Entry level recording equipment

[txbluesboy]

I know almost nothing about recording gear.
I got a Zoom Q3 and have done some recording with
that. Its OK, however I would like a little higher quality
sound and more flexibility. What do I need between
an SM57 and my Imac? Thanks

[surfsup]

A good preamp or soundcard. Both cost $. What's your budget? I use a presonus firestudio but not too happy with it due to reasons other than the preamp.

[xtian]

It's important to know the order of importance of the elements in the chain for recording and reproduction. I wish someone explained this before I wasted money on hardware I couldn't appreciate! Like, why spend $1K on a nice mic preamp if you're using an SM57? So invest in the top of these lists first.

INPUT

1. microphone
2. the sound of your environment (studio, closet, hotel...)
3. DAC (audio interface)
4. mic preamp
5. mic cable

OUTPUT

1. monitors/headphones
2. the sound of your environment
3. ADC (audio interface)
4. cables

If we're just talking mics, an SM57 is inexpensive and has a definite "color." However, it's used on so many guitar cabs and snare drums that you'll recognize the sound, and be happy using it on those instruments. Otherwise, it sounds like indie garage recordings (Elliott in his basement!)--though this can be OK, too. Get a large-diaphragm condenser to record sounds, especially voice, more accurately. Plenty of good choices between $100 and $200.

Oops--let me know if you already know this shiz.

[surfsup]

Or just drop the mic alltogether. Get the redwire or recab impulses and play to your heart's content with positions, mics, distances, angles, on axis, off, etc.

Much better than re-recording every time to find out your mic moved, or was in the wrong spot to capture a good recording, etc.

Just record once dry, and use the impulses to shape the sound. A reamp is great, you can run the dry back out into the reamp, into the amp, and record the dry, while you listen to the amp play.

This way you can make sure you didn't play a bad string or something (because you hear the amp-ed sound), and you know you've got a good recording. Playing without the amp is kinda tough to know what you're going to get.

Then you can reamp the dry with as many takes through the amp as you want and play with mic position, the chicken heads, etc.

[selloutrr]

for guitar - Ribbon Microphone Beyer or Royer
Vocals - SM58 for live Neumann U67 for studio quality
Bass - Countryman DI Type 85

Signal Chain -
Quality Microphone
Quality XLR cable!!!
Neve or API preamp
Quality Cable
(MBOX) protools is the only way to go (industry standard). Allowing you to track at home and mix in a studio with quality outboard and large frame console. See Mbox for computer requirements.

________________________________________________

Cheap microphones have a High end (3khz) presence boost
Cheap cable has a high impedance and other noise floor issues
Cheap preamps have a very harsh sound and clip early
Cheap Analog -to- Digital converters have a sterile and crisp lifeless image.

__________________________________________________

Best advice before you buy new equipment, learn the ins and outs of the gear you have. It's not easy but it's not impossible to get a great sound as long as you understand what each piece does best and you don't ask it to do more. Buy the best cable you can afford! I don't mean monster or some hype brand you find at best buy. Prefessional studio's use Mogami, Beldin, and Canarie.

I'm not meaning to be defeatist or mean. please don't take this the wrong way but it takes certain pieces of equipent in very specific combinations to make the sounds you hear on your favorite albums. It's not impossible to have these tools at home but it's not cheap, and most are not sold at your local guitar center.

[surfsup]

Making assumptions:

You want to sing
You want to record guitar
You want some drums laid down over it
You want some FX
You want, want want...

Since you are home-recording and probably don't have a ton of cash - I record in a home studio as well.

MIC:
Don't spend any money here just yet. Use the SM57 as a vocal and guitar amp mic. Its fine. You can EQ the vocals later. You won't get stellar vocals from it but you won't have a $1000 mic, a treated room, a perfect singing voice, etc. Do this first then determine if you need it. If the guitar is acoustic forget all that I just said. Down the road, yea, ribbons are awesome, but you need a mic pre (I have a golden age and its nice, but another $300). As you can see with each thing you get, you need more. So keep it simple.

DAW:
Download Reaper. Its great, its a free trial, then its like $60 and you own it. Very powerful, but has a few bugs. Routing is amazing. Protools is great but its pricey. As a home studio afficionado, you need to use your $ where it meets the road. Also has some basic drums built in, etc...

REAMP:
Get one or a DI box that can convert the signal as well. best investment I ever made (posted earlier). You can double track guitar etc.

FX:
Plenty of decent free FX for the home studio. Lets face it to do good work you will need to spend some money but you CAN do very good stuff with free FX. The caveat is you have to KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING. This takes years of work and study and practice and experimenting, etc. (hmm sounds like amp building..)

Okay so I'm posting too much but with all the help i've gotten I wanted to give back a bit and this is the only subject here I can add to!

[selloutrr]

I'll throw you some bones...

Tip one.

build a "Y" cable. two XLR female into one male.
using two SM57 you can use microphone placement to cancel out the high end bump and create a smooth frequency response. both microphones go into one mic pre.

HINT: place one both microphones together capsules facing the source and move one microphone about the windscreens distance back.

HINT: Microphone placement is 100 times better then EQ. the less eq you use the better your mix will sound every time you move the eq knob you add phase shift.

If you use Protools you can buy melodyne or one of sveral other pitch correction software plug ins = better vocals and instrument takes. HINT" pitch correction will not make up for a bad performance it will correct it but the end result is a noticable robotic overtone. i.e. Pop vocals. pitch correction is best used in moderation and for stabilizing a performance which helps make "pockets" for the instruments.

HINT: Use a Direct box and track your amp and Direct box signal at the same time. In the event you don't like the tone of the amp but you like the performance you can reamp the DI signal and adjust the amp to fit the mix.

HINT: You get what you pay for in studio gear. outside of a few must have live mics, my average microphone costs over $3500 and few as much as $15000 each (AKG C12 stereo pr, C24(stereo C12), Telefunken Elam 251). I'd love to sell them and free up the $, but no cheap mic comes even close.

Must have mics under $1000

Shure SM57. SM58, SM7
Electro Voice RE20, RE16
Sennheiser 409, 421 (telefunken), 441
AKG D112, D12e, 451eb, 414(uls,TLII,eb)
Beyer 260, M88

The Blue Woodpecker (ribbon) is a pretty nice microphone I've used it a few times and been pleased.

[txbluesboy]

Ok, thanks for the feedback guys, but I think most of you missed the
part about me knowing almost nothing about recording. Im afraid your going to have to dumb it down for me a little more. Surfsup mentioned the Prosonus Firestudio, but had misgivings about it. I had been looking at this already but the reviews weren't really great. Is that what you get in the entry level price range? Honestly what I mainly want it for is to record an amp as I make mods to it, and compare the tone with the mod to the tone before the mod. The comment about the direct box will be useful to have identical guitar tracks. Thanks for your patience
with me! Terry

[xtian]

Thanks for clarifying! You need a USB audio interface, plus some recording software. Audacity is free for Mac and Windows. Find an interface here:

http://www.sweetwater.com/c695--USB_Aud ... UiOiI3In19

or get a used one on eBay.

[dartanion]

Either USB or Firewire interface should work with your iMac. You have GarageBand as well, so you can use that if you like. Audacity is great for a free recording package. Apple also has Logic that you can buy which is nice.

I have a Firestudio as well and it is a bit of a hassle to get working right. It does have nice quality preamps, but the hassle of getting the hardware and software to work together is what makes me wish I bought something else. I have also used the $30 iMic setup which works fine for a single channel into a recording app. I actually recorded some of my band's early demos using an 8 channel mixer into the iMic into Audacity. The problem is that the mix needs to be right on the board as you are stuck with single channel stereo in.

[mdroberts1243]

Ok, thanks for the feedback guys, but I think most of you missed the
part about me knowing almost nothing about recording. Im afraid your going to have to dumb it down for me a little more. Surfsup mentioned the Prosonus Firestudio, but had misgivings about it. I had been looking at this already but the reviews weren't really great. Is that what you get in the entry level price range? Honestly what I mainly want it for is to record an amp as I make mods to it, and compare the tone with the mod to the tone before the mod. The comment about the direct box will be useful to have identical guitar tracks. Thanks for your patience
with me! Terry

I use my Zoom H4 for the purpose you describe. The guitar goes into one channel directly, the monitor output of the Zoom goes into the amplifier and then I use a mic on the cabinet to record the amp output on the second channel of the H4. The H4 captures a dry track from the guitar that can be 're-amped' to compare the sound after a mod. Sometimes I've tried a few mods and re-amped the dry guitar track each time and then sat down to compare the amplifier tracks against each other to select between options.

The H4 came bundled with a decent version of Steinberg Cubase (LE) which is all I've needed for PC software.

The only disappointment with the H4 has been the user interface to set levels, etc. Not that difficult but I've not found it intuitive.

[surfsup]

My reservations on the presonus:

- if I want to record direct with any electric instrument and listen with my monitors while I play/record along with what I already have - I can't do it. Well, I CAN, but with the main volume up to anything other than zero, static and noise is introduced into the recorded track. Make 10 tracks like this and that noise adds up. So I have to wear headphones and remember to turn the knob to zero every time, annoying as HELL. (sometimes I forget to turn it down and I can't hear the monitors because I have the phones on my head, etc.)

- drivers are buggy. I finally have it all working except for the annoying "found new hardware" at bootup that I cancel every time

- the mixer sometimes loads presets properly. Other times doesn't. etc.

Basically it sounds great when it works but there are some annoyances that get me screaming. The pres are great for the price and I like the 8 inputs so I can have many setup as a template for each instrument (bass on 1, LP elec on 2, gretsch on 3, SM57 on 4, ribbon on 8, ST51 on 7, blah blah)

YOUR REQUEST:
For you just doing that, all you need is the REAMP or DI box that can convert so you can reamp. Why?

since you want to compare amp mods, you MUST do it with the SAME recorded input track becuase you can never duplicate the sound exactly each time you play (tuning, string attack, mic position, etc.)

Set up a cab with the mic on a stand and never touch it.

Record a track once (dry).

1) Reamp it once with amp (original condition)
2) make amp mod (don't move speaker or mic)
3) Reamp it again using amp after mod
4) repeat steps 1-3 for each amp mod

So with what you have you can get away with just the reamp/DI investment

The presonus firepod gets great reviews btw, and is cheap, if you want a new interface.

[mdroberts1243]

@SurfsUp Agree with most of your step-by-step above, but I think it is important to create the original dry track while playing through the amp... you get the amp dynamics, etc. and the benefit of the touch/sensitivity feedback for the player. Then you can re-amp.

The only drawback to this is if you are trying to modify the feel/dynamics! But for straight tone tweaking this has worked very well for me.

[selloutrr]

Experiment with what you currently have and get a feel for how it all works. Once you understand how your actions directly effect the tone or outcome of your mix, you will be able to better answer your own question and you just might be hapy with the setup you already have.

If all you are doing is using the recording to compare what you have done versus a previous step the trick is to not change the signal path. i.e. the cabinet, speaker, tone settings, mic position, gain settings, etc. it's only a true comparision if everythig is the same so you can hear the difference in your modification. Otherwise, it's a loss and the differences you hear could be the mic or a knob being just a fraction off of where the other take was recorded.

for what you are doing a handheld recorder or video camera would be just fine. Anything more detailed and you would need an acoustically controlled room and calibrated test equipment.

Read the owners manuals for the gear you currently own, follow along and use your equipment as you read, experiment, and get a feel for it, then track until your hearts content.

[Gibsonman63]

Brandon Drury at RecordingReview.com has a 300 page free download for getting started recording. Definitely worth a read if you have limited recording experience.

I am using a Mackie 1640 Firewire mixer and Sonar Producer 6 and getting decent results. Good enough to make a little money on the side recording demos... not good enough to quit my day job.

+1 on Reaper. ProTools is the industry standard, but with the hardware bundles it gets pricey. You can get the same features with Reaper and if you aren't making serious money recording, it is only $39. BTW, this month's TapeOp magazine has an interview with Reapers developers. Another interesting read.

Don't scrimp on monitors. It will drive you crazy otherwise trying to get a balanced mix.