What do I really need for a home studio?

[<Mike>]

Thing is that up until now I've been a bedroom shredder but I plan to change that! Me and my buddy, who is a singer, plan on making cover videos and put them on youtube (how original!) I also want to put some guitar shredding videos out there too.

So anyway, back to topic. Since I've only been a bedroom shredder I haven't really looked into the studio bits very much so I don't know much about it. What do I really need to start recording?

We have a good video camera and we'll get a micrphone for recording acoustic guitar and one for recording vocals. Is there a possibility that I could mic my amp with the same mic I use to record my acoustic guitar? If so, I'd like some suggestions of microphones, that aren't too expensive but still works, that you... suggest

But what else will we need to get? I have a soundcard that I think will work pretty well but I don't think I'm supposed to plug in the mics directly into my soundcard, right? I need some kind of box... that I don't know the name of.

So yeah, I'm quite an amatuer when it comes to this as you can see. So I'd really much appriciate any help I can get and also suggestions of what to get. We're prepared to spend about 500 euros/800 dollars to get this to work but hopefully we won't have to pay that much.

Thanks in advance!

[Roger]

You need a sound card made for music recording, cause the ones that comes with the computer is crap for recording music. They have bad drivers that gives you too much latency.
Sound cards are available as USB or Firewire. TC Electronic has a kick ass card called Konnekt 8 at a decent price. There are cheaper cards but it all comes down to how cheap you are.

For recording acoustic guitar and vocals ADK51 works pretty well and is not very expensive. For micing your amp I'd go with a Shure SM57 hands down. It works every time.

[al]

lots of $$


well first of all decide what ur going to be using it for i guess, then work the equipment around that

[boswell]

I've recorded with just a Creative SB Live sound card and Sonar's Cakewalk software and got decent results, so to start with you don't have to spend loads of £$'s

[pagliai]

if you need to put the videos on youtube alone,well take a good video camera and record the video with audio,at the end if you play good and the singer sings good it is not a problem,modern video cameras 's got a pretty good audio,no?

If yoou wanna build an home studio brother al is correct ,a lot of money and a lot of problems 'cause you need:

1)a good cpu
2)a good soundcard it depends hoow much channels you need
3)2 condenser mics for the acoustic one at bridge one at neck(expensive)
4)1 electric guitar mic sm57
5)2 monitors (active if passive you need a poweramp monitor)
6)a little acoustical treatment or when you mix you can hear nothing and when you'll play the song on other place the mix 'll suck.
7)2 good headphones so the singer 'll sing and record in the same room and you too with amp(of course in different moments)
8)a spectrum analyzer (software too ,pinguin is really hot)

I forgot something .........well .......mah!!!

[Roger]

3)2 condenser mics for the acoustic one at bridge one at neck(expensive)

You don't need 2 mics to record an acoustic guitar. You can record it in mono as well, it all depends on what you're after. But you don't need to record it in stereo.

[lydian2000]

Soundcard with ASIO drivers.

[Jeries]

i'm too lazy to read all the replys but my best suggestion is use a computer that you ONLY use for recording and nothing else

[al]

get a mac and logic and a nice sound card with as many inputs/outputs/midi as u need, pro tools is spawned from satan, go with logic!! mixing desk is not necessary but hands on is far better eh, nice minotors, powerfull comp, bunch of mics, proper sound proffing/padding isolating a section of the room off... lots of tihngs oh and a keyboard prefrably midi

if u go pro tools get latest pro tools and reason, i love them paired together, but hate pro tools

it really depends what ur mainly going to be using it for man


and xy micing for acoustics, you can record them whatever way u want, but i found best results with xy, also add DI if u can and mix the 3 sounds

[<Mike>]

Well, my vocalist friend has got a good enough computer already and I have a M-Audio Audiophile USB card that I bought for about 300 euros a while ago that should work.
I'm not really aiming for a pro studio here, I know it'd cost me more money than I have. We'll ony try to record acoustic covers of diffrent songs. So basically me with an acoustic guitar and my friend on vocals and that's pretty much it. I don't think I have to be a millionaire to make that a reality.

I've checked out your mic suggestions and it seems nice. Will I need some kind of pre amp?

Thing is that I've tried plugging my electric guitar straight into my soundcard and then record using GuitarRig, but even though I had an established musician as help to get things working I couldn't record without getting a 1 second latency, which is quite much. So I dunno if something was wrong with my soundcard or if my computer just sucked too much. My friends computer is much better so hopefully things'll work.


But so basically, I only need two mics and two headphones and for example Cakewalk, Pro Tools etc? I think I should need some kind of preamp (even though a preamp might not be the right thing at all, I dunno what they're called)

[lydian2000]

Thing is that I've tried plugging my electric guitar straight into my soundcard and then record using GuitarRig, but even though I had an established musician as help to get things working I couldn't record without getting a 1 second latency, which is quite much.

This is precisely why u do need ASIO/ASIO2 drivers which will dramatically reduce your latency, I have a current 11miliseconds latency and believe me that's enough to get on my nerves especially when you try to nail complex and accurate shredding.

from: http://www.usb-audio.com/faq.html

- What's ASIO, USB, MME, SoundManager and dithering?
ASIO means "Audio Stream Input Output" and is a Steinberg technology of hardware to audio application connection at less CPU usage. It provides reliable sync and low latencies (Latency is the delay time due to audio processing inside the computer).
"Universal Serial Bus" V1.1 (USB) is an external peripheral interface standard for data transmission. USB works at 12Mbps and provides up to 8 uncompressed audio channels. It's also fully compatible to the new USB2 standard allowing faster access to external harddrives and CD burners (in theory up to 480Mbps). For audio USB2.0 improves samplerates and the number of channels. E.g. the latest Tascam, Alesis and Numark units are capable of doing 96kHz at 24bit full duplex and run with a fixed masterclock. That gives you a way higher sound quality compared to "classic" designs deriving the samplerate out of the USB clock which can be really bad, since there might be jitter on the USB clock - check the internet about "clock spreading" regarding this.
"SoundManager" (Mac) and "Multi Media Extensions" (Win) are first generation, high latency audio systems being supported by almost any application. CoreAudio (Mac) is a more modern approach but still in between - we work around that, too.
"Dither" is noise added to the bits that have to be cut off on converting the bit-depth. The noise isn't audible but changes the "arithmetical carry" on rounding the last bit to be used. This increases sound quality.

[GYiakoumi]

guitar > efx > amp > SM57 dynamic microphone > M-Audio Fast Track Pro > PC (wanna change it to mac soonish) > Pro Tools 7.4 M-Powered


^ thats all in my bed room atm it works for me

[<Mike>]

efx, that's short for some kind of pedal?

Anyway already have Asio4All, I know that much at least I still had a 1 second latency. But my soundcard is a messy story actually, I can't even access the sound and audio devices menu and in the handbook for the soundcard it says I have to have an apple computer to access that... which is really shitty since they sell it for PC.

But anyway, less focus on my soundcard. Did someone say I need a preamp or whatever it's called? I mean to plug the microphones into and then plug that box into the soundcard. I recorded at my previous school some time ago and then we used something like that but I can't remember what it was called At least it worked then.

Can someone clear things up for me regarding the preamp question? thanks

[GYiakoumi]

by efx i mean, pedalboard, (guitar efx), when recording though I never apply reverb or delay or anything timebased, only wah or whammy or volume pedal. always leave efx for the end.

[Roger]

The reason why you get that latency is because the buffer size is too high. There is a control panel for the sound card where you can adjust that. M-Audio's own drivers are much better than the free crappy asio4all drivers since they are written specifically for their cards. Check M-Audio's webpage for the latest drivers.

You're gonna need a preamp to boost the mic signal. The Art Tube is pretty cheap and works ok. If it's good enough for José Gonzales I guess it's good enough for you ...plug your mic (or guitar) into that, and then from the preamp into the line inputs on the sound card.