample that is distorted, and the whole mix is compressed to give a pumping effect around the kick.

I don't like it. I don't like it at all. I am sure that the song could sound so much better given the benefit of clean recording and mastering.

But you can't argue with...

Quadruple platinum.

A quadruple platinum award means Firework has sold over 4 million copies, and that's only in the United States. The sales figures in other major music markets are equally impressive.

It might be possible to speculate that, without the distortion, Firework might have achieved quintuple platinum, but with my hand on my heart I just don't feel that is so. There is something about the entirety of the artist, the song, the recording, the mastering (and the marketing) that put together has given Firework's creators their deserved success.

This brings my to my point...

My point is...

If this extreme distortion, that many listeners find unpleasant, is a component of such a successful record, then it has to become part of your recording technique.

Suppose for instance you make a recording, and the client says it isn't exciting enough. (Don't expect the client to use technical language, or be specific about what they want.) If you can't bring yourself to turn up the warmth on the kick to thermonuclear levels, then the client will find someone else who can.

And if it's not the kick, then it could be some other instrument, perhaps even the vocal. Mastering has for a long time been the char-grill of the recording process, so it might happen there.

So, I would say that anyone who doesn't like this kind of sound has three options...

• Lose clients who want the sound of heavy distortion
• Do it reluctantly, when pressed

Or...

• Embrace extreme distortion, make it your own, make it artistic and make it good!

So although the ability to make a clean, undistorted recording of any types and combinations of instruments and voices is absolutely essential, so is the ability to manipulate audio in any way that pleases the market. A knowledge of distortion techniques and their artistic application should be part of any engineer's skill package.

Publication date: Monday September 05, 2011
Author: David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass

Korg In The Studio - Krome Music Workstation -- TouchView Navigation Tips & Tricks

Does limiting make your audio clip and distort?

 Push your levels too high and you will break the bounds of your system's capability. But will a limiter make things any better, or simply act as another source of distortion?

By David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass

Here's an experiment... Take a section of cleanly recorded audio that is well below the level at which the red lights come on.

Now raise the level, raise it some more, then raise it some more. Your system almost certainly does have the ability to raise the level by as much as you want, although you may have to rummage among your plug-ins to find it.

But by whatever means, raise the level until the red light starts to flicker. Listen carefully for changes in the sound. Continue raising the level until the red light is solidly on and there is absolutely no doubt that your sound is distorted.

What you are listening to is the sound of clipping. Any digital audio system has an upper level beyond which the signal just cannot go. We call this 0 dBFS - zero decibels with respect to full scale.

If you try to raise the signal beyond this level, the tips will be clipped, causing distortion.

By the way, this test should be done at a low monitoring level as it will produce a lot of high frequency energy that could potentially damage your tweeters.

To avoid clipping, you might consider using a limiter. Set correctly, this will prevent the signal level reaching 0 dBFS, so no clipping can occur.

Well, that is the theory. In practice it depends on making the correct settings.

Think of it like this... imagine that you could control the level by hand very quickly so that the signal never went above 0 dBFS. Every time a loud section comes along, you lower the level so that the signal stays within bounds. When it goes quiet again, you can raise the level back up again.

That's exactly what a limiter does. But you can make a limiter respond very much more quickly.

You might therefore be tempted to set a really short 'attack' time - that's the time it takes for the limiter to respond; it has nothing to do with making your signal sound more attacking subjectively.

But when the speed of response approaches 50 milliseconds or less, something interesting happens. The limiter is now fast enough to respond to single cycles of the waveform, at low frequency.

At this point, the limiter has the capability of changing the shape of single cycles of the waveform.

There is a word for that - distortion.

So you have a dilemma. Set the attack time too long and fast peaks may get through and clip. But set it too short and the limiter itself causes distortion. It isn't clipping, but it can sound as bad.

The moral is to be very careful when setting an attack time of less than around 100 milliseconds, to be on the safe side. Listen very carefully, watch for red lights, and perhaps limit a little lower than 0 dBFS, then normalize afterwards to bring the level up to peak.

Publication date: Tuesday May 26, 2009
Author: David Mellor, Course Director of Audio Masterclass