Part V: Tracking Tips

When it comes to the actual recording of tracks let me try to suggest a few things to keep in mind. The first is understanding your gain structure. As signal travels form one piece of gear to the next and through the interconnections, your quality is only as strong as the weakest link. This is usually the cables, but lets me explain all stages.

If you are recording an instrument like guitar, bass, etc, your gain starts with that instrument. I went over some of the pointers for making sure your instruments are good in the previous installment. Your guitar or bass is sending what is called an ‘instrument level’ signal. This is a high impedance, low voltage signal. Remember impedance is just a word that describes resistance. Higher impedance is more resistance and therefore more strain on the current capacities of the equipment. But an instrument level signal is very fragile. Its also unbalanced meaning it has no third wire ground in it. So you will want to keep instrument cords short and high quality. Also you will want to keep your instruments and their cables away from electromagnetic interference coming from computer monitors and hard drives. You can step back from monitors or turn them off to eliminate this buzzing. Listen for it with volume knobs up. Microphone signals are also low. But they travel inside a balanced XLR cable and you can run pretty long lengths of this cable safely. Again, just keep cables new and in good condition. Treat your cables nicely! Don’t step on them or drop the metal ends on the hard floor.

If you have acquired a decent amount of gear, even inexpensive gear, and are looking for an upgrade, you can do very, very well by re-wiring your studio with high quality cables and keeping them organized. You’ll want to run power cords with each other, signal wires with each other, digital interconnects with each other and computer cables with each other. If you have to cross one cable over another, do it at a 90 degree angle so it only touches the other at one small point and does not run with it for a great length. If you do this and use good quality cables (Not Hosa brand, hehe), you will notice that your noise floor will go way down. You will be able to turn up the volume on your monitors and hear just low level, non buzzing hiss. Also, you should use a decent power conditioner like a Monster Cable two rack space unit or similar. You can get one of these conditioners for a few hundred bucks. A home theatre one will have different outlets with different kinds of filtering on it.

Ok, back to gain staging. Your low level signal, whether its instrument level or mic level, will travel along a high quality cable and into a mic preamplifier or direct box which is a preamplifier. Here the level goes up to +4 line level. Notice it was at instrument level or mic level, not it’s at line level. There are two standards for this level. -10 unbalanced and +4 balanced. Even if you are using unbalanced connections here and there, you want to work at +4 line level when you set your equipment up. You will see switches on your gear that will let you choose this option. Now if course if you are getting too high a level somewhere and you need to switch down to get the gain correct, do it. But in general, you want the extra gain that you get with a +4 level. By the way they call -10 consumer level and +4 pro level. Balanced connections which are three prong or three conductor are +4 and two conductor cords like guitar cords and RCA phono plugs are considered -10. A three conductor stereo ¼ inch plug can be either but usually is a used for s +4 level. The important thing to remember is that you want the highest level signal before clipping that you can. Adjust your preamp’s gain so that you get a good level out from there and you do not hear any crackling or distortion.

After a low level signal is jumped up to line level by a preamplifier it is ready to go into the computer interface box. The interface box might actually also have a preamp in it and maybe you are doing that if you don’t have a good outboard preamp. The main thing these boxes contain besides preamps is Analog to Digital and Digital to Analog converters. Your preamp signal is an analog signal. The computer needs a digital one. So these converters are in this box. Or maybe you have an outboard AD/DA converter box but if you have this, you probably know enough not to be reading my blog…. :)

When we are talking about digital recording, you want to get the highest level you can, but you never want to go above zero in the computer program or clip the A/D converter on the way in. You actually could afford to push the A/D a bit but usually it’s calibrated so that a clip on the A/D equals an ‘over’ on the computer. ‘Overs’ are digital levels above the calibrated zero level. In a computer program, the red light is always an indicator of a zero level and you don’t ever want to see any of those, ever. You can hit at .01 db below, but don’t go over.

Because you will not be able to fully anticipate the dynamics of the performance, you want to check to see what the loudest level you think you might get is, and then set your gain stages to let you hit 3-4 db below zero. Because digital is so clean, you can even afford to go lower but really just making sure you are a few db below absolute zero is fine. If you do hit zero by accident and you don’t hear a clipping sound on playback, never mind it and then keep an eye on things.

Alright, assuming you have set your preamp levels well and you have recorded a clean track into the computer, move on. I will explain more about this in mixing later but just remember that your gain stages in your computer mixer are additive so the more tracks you have, the more volume you will create down at the master fader. I usually start a 24 track mix with all channel faders at -13.and the master fader at zero. A 36 channel mix might have all faders at -16. But this depends on how loud you record your track into the computer. If you keep an eye on levels, you will never need to move your master fader below or above zero.

On now, never normalize or apply any kind of processing to any of your raw tracks. You will only degrade them and make it harder to keep quality high and gain structures in order. Normalizing only brings the level up to the highest possible level and this means you get no extra quality but that you will be feeding these higher levels into all your channels and plug ins. You will then have to turn them down and every time you make an adjustment in a digital mixer, it has to make mathematical calculations that potentially can degrade your sound. In the perfect situation, you would mix everything at such a level so that you would never have to turn down the master fader, never have to turn down a plug-in fader and only have to adjust the channel faders. Most experienced engineers can achieve this and this is what you want to go for.

Ok I think that is about it for gain staging. Now, let me talk about things to keep in mind as far as the logistics of tracking goes. There are mono and stereo tracks. A stereo track would be needed for a keyboard or a sound sample file. All other tracks you will be using in your computer workstation will be mono files. (Except stereo FX channels but tracks are your recorded files and channels are what they are played though.) Even cymbals will be two mono files. One panned hard left and one panned hard right. Recording a mono track into a stereo file is a waste of storage space and limits your flexibility and your plug-in power as well.

You want to name your files perfectly. Name all your channels and your aux sends or busses. Also name all the tracks you mix down and anytime you name something do it with forethought. You will be doing a lot of cleaning up of files down the line and you really want to be able to remember what is what when you do that. Let me give you some examples:

“Rhythm Guitar L 2 Neve” This is the second rhythm guitar track that was recorded through a Neve preamp.

“Mike Vox OD 3” This would be the singer’s 3rd vocal track that is not the main track but an additional “Overdub” take.

Another example might be bass parts that have been recorded as three separate tracks. “Bass DI”, “Bass Comp”, and “Bass 421” This would be one track for the bass that was just recorded direct with a direct box. “Bass comp” was sent through a ‘channel strip” outboard box that had a preamp and compressor in it and you turned on the compressor on this track. “Bass 421” was the track that came from the bass player’s amp and speaker cabinet that had a Sennheiser MD-421 microphone pointed directly at the center of the cone. With this kind of track naming, you will remember exactly what you did to each track. Just naming them “Bass 1”, “Bass 2” and “Bass 3” tells you nothing and you might get lost in the mixing process. Or if you or another engineer ever has to work on this session, they will need really well named tracks because they were not there to remember anything about how things were recorded. Keeping a track sheet and notes is also a very good idea.

Also when you make mix-down files of your mixes, you will want to name them in the same descriptive way. You can keep them in folders that are also named descriptively like “Cannibal Test Mixes” and in there you would put files like “Bloodthirst test mix 1” and then later “Bloodthirst test mix 2 vox up 1 db” Keeping track of names and folders this way is extremely important.

This also applies to your outboard gear. Get yourself some white ‘board’ tape or use blue painter’s tape and tape and mark everything. You can mark knob positions, mic positions, write names on things, etc. Tape and mark everything. Speaking of tape, you will want to tape down cords to the floor so people don’t trip on them and tape mic cords to the drummer’s drum cage, and things like this.

Now, let me talk about doing takes. If you are using Pro Tools, you have an option of making takes that overlay in a fresh window and then going back through them all. With other programs, you will want to punch in over older takes and just leave the takes lying on each other. Or make new well names channels for these takes. You always want to walk the line between pushing yourself or whoever the performer is to get the best take but not go so far as to burn the person out. If you cannot get something, go back later and get it. A fresh head will often cure any problems like this. You can usually try a few times and if it needs more work go back later or stop and practice it more. The studio is really stressful and it’s always good to be patient and also optimistic and open with options.

oh, if you are wondering what that rag is doing on the nut of the guitar in the pic above, thats a trick for limiting open string noise when tracking solos or certain rhythm parts, try it. Slide it over the nut more to get more dampening.

I’ll add to this installment as I think of more things….

Cheers,

Colin

Part IV: Recording Preparations

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When we talk about recording preparations, what we are talking about is aspects that will affect your final product in a way that you can never take back. These little nuances all have a cumulative effect. They all add up and if you miss a few of them, you are looking at major, unsolvable problems. And since it’s not very expensive to take care of these little issues, it’s in your best interest to address them. I’ll discuss each instrumentalist and their preparations individually.

Guitar players: A lot of people have forgotten how important the guitar is to their tone. But yes, the quality of your guitar matters. Not just the pickups, but the actual woods and construction. Generally, a two hundred dollar guitar will not deliver a resonant tone. But assuming that you have a quality instrument, just make sure it is set up properly. If you are using two guitars or have two guitar players, take all the instruments you will use to the luthier and get them set up. It’s better to have slightly higher action than lower and it’s really necessary that the intonation be perfect. All the guitars you use should be set up by the same guy at the same time. It’s true that you can do this yourself, but I suggest that you don’t try. It’s just too important and the cost is usually minimal. You need a strobe tuner anyway and most people don’t have one of those.

In metal, a lot of people use EMG pickups. The 81 is bright and has a lot of gain and the 85 or 89 is a little darker and more mellow. Both offer a pre-compressed and high voltage output. EMG’s have the capability of making a mediocre amp sound decent because they supply a lot of the tone before the amp has to do anything to it. The problem is that they make all amps sound too similar. Also they are not very responsive to the player’s dynamics and they are not very good for clean tone. You can’t turn down the guitar volume knob to clean up the gain. But that aside, they do offer a good sound for metal and can be very good if they are in a good guitar and used with a good amp.

Passive pickups are a bit more versatile and responsive and they will give you a less scratchy sound than EMG’s. But the problem is that many of them do not have enough gain for metal. With the new high gain tube amps that are out, this is less of a problem though. I can highly recommend the Dimarzio Evolution for a high output passive pickup that delivers gain, tone and versatility. You can experiment with others such as the Dimarzio PAF Pro, Duncan Custom or other designs..

Make sure that your wiring is clean and buzz free. It’s too common that a guitar or bass has a ground buzz problem. If you have your amp turned on and set to the distortion channel and do not hear a buzz with any cord plugged in, then your power is clean. But if you add your guitar and cord to the mix and hear a buzz when the volume is up and you are not playing, you need to check it out. It’s the cord or the guitar. Get that fixed before you record.

When you record, you can get about 4 hours of playing time on a pack of strings. Replace them before they lose their snap. When you put a new set of strings on, tap the low strings with your finger so they hit the frets and listen to how they sound when they bounce back. They are very bright and metallic. Now play on them for about 10 minutes and tap on them again. This is when they sound best. After this little break in period, they are ready. When you notice that this sound is going away, replace them. It’s usually only several hours at most of playing time. You can buy strings in bulk and they will only cost about 6 dollars a pack at the most. If you are tracking left and right sides and you can do one or both performances on one pack, then your cost per song will be either 6 or 12 dollars. Multiply that by 10 songs and you have 60 to 120 dollars for your entire album. If it cost you 120 dollars to get two guitars intonated at the shop, you’re up to 240 dollars. This is not expensive! That’s less than the cost of one day at a recording studio for your entire album to be perfect.

Also make sure you get new cords, many new batteries for any pedals you use, many new picks and make sure you have a good tuner. You will be checking your tuning every five minutes or less. I’ll talk more about these things in the columns about recording guitars later.

If you have a tube guitar amplifier and the tubes are old, replace them. At the least, replace the preamp tubes which will only cost you about 60 dollars. I also recommend that if you are getting a new amp, you not do it a week before you record. It can take a long time to understand a new amp and you will need that time. Regardless, you definitely should record a ‘reamp’ track when you record so this will let you go back and fix your tone later if you mess up. You can watch my guitar tone video to find out what this is and how it works. But its basically a direct track that you record in addition to the mic’d signals that you can send back into an amp later to re-record your tine. You’ll need a good direct box and a $200 Reamp box to do this.

Bass players have a similar situation. But if your bass has been set up and intonated anytime in the recent past and you have not changed your tuning, you may not need to take it to the shop. Bass strings will last for about a song or ‘maybe’ two if you are very fast. Again, check for grounding problems and get cords, batteries, etc. By the way, try to use the shortest cords you can when recording bass and guitar

Drummers have a lot to worry about. Drums are really hard to maintain, tune and keep in tune. If you are a drummer and you have not dedicated yourself to learning how to tune your instrument, I’d really recommend that you start doing that. It can take some time, but you will be able to learn. If you are a recording guy and you don’t want to trust drummers anymore, well then you can learn yourself. I recommend a video by Bob Gatzen for learning this art. You can also search Youtube for excerpts.

Before you record drums, make sure all the hardware is working and nothing is rattling or falling apart. Check out your rims and see if they are true. They are cheap and at least you should replace the bad ones. When you have the rims off, check the bearing edges for dents. Run some fine sandpaper over rough bearing edges. Replace bent lugs and any other cheap hardware you can. Try to make sure the tuning lugs turn smoothly. This way you can be sure the heads will stay in tune.

If you have not replaced your bottom heads in more than a year, it’s a must do. If you have, and you are on a budget you can skip it and just tune them. If you have the extra money, it’s well worth it. Bottom heads that are one ply and clear are usually best for rock, metal, etc. The top heads can be one or two ply, clear or coated. Coated heads have a duller attack that is good for jazz and some rock. Clear heads have a nice ‘tick’ sound as the stick meets the head. A one ply head will be very resonant and can be good for making older thick shelled drums sound better. A thick two ply head like Remo Pinstripes might have too much of a plastic thud sound and I generally stay away from those. I personally recommend the Evans G2 clear. It’s a two ply head but each ply is thin and it is a great compromise between resonance and durability.

You can tune drums where the bottom head is a half step higher than the top or where they are about equal. Also each drum has 2 or three tuning ranges. The first is the lowest where the heads first start to ring. And there is always at least one higher one and usually this is the one to use if you are playing fast. If the band is slower and tunes down, you might like the lowest range. Again, you definitely will need to study drum tuning before you do this or get someone who can tune. Another cool way to learn and speed things up is to use a tension watch. Check it out.

Also, another thing the band and drummer can do is to find out if a click track can be made. You can make one in the computer and then make a practice CD for the drummer to play to. It would be a guitar track or two and a click sound. The drummer can practice to this for a month or two before tracking. If you do this, the drummer can track all his parts to a click in the studio and this will not only tighten up the performance, it will allow you to cut and paste sections of the recording.


Vocalists usually just kick back until it’s their turn but they should definitely be staying healthy, getting exercise and going over their parts in their spare time. Also, it’s pretty helpful to type out all your lyrics. Make a print-out for yourself and another one for the engineer so he can follow along with you and refer to the words when you guys are recording.

Recording engineers need to ask themselves if they are truly ready to record the entire album at home or if they should use a pro studio for certain aspects. It can be worth it to use a studio for drums, mixing and mastering and just track guitars, bass and vocals at home. And when you are at the pro studio, you can watch the engineer like a hawk and learn a lot. But if you do this, it’s best to learn from a guy who has at least 10 years experiences or more and knows all the proper ways to record and mix. Many new engineers never learned the basics and this is why they have never advanced past a certain stage. Good luck and have fun!

Part III: The Gear

Note: The reason I am posting this article installment is that it is a needed bridge to get to the other more complex concepts and techniques that I want to discuss with home recordists. For many, this article deals with basics that you have already dealt with. And for others, it deals with aspects they have not yet dealt with. I can’t make a really comprehensive article about the various kinds of gear in a home studio and their functions. That requires a book. Glean what you can from this article and in the near future I will take you off into more complex techniques. Sorry if this article is of little use to many of you!

It is now possible to get very good sonic accuracy from relatively low cost equipment. There is a level of quality you do not want to go below, but other than that, it’s possible to get very good results from a fairly low cost home studio.

As I have said before, your monitors and your room are more important than anything else in your studio. But assuming you have those two issues settled, its time now to move on to the fun stuff. First you will need a computer.

The platform choice is basically between Mac and PC. My advice is that a home studio owner use the PC platform. The reason for this is cost. MAC computers are very solid and stable, but it could cost you twice as much money to get your studio running and to keep it running.

A PC may give you more problems with the fine details of installing drivers, keeping the peripherals running, etc, but this is often worth it for the home studio owner because of the lower cost and higher availability of those parts. If you do have the extra money, are familiar with the MAC platform already and want to go that route, you will do well.

Ok, if you are running a MAC you will use OS X, if you are running a PC you will use Windows XP Professional Edition. You should not use the Vista operating system unless you want to experiment a bit. If you buy a new computer that has Vista installed, you can buy a copy of XP and install that instead. Vista is very new and is not as reliable as XP for audio yet. Those running Windows XP can use this guide to optimize their settings for audio use:
http://www.digitalproducer.com/2002/11_nov/features/11_04/optimize_pcaudio.htm

The way you build a home studio is based on what you want to accomplish. I recommend that musicians use the home studio to augment time at a pro studio. Also using it for writing purposes is very handy. During this time, you can build your experience and eventually, you can get good enough to record your album at home.

The most effective way to go is to record drums at a pro studio, then record the other tracks at home and go back to the pro studio to mix and then send out for mastering. In later installations, I will probably talk about recording drums for those that want to go in this direction, but honestly, recording drums is pretty serious and those people are going to need an education much greater than these blog posts.

A very good alternative to recording drums is to use the Toontrack family of drum programs. Check out EZ Drummer or Superior Drummer 2.0 at www.toontrack.com You can get a drum sound that is nearly as good as real drums with this method.

Supposing that you have either recorded drums at another studio or have sampled drums like those from EZ Drummer, you will need to now record guitars, bass and vocals. This means that you will only have to have 2 channels of mix preamps. The more types and brands you have, the more colors you are painting with, but even just having two really good preamps is very good for the home musician. I recommend the Vintech Dual 72 for the semi pro users. It’s a Neve style dual preamp that you can use for anything. It will be super high quality and never let you down. It costs about 1200 dollars for two channels. If you need a cheaper alternative, just remember that you get what you pay for. 600 dollars per channel of preamp and higher is where real quality comes in. But you can get quite adequate quality for about 300-400 dollars per channel. There are many brands to choose from. Try www.fmraudio.com for a low cost solution. Or just keep these prices in mind and shop around. There are too many brands for me to cover them all here. Preamps that are built into audio interface cards are ok, but you should step up from this at buy a dedicated preamp or two. Buy a couple of preamps that will take an XLR or ¼ inch input that you can use as a direct input (DI). This way you can mic up cabinets or record vocals with vocal mics, or plug straight in for recording a DI track.

Another way to go is to buy a small mixing board. You will get many preamps and the ability to do more versatile operations. In the home studio range, I’d suggest you stick with Mackie or Allen and Heath. Cheaper than that and you will get low quality. Those two brands are quite good for the money.

Next is the audio interface card. This is where your analog source from the preamps or mixer get changed into digital and go into the computer. The actual conversion takes place in the A/D converter. This is the Analog to Digital converter. Many audio cards have these built into them. But a few are full digital cards and will require a separate AD converter. I recommend you get a card (interface) with built in A/D and D/A converters

If you are using a laptop, you will need a Firewire or USB 2.0 card. If you are using a desktop, you can go Firewire or USB or use a PCI card. Either way, there are a lot of options. PCI interfaces may be a more stable option though. For the higher end of home recording, I recommend RME. Under this I’d say MOTU, Digidesign and M-Audio. Also, you will have fewer problems running a desktop over a laptop, but a new and fast laptop with a good card can work for just recording a few tracks at a time. You can mix as many tracks as you need though. Again, you get what you pay for.

So far, you have your speakers, you room has been set up to work well, you have bought a couple preamps or a mixing console and an audio interface card. Now you need software. The most popular programs are Pro Tools, Cubase, Nuendo, and Sonar for PC and Pro Tools and Digital Performer for MAC.

Pro Tools needs a Digidesign approved audio card to run it, but the others will run on any audio card. Pro Tools is the industry standard and if you plan on going back and forth with another Pro Tools equipped studio, that’s your best bet. You can buy a book for Pro Tools on Amazon.com and learn it. It’s a bit of an odd program, but there are tons of people to help you. It is the most popular program.

Steinberg is the maker of both Cubase and Nuendo. Originally, Cubase was more geared towards home recordists and Nuendo was more pro, but now they are almost identical. Pick one and run with it. I use Nuendo myself and it’s a very intuitive and stable program. Sonar is made by Cakewalk and is also very good but it will not be quite as easy to get help with because it’s not as popular. I hear it works just as well as the others. I’m sure it does. Digital Performer is a very deep and high quality MIDI and audio program for MAC and most MAC users use it in combination with Pro Tools. You can buy instructional books for all of these programs and I would advise it.

I would also suggest that those individuals who want to get into home recording begin using the internet as a library and start visiting as many forums and websites as possible that pertain to recording. Don’t get caught up in gear lust, just try to glean as much information as you can. Getting into recording is like taking yourself to college and you will need to be constantly on the lookout for new techniques and pointers. Always ask questions and keep absorbing information like a vacuum cleaner.

You will undoubtedly run into many problems installing drivers, getting things to work properly, etc. For this reason, you should try to find an audio buddy. Find another person who has a few years experience in this that is near you to help you when you get stuck. If they are running a certain program such as one of those listed below, find out what they run, and you can run it too. This way you can compare notes. They can come over and help you when you are stuck or talk you through a problem on the phone. If all your friends are running Nuendo on PCs and you get Pro Tools and a MAC, you’ll be very sorry you did.

Ok, back to the gear. Most musicians who want to just record their ideas at home and start to learn the art of recording only will need speakers, computer, sound card, preamp and software. They can use sampled drums and record direct guitar or bass tone from a Line 6 POD or use a guitar simulator plug in. If you want to actually mic up a cabinet and record guitar tone the professional way, watch my video for instructions on doing that. If you want to record bass, the best way is to plug in directly from the bass into a preamp and from there into the audio interface.

If you want to record vocals at home you will need a good large diaphragm condenser mic. On the low end I would recommend the Oktava MC319 and on the semi pro end, I’d suggest the Neumann TLM 103. Actually, the Neuman is a fully professional mic. You can also try an AKG 414 BULS. Other good inexpensive mics are the Audio Technica 4033, 4055 and 4060. There are many Chinese made mics that are pretty good these days but none of them will be better then these I just listed and you are in hit or miss territory. There are also a lot of half Chinese, half American made mics and I’d just stuck with AKG, Neuman or Audio Technica if I were you.

You can record a singer with just a good preamp, good converters (probably built into your card in most cases), and that’s all. But usually, the best way to record vocals is to compress them with a good compressor before they go into the digital domain. The problem with this is that you now need another piece of gear that is often expensive, but you also now have to learn how to listen to compression. But you have to start somewhere. For a cheap compressor, I’d recommend the FMR Audio RNC compressor. And if you want to get better, you should spend about 800 dollars or more. With the RNC, you can set it on auto, let it peel off about 4 db of volume off the vocalist and just record that into the computer. Vocals are very dynamic. They always need to re-compressed with your plug in compressor in the computer during mixing, but it’s very beneficial to also have them pre compressed on the way in. But when you do this, you are locking the compression into the audio track and you can’t go backwards. But then again, it’s necessary for vocals if you want a pro sound. Here is a good reason to let a pro do your vocals for you if you are not sure if you can understand compression. I’d say, watch the professional do it and ask him questions, then try to mimic what he does. I’ll do an installation on compression in the future. It can take a few years to really get the hang of it. But if you are not trying to record your best album at home, you can always record without compression or with an RNC and just experiment. It’s best to get your hands dirty.

There are so many other aspects that I should try to put into this installment but really can’t. In fact this entire article is really too basic for those that are already building a studio and too complex for those that are just getting acquainted with the technology. I hope there is something that is in here that can help bridge a gap in your knowledge. For future articles, I will have to suppose that the reader has already done their homework on basic techniques. But let me just list a few key terms. If you don’t know what these are, find out, and take yourself to school on the basic concepts of recording. There are many books and I will try to make a list of them later. But you will need to know these terms if you are going to be even slightly successful with recording.

Signal to Noise Ratio
Dynamic Range
Bit Depth
Sample Rate
Analog to Digital Conversion
Digital to Analog Conversion
Sample Rate Conversion
Dither
DI Track
Reamp
Line Level voltage
+4 and -10 level voltage
Nyquist Frequency
Attack
Release
Threshold
ADAT Optical
XLR
AES/EBU
Instrument cable
Speaker cable
¼ inch mono and ¼ inch stereo jacks
Insert cable
Patch Bay
EM interference
Human hearing frequency response
Standing waves
Diffusion
Absorption

The list goes on and on…….

Are you sure you want to record your own album??

Part II: Monitors

Assuming that the room you are using is not a bathroom or a closet, the monitors you use are the most important part of your studio without exception. After the monitors, the importance shifts to the room, and then the other studio gear. .

The more money you spend on monitors, the less time it will take you to develop a good ear and learn to make good mixes. If your priority is only to make demos that your band will use for personal reference, you can get away with a pair of 400 dollar powered near-field monitors. But most home studio operators eventually want to learn to make professional sounding albums and maybe record other bands. The longer you wait to get a pair of high-end monitors, the longer you will have to wait to be able to accurately hear what you are doing. If you can’t hear what is in your mix, you can’t make a mix that will satisfy you.

Personally, I learned how to record with a friend and we started out with a pair of KRK K-Rok speakers. They were about 400 dollars. We made a few demos on these. When we wanted to add more equipment to the studio, we asked the right person what we should add and they told us to add better monitors.

After a brief stint with a pair of JBL unpowered nearfields, we added some Genelec 1031’s. These are internally powered and they are probably the most popular nearfields among professionals after the Yamaha NS-10’s. They cost about 3500 dollars for the pair in 1997. Because we added these pro monitors so early on in our careers, we were able to jump much further with our skills in recording and mixing than if we had not upgraded our monitors until later. And now that I am a mastering engineer and know much more about this subject, I can clearly see that this was an essential move to make.

Let me now go over the differences between monitor sizes and types. In a traditional professional studio, the control room will utilize two different types of speakers. They will have large sofit mounted speakers in the walls above the console and they will have one or two pairs of nearfields on the console deck.

The larger speakers are mounted in a recessed and padded hole (sofit) and they are powered by some high current amplifiers. They are loud and clean and give you a far-field reference. They are kind of like a mix between home hi-fi speakers and PA speakers.

On the console deck will almost always be a pair of Yamaha NS-10 nearfields. These are unpowered so they require a separate amplifier. They were originally released in the 1970’s as home bookshelf speakers. Studio owners started using them as a way to hear their mixes on a speaker that showed them how small home speakers would reproduce their work. They are not the best sounding monitors at all; they are very midrange heavy but they are very good for this type of reference. Another benefit to using them is that if you learn to mix on them, you can work at any pro studio easily because they will surely have these speakers. Something else they say about them is that if you can make a mix sound good on the NS-10s, it will sound good anywhere. And for the most part, this is true. If you will have two pairs of nearfields in your studio, make these one of those pairs. Now you will definitely need a pair of more high fidelity nearfields than the NS-10s and if you can only have one pair, skip the NS-10s.and get a pair of really good quality active monitors.

Active monitors have power amps built into them and they are very popular these days. The benefit to self powered speakers is that they are more portable this way but also they have a different amp for each driver in the speakers. The manufacturers usually claim that active monitors are better than non powered monitors because the amp/driver systems are perfectly matched. In some cases, this is true. In others, it is not. But because of the availability and convenience of these types of speakers, you might as well grab a good pair. Just make sure they are a very good pair.

I suggest that you either spend about 1400 US dollars or more on 2 active monitors or buy a used pair for slightly less. I also recommend that you buy speakers with 7-8 inch woofers or larger. Smaller drivers will not be able to give you adequate bass response and you will never be able to get a balanced mix no matter what you do.

One pair of active monitors that I can recommend that are not very expensive are the Mackie 824’s. They are really a close copy of the Genelec 10/31s but they probably go a bit lower. These are probably the least expensive monitors you should check out.

Another company to look into is Dynaudio, a Danish company. They have an active pair called the BM6A that sells for about 1600 US dollars and has a 7 inch woofer. It is probably slightly higher fidelity than the Machies but wont go as low because of the smaller woofer and smaller enclosure size. If you consider these you may or may not want to add a subwoofer later on. They also have a larger pair called the BM10 that has a 10 inch speaker for more than 2000 dollars per pair.

Of course Genelec has fantastic speakers in their line and they are very worth looking into if you want to spend about 3500 dollars. Also there are ADAM speakers and many others that are as much as the Genelecs or more. There are many, many brands on the market and if you have 2500 or more to spend you can find a lot of models that you can listen to. Any speaker in this range will be good and will work for you. Once you get into this price range, it’s a matter of personal taste but any monitor will be great.

There is also a gigantic array of cheap active monitors on the market. Just stay away from them and you will be far better off. But because most home studio owners are probably on a budget, this is why I recommend the Mackie speakers. They are about the best you can find for the price. And you will not need a subwoofer. And this is a good thing. Let me explain more about subs.

Adding a subwoofer to your speaker system can be great but it can also be problematic. I would say that half of the time, the studio owner can get a subwoofer that will work well in their room and with their monitors. But other times they just make mixing more complicated and confuse the listener.

If you have bought a very small set of speakers and you do not want to replace them with bigger speakers because you are already familiar with them, you might want to add a sub to your system to get good bass response. But if you are starting out from the beginning, or do not have much invested into speakers already, you should consider buying a pair of monitors that have good low end response so you wont need to buy a sub. This way you can skip the problem of matching a sub to your nearfields.

If you do decide to add a sub, you will want to get the most expensive and powerful subwoofer you can afford. Follow the manufacturers’ instructions on setting up the sub and try to just use it to add enough bass to bring up the missing low end without making it obvious. It’s just there to add the very lowest frequencies that your nearfields can’t reproduce; its not there to give you a home theatre experience. If you set it that way, you will ultimately end up with mixes that have too little bass. Remember, the more bass you have in your monitors, the less you will put into your mixes. And when you have speakers with very little bass response, you will end up with bass heavy mixes.

The biggest problem with subs is that they have a crossover frequency point where the nearfields stop making bass and the sub takes over. This crossover spot is often a place where there is a hole in the overall frequency response. And it’s usually around 70-90 HZ. This is exactly where the most important low end belongs in most music. So because of this, studios with mis-aligned subs often have worse bass problems than those without subs.

If you buy an expensive sub and you use a subwoofer set-up reference CD and do some experimenting, you can make it work well if your room is good. I don’t want to scare anyone from adding a sub. I am just saying that if you are going to do it, do it right. If you do, you will be satisfied.

I could go into much greater detail about speaker types, recommended wattages, tweeter materials, etc. But honestly, I don’t think all that is very important for the home studio owner. Like I said, as long as you spend a decent amount of money on some quality speakers and try to get the very best you can afford, you should be fine. If they have the power to go as loud as you need without distortion, have an extended low end, are not fatiguing to listen to for long periods and are at least 14 or 15 hundred dollars a pair, they will work for you. Whatever you do, stay away from anything cheaper than that and try to spend more if you can. And then of course you can buy a 2000 dollar pair on the used market for 1300 and that would be an even better thing to do. Also now that Genelec is making a new line of speakers, you can get a pair of 1031’s on the used market for very cheap. If you do this, you will never need to upgrade again unless you want to.

Another final comment is that you can also but a pair of unpowered monitors and couple them with a nice hi-fi amp. In this case, don’t use a PA amp like a Crest or Crown if you can help it. Better to use an old hi-fi stereo receiver with at least 80 watts or buy a nice newer hi-fi amp with more power. Dynaudio offers un-powered versions of their active speakers and there are many other brands. Tannoy makes good un-powered speakers too.

If you know your budget, you can do a couple of weeks worth of internet research, and then try to listen to as many of the speakers you can and then grab a pair. If you have a good local dealer, make sure you can return them if you are not happy.

Monitor shopping is always a fun and challenging experience. Good luck!

Recording perfect tracks at home. Part 1: The Room

Home recording is almost ubiquitous among musicians these days. Nearly every serious musician has some sort of recording equipment in his home or within easy reach. And because of the relatively low price of quality recording gear and software, there are a growing number of musicians who have decided to save the money they would normally spend at a traditional studio and buy a home recording setup instead. This gives amazing freedom to musicians, but it has unfortunately contributed to a decline in the quality of the average album as well.

The reason for this decline is a mixture of factors. Firstly, technology has enabled musicians who would not have been able to afford to release an album to do so; and now the market is flooded. Another reason is that people have less patience than in times past for mastering their instruments and their albums are recorded prematurely. But the factor that I want to address here is related to the fact that musicians are not always technically inclined or of the same personality type that recording engineers are. They are looking for quick results to keep their inspiration flowing. They will usually figure out a way to record that gets the job done quickly and on the cheap, but then as they decide to do more with their home studios, they are reluctant to go back and re-learn recording techniques in the traditional method.

My particular area of work is in recording and mastering heavy metal and extreme metal. But 95 percent of what I talk about pertains to all styles of music and all recording situations. You can apply it almost anywhere.

Those that want to convert a house into a real studio with a separate control room and live room can check out books by F. Alton Everest and many other resources online. But this article is actually intended for musicians who will usually set up everything in one room. They often are not trying to record drums and if they do, they will set up the drums in another pre-existing room. Most home studio setups are in a bedroom or other room of this size and they will set up a computer system on a desk and have their speakers directly in front of them on a desk or right behind it. In this series I will address the following subjects: The room, monitoring, the gear, recording preparations, tracking tips, mixing in the computer. Here we go…

The Room:

A typical bedroom or similar sized room will work in most cases. The best sounding rooms that are not custom built are rectangular in shape. A room that is a short rectangle is usually best. Rectangles that are too long have big bass problems in the rear of the room and square rooms suffer from intense standing waves. A short rectangle works best. This is what most rooms are anyway.

All rooms will need some kind of absorption and diffusion. Sound bounces around a room like arrows. Higher frequencies (Treble) are directional. This means that in order to hear these frequencies you will have to be facing the speaker. And treble frequencies also will bounce off of hard surfaces. They will bounce around as long as they have energy. Large rooms have long reflections. This means they take a long time to go from the source (Speaker) to your ears. You will hear a delay. Small rooms make more short reflections and they create what is called Comb Filtering. If you enter a totally empty room and clap your hands you will hear a rapid bouncing of the sound. This is Comb Filtering and it is much more unpleasant than long reflections.

Long reflections are generally nicer sounding to the ear. But there are good long reflections and bad ones. A gymnasium goes not have good sound. If you listen to a sports team practicing in an empty gymnasium, it can be hard to understand what the players are saying to each other. A large church is about the same volume as a gymnasium but it sounds very good. The sound of a church choir is one of the esthetically greatest sounds possible. The reason for this difference is what we call diffusion.

In a Gym, the sound that is bouncing off of untreated walls is allowed to continue to bounce for a long period of time. The reflections add to each other and build energy and volume. In a Church, the different angles and odd shapes in the room stop the sound from bouncing in parallel routes. These odd angles stop the sound from building energy, but the size of the room allows whatever sound does propagate to echo with a pleasant long reflection. So large rooms sound good when they are diffused.

Smaller rooms have no space for long, church-like reflections to bounce. They can only make short reflections. And as we know, an unfurnished small room sounds very bad. So for a small studio, we need to stop those sounds from happening at all. What we use to do this is called absorption. There are many types of products and materials that absorb sound. Some absorb high frequencies only, and some will extend down to the low ranges. Because high frequencies are physically small, we can stop them with porous materials like carpet, foam, blankets and things like this. Bass frequencies are very long, so they take a different kind of material. I will get into this later.

Ok, so we know we need to install absorption materials in our room, but how much and what type do we use? And what about diffusion? Do we need that? Yes we need both absorption and diffusion but we have to be very careful. What we want to do with our room is to allow the longest, good sounding reflections to exist while stopping only the annoying, short reflections we call Comb Filtering. And whatever reflections we do allow to exist, we want to break up like the odd angles in a church do.

Now the first thing we want to do with our rectangle-sized room is to decide where we will set up our speakers and computer console. Will we place our system in the middle of the room with the long ends to our left and right? Or will we place the system in one end of the rectangle?

Really the answer to this depends on your particular situation. You can try both ways to find out what is best for you. There are many technical reasons for using or not using either position, but I will just say that in general, setting up with your speakers and computer in one end of the room is usually best. This keeps the long reflections behind you and allows you set up a commonly used method called Live-End-Dead-End. With this set-up, you will deaden the short reflections around the speakers and diffuse the long reflections on the back wall. Even if you set up with the long ends of the room to the left and right of the control station, you will still absorb the short reflections and diffuse the longs ones. And you will always diffuse the wall behind your head. If the room you have to use is a very long rectangle, you will get a lot of bass problems in the far ends. So here you might want to set up in the middle; even though you will not get great sound, it is more workable than sitting in a bass wave.

Ok, now let’s set up our speakers. In general we always want to be sitting in a position that puts us at equal distance from each speaker in an equilateral triangle. Each speaker will be placed in one of the three points of the triangle and our listening position will be at the third point. Always, this is the proper placement for near-field studio speakers to be set up.

An optimal small studio room is at least 1500 cubic feet in volume (LxWxH). You can go smaller; even 1000 cubic feet is usable but trying to keep it around 1500 or bigger is best. The bigger the room, the more bass you will be able to hear. Rooms under this size don’t have very good bass response. If you plan on mixing, your mixes will suffer if less than 1200 cubic feet or so. If you just plan on recording and having another engineer somewhere else mix, you can use a smaller room.

Ok, once you have your speakers in an equilateral triangle, you can sit down in the listening position and have a friend take a small hand-held mirror and move it on each wall to the side of each speaker. When you can see the speaker’s tweeter from your listening position in that mirror, you will later place a piece of sound deadening material there. Do the same thing on the opposite wall so you will now have a piece of sound deadening material on both side walls. I will talk about materials in a minute.

Now attach the mirror to a stick, hold it to the ceiling and try to see each tweeter from your listening position. Do this directly above each speaker. So you will have two key positions on the ceiling and one on each side wall. Now for the floor, you will need to do the same thing, but the easiest thing to do is to throw a small rug in front of the speakers. And in the case where you have the speakers right on your desk, you can skip the rug.

Another thing I should mention before I get into absorption materials is whether or not you have carpet on the floor of your room. Many American rooms have carpet on them from the start. If you have this, you can deal with it, but its best to have hard wood to start with and then throw carpet down in small sizes as you need it. But if you do not wish to pull out the carpet, this is fine; just use less absorption in the room to compensate.

Ok, the easiest way to get good sound absorption for your side walls and speakers is to buy pre-made acoustic foam from a manufacturer like Sonex, Auralex, etc. A bedroom will probably need about six to twelve 2 foot by 4 foot sheets. You can cut them in half to make 2x2 squares as well. You can start out will less and add as you feel necessary. You can also use blankets or egg crate material but the pro foam is very cheap and works much better so this is what you should do in all cases. The first step is to set up foam in your key positions around the speakers with the mirror. Then we will move on to diffusion and then back to absorption until we get the room to sound coherent.

For the diffusion, we can either purchase diffusers from a company like Auralex or we can use household materials. The pre-made plastic diffusers are excellent. They come in 2x2 size squares and 4-8 of them on the back wall behind your head will be perfect. You can fill them with foam or household insulation and then mount them all to a piece of wood or soundboard. Then place this on the back wall. This will allow the long reflections to exist but not bounce back to hit your head. Without diffusers, when the sound coming from the speakers in front of you is coupled with sound coming from behind you that is coming later, it will phase-out the sound and stop you from hearing clearly. Now with the diffusers on the back wall you should have a tolerable situation. If you don’t want to use pre-made diffusers, you can set up a bookshelf full of books or gather many items of different sizes and shapes and put this on the back wall. A bookshelf or two filed with books is a great, household diffuser. Now you a have dead front end because of the sound absorption and a live but diffused rear end. This is where we get the term Live-End-Dead-End. The rear end is live and the front end where the speakers are is dead.

The next step is to listen to some music we are familiar with in the system. Walk around the room and listen to the sound at a medium to medium-loud level. How does it sound? Is there still too much echo? Ok, now add the other items you will probably store in the room. Add any furniture and other items that you must have in the room. Now listen again. How is it now? In a small room, this may be all you need. If you still are getting too much echo for your tastes, add some more foam to the walls. Try a 2x4 piece on each wall, mid level in about the middle of the room. If you have longer reflections that you want to tame, place foam on the far ends of the room and the ceiling at the far end. If you think it is shorter reflections, put the foam around the listening area more. The more foam you place, the deader the room will sound. More foam is good for clarity but not natural sounding. The best compromise is just enough foam to stop annoying echo and then stop there. I have a medium sized room for my mastering suite and I have ten pieces of 2x4 foot foam on the walls. I have 5 pieces on the wall behind the speakers, 2 on each side wall near the speaker, one on each wall mid way down, a couple pieces on the ceiling and just a couple small pieces on the back wall. I also have a diffuser panel as I described behind my head. My room is 9 feet tall by 17 feet long by 13 feet wide. There are also room ratios that always sound good but for home based musicians, you are always using a pre-existing room so just sticking with short rectangle ratios is all that you need to do.

Ok, now we have taken care of our treble reflections and set up a room that we can listen to music in without strain. The next sound problem we will encounter is bass reflections. Bass is omni directional. It goes through everything. It travels through walls, foam, everything almost. Bass reflections are very difficult to deal with. The bass will always collect in the corners of a room and on the back wall. Because bass reflections are long, you need to be far from them to hear them. And because of this, they will be worse in the back of the room, farthest from the speakers. In custom rooms we can do a frequency analysis and determine where our bass problems are. They call these problem areas Room Nodes and the overly prominent frequencies are called Standing Waves.

If you know where your Room Nodes are, you can build custom made bass traps that are tuned to those frequencies. But for home studio musicians, I suggest foam solutions again. Auralex and others make foam bass traps where the foam is made in a different way, of a more dense design and they work almost as well as custom bass traps. You can fill all your corners with these foam traps. It is not advisable to skip this part of the room treatment. Usually just filling the corners with 8 traps is all you will need to get rid of the worst bass problems. If you have the room, you can also place a couch under the diffusers on the back wall and that can help a bit. If you need more bass trapping, you can purchase cylindrical, mobile bass traps or use the F. Alton Everest books to design a custom bass trap. By the way, buy his books no matter what you do! One is called “The Master Handbook of Acoustics” and the other is called “Sound Studio Construction on a Budget”. Also remember that the most critical part of the recording studio is your monitoring. The room determines how those monitors will sound and how you will interpret what you are recording. An astronomer depends on his telescope and his observatory quality. A recording engineer depends on his monitors and his room in the same way.

If you are setting up your home studio in a room that is not as workable as what I described here, do what you can. Take this information and use it as you can. Buy some books and do some internet searching. In fact, the Internet has all the information you will ever need if you will only take the time to do the research. Recording is an art and a science. If you wish to take the responsibility to do what a recording engineer has dedicated his life to, you will need to do your homework as well so you can at least get the job done without any major problems and record some quality tracks. You probably will still want to send your music out to a professional to mix and master, so this will save you many years of practicing recording; but you will definitely still need to get the basics understood and begin your recording journey on the right foot.

Sound materials:

http://auralex.com/

More extensive acoustic information:

http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html#diffusers%20and%20absorbers

F. Alton Everest books:

http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Studio-Construction-Budget-Everest/dp/0070213828/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

Determine where your standing waves will be (intermediate level):

http://www.mcsquared.com/metricmodes.htm