You have a home recording studio, but you're not satisfied with the results you are getting?

Firstly, and this is very important, I want you to ignore what you hear in recording forums. It's true that many expert musicians, engineers and producers contribute to these forums. But you don't always know who they are. And for every one person who really knows what he is talking about, there are a hundred just blowing off hot air.

Also, although I love recording magazines, especially Sound on Sound, which has published many of my articles on recording since 1986 (you can search their website for my work), you have to bear in mind that these magazines earn their living through selling advertising. And what are the ads for? - Equipment, equipment, equipment and more equipment. So they have a tendency to promote 'more equipment' as the way forward in recording.

Having more equipment is not the route to professionalism. Once you have a basic pro setup, which is easily achieved these days, it is your knowledge, skills and experience that will help you achieve the pro standards to which you aspire.

Knowledge, skills and experience. Not equipment.

At this point I would like to help you check that you have the right equipment, so here are a few questions...

• Do you have at least one microphone as good as or better than the Shure SM57?
• Do you have an audio interface?
• Do you have digital audio workstation software?
• Do you have headphone or loudspeaker monitoring?
• Do you have an instrument?
• Can you sing, or do you have access to a singer?

Shure SM57 dynamic microphone

If you can answer 'yes' to all of these questions, then you're good to go! Stop worrying about anything else. And - most of all - don't buy any more equipment or software! That's not what you need right now.

As I said earlier, you need knowledge, skills and experience.

But...

You do need one other thing. You need a good home recording studio working environment. So..

Here's how to set up a home recording studio working environment as easily and cheaply as possible

Anyone who is interested in recording would like to have a studio that looks 'the business'. Yes, that's a great thing to desire, but you don't need it. It doesn't matter what your studio looks like, as long as your recordings sound great.

You need a place to record that is quiet.

The easiest way to do this is to find the quietest location in your home, whether it is a house or apartment. It may be that the quietest location is already used for some other purpose. Well you'll just have to convert it temporarily into a recording studio, as and when you need it. Do this and getting started, is much better than just sitting and dreaming, or even budgeting and planning. Just get started on your recording. Why wait?

A recording studio also has to be acoustically dry. Now this point needs a little explanation...

A pro studio will usually have a pleasant 'ambience' for acoustic instruments to play in. But that only works if the studio is of a certain size, like the size of a school hall or community center. Smaller rooms don't tend to sound so good. And when you get down to domestic room sizes, they sound bad. They might not sound bad to the ear, but to the microphone they usually do.

So with a small room, what you need to do is make it acoustically as dry as you can. Bring in drapes, bedding and any soft materials you have around. That way you'll soak up a lot of the excess reverberant energy, allowing the microphone to pick up only the direct sound from voice or instrument.

A well-stocked bookshelf can be amazingly good acoustic treatment

You may have heard that studio acoustics need to be professionally designed. Well yes, they benefit from the professional touch. But you can get 80% of the way there with drapes, bedding and other soft materials. Even a clothes rail with all your jackets, t-shirts and jeans hanging from it can make a huge difference. Or a bookshelf full of books (the absorbency and irregular shapes are absolutely ideal acoustically).

A word of warning... Rooms that are too small are almost impossible to work in. A room of living-room size is fine. A double or even a single bedroom is fine. But it is difficult to make bathrooms or closets work however, no matter how much soft materials you bring in.

One more point...

I said earlier that you should choose the quietest location in the house. Once you have done this, it makes no sense to bring any sources of noise into this room. So ideally your computer, if it is noisy, should be outside the room. Fortunately, many modern computers are almost completely silent these days, so it is becoming less and less of a problem.

Now that you have a great home recording studio, you need a great control room

In professional recording studios, there is always a recording room, and a separate control room. The purpose of this is so that the musicians can perform in the perfect recording environment, and the engineer and producer can listen to the sound picked up by the microphones and not get confused by the direct sound from the instruments and vocals.

Also, the control room needs different acoustics to the recording room. You can do this at home, just like the professionals. Let me tell you how...

Ideally, your monitor loudspeakers should be positioned symmetrically in your control room

Ideally the control room should be quiet, and it should be acoustically dry. You should also be able to position a stereo pair loudspeakers so that they are symmetrical in the room. What I mean by this is that you could draw a line between the speakers through to the central listening position, and the left side of the room will be a mirror image of the right.

This is the ideal to aim for. If you can't get all the way there, get as close as you can. It will help you balance the stereo image of your recording. If your control room isn't symmetrical, your recordings may end up biased towards the left or the right.

And that's it - you have a control room, where you can judge the sounds coming from your microphone(s) and where you can mix.

And if you are prepared to monitor on headphones while you are recording, you can use the same room as your recording room (but with the computer preferably outside). You can monitor on loudspeakers for mixing.

By the way... Although it is possible to mix on headphones, what works on headphones won't always work on loudspeakers. What works on loudspeakers usually sounds fine on cans. This is a matter where experience comes in. If you need to mix on headphones, then you should take your mix to a place you can listen on loudspeakers, even if it's just your car stereo. Have a careful listen and make your judgment, then come back to your control room and make any adjustments. Then test on speakers again.

How to choose the right microphone

Good recording engineering isn't so much about which microphone you choose. It's more about positioning. But I'll tell you a little bit about microphones first...

If you have a dynamic mic like the Shure SM57, it will sound at its best on vocals, drums and electric guitars. It will not sound quite so good on an acoustic guitar (Although in the context of a rock song, this can work fine. In fact you can consider the SM57 a 'rock mic'.) and it will sound at its least good on metallic percussion. There is no reason why it would actually sound 'bad' on anything. That's a myth that is perpetrated in recording magazines and forums. I have tested this many times. Any microphone of professional quality, properly positioned, will sound at least good, and not bad, on any sound source.

The CAD M9 vacuum tube microphone - a cheaper alternative to the Neumann M147

But you might also like to consider that a capacitor microphone like the AKG C 414 XL II will pick up the brightness of a steel-strung acoustic guitar, or metallic percussion better. A small-diaphragm capacitor microphone like the Neumann KM 184 will give a very accurate sound, making it ideal for classical music recording. A vacuum tube microphone like the Neumann M147 will give a warm sound, making it good for close-up, intimate vocals. These are all quite expensive microphones, but there are many cheaper alternatives that will still produce pro-quality sounds.

So, a quick summary on which mics to use...

• Dynamic microphone - rock vocals, drums, electric guitar, rock acoustic guitar
• Large diaphragm capacitor microphone - general-purpose vocals, instruments with vibrating metal parts such as steel-strung acoustic guitar, piano, metallic percussion, anything except close-miked individual drums really
• Small diaphragm capacitor microphone - classical music, where accuracy is important
• Vacuum tube microphone - warm vocals and anything requiring a warm sound

That's it. No need for a textbook. You can accomplish 90% of everything you need to do in the studio with these few tips. Of course, as you gain experience you will want to consider finer details. But that's only the 10% that hardly any of the listening public will notice at all. When the time is right, you'll enjoy that 10%. But right now, we need to get you started on a firm foundation.

How to set the microphone in the optimum position

As I said earlier, there is nothing about microphone selection that will lead to a bad result, providing your mic is of professional quality. It is only in fine degrees of extra 'goodness' where you will hear small differences.

However, differences in microphone positioning make huge, enormous, elephant-like changes in sound quality. We are talking here about the difference between top-notch pro sound, and raw amateurism.

Get your priorities right - it isn't about the equipment, it's about your knowledge, experience and skills.

I really could fill a book with information on microphone positioning. But I haven't got room here. However I can, in a couple of paragraphs, give you a technique that will work for any instrument and any vocal. It is surprisingly simple...

Bear in mind that whatever you have read in recording magazines and forums may have been written by people who haven't actually done much recording. They might just be regurgitating something they have read in a book. Which might have been written by someone who hasn't done much recording!

So here goes with the simple technique for individual instruments that always works...

Place the microphone anywhere in the same room as the instrument. Go into your control room or put on your headphones and judge what you hear. (If you can still hear some direct sound through your headphones, this will cloud your judgment. Make a quick recording and play it back so that you can hear clearly.)

The best microphone position should always be found, or at least fine-tuned, by experiment

Now move the microphone. If you move it closer you will capture more direct sound and less reverberation. Take a listen. Does it sound better? If it does, then move the microphone again in the same direction and try again. Basically what you are doing is carrying out a series of experiments that will ultimately lead you to the best possible microphone position for that instrument, in that room.

THIS IS WHAT THEY DO IN THE BEST STUDIOS IN THE WORLD

Don't let anyone kid you that any engineer is so good they can just guess the best microphone position. They can guess a really good position, but there's always a better position that will only be found by experiment.

You now know everything you need to know about miking a single instrument with a single microphone. This works for vocals too, and you should experiment with positions that you don't often see on TV. Placing the mic above the mouth looking down at the mouth is often surprisingly effective. Try it.

I'll have to say that stereo miking, and miking groups of instruments and singers, is more complicated, and you have to learn the basic techniques. But the principle of experimentation still applies.

And experimenting with microphone positioning costs nothing!

Here's an important point...

With few exceptions, you can place your microphone as close as you like to your sound source and not risk damaging the mic. So you can put a microphone an inch (25 mm) from a bass drum head if you like. This is in fact commonly done. The exceptions to this are 1) If your mic is old, it might not be designed for such usage, or have become fragile through age, and 2) If it is a ribbon microphone. These are usually quite fragile and need careful handling.

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The myths and legends of microphone preamplifiers - debunked

Wow, there is such a lot of misinformation written about microphone preamplifiers. You would think that unless you have just the right preamplifier (probably a vintage model that is now hard to obtain), you might as well not bother to record. Well, that's the forums for you.

Microphone preamplifiers fall into two types... transistor and vacuum tube.

Transistor preamplifiers are normally designed to achieve an accurate sound. Transistors work best in circuits that are designed for low distortion, accurate frequency response and low noise. These days, it is easy for a manufacturer to design a transistor preamplifier that works imperceptibly close to limits set by the laws of physics. And cheap too - they no longer need expensive components such as transformers. So if you buy, for example, a budget-price mixing console from a budget manufacturer, it will come equipped with several microphone preamplifiers, usually one per channel, that are FULLY good enough to make professional recordings. There is nothing about such preamps that will make your recordings substandard, unprofessional or unmarketable in any way. So stop worrying and start recording :-)

The Universal Audio Solo/610 vacuum tube preamplifier

Vacuum tube preamplifiers are rather different. Although it is possible to design an accurate vacuum tube preamplifier, it will require more expensive components than a transistor preamplifier, so there isn't really much point. The point is that vacuum tube preamplifiers can be designed in such a way that they produce a 'warm' sound. Not accurate, but pleasing to the ear.

The warmth of a vacuum tube preamplifier is quite easy to hear. But it's not of a degree that will make or break the professional quality of your recordings. It's nice to have, but if you don't have it, don't let that stop you recording while you save up for one. Interestingly, although you can pay $1000 or more for a vacuum tube preamplifier if you want, there are models on the market for less than $50 that sound so nearly as good that only bats can hear the difference.

Setting the gain of your preamplifier

This is very simple, but like many other areas of audio, people do tend to worry needlessly. All you need to do is start with the gain at its minimum setting, then have your performer sing or play into the microphone. Raise the gain until the meter in your DAW is coming within a few segments of the top. It's as easy as that. Just make sure the red light at the top of the meter never comes on.

By the way, if you hear the background noise level increase, don't worry. It only increases in proportion to the signal level. Your recording will have a better signal-to-noise ratio if you optimize the gain instead of leaving it too low.

If you have a vacuum tube preamplifier, then it might have a gain control and a level control. If you want a cleaner signal, keep the gain low and the level high. If you want a warmer signal, set the gain high and the level low. Once again, you are looking for the meter in your DAW to come within a few segments of the top.

Choosing your digital audio workstation (DAW) software

Your choice of DAW is very personal. The chances are that you already have DAW software and you have learned how to record, edit and mix. In all probability you will be better off sticking with what you know than changing to any other DAW.

Having said that, there are 'major' DAWs that are commonly used in professional music making, and other DAWs that are not so commonly used by pros.

This is Pro Tools, but you can make professional-standard recordings with any DAW

So if you are using Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Sonar or Digital Performer, you are using one of the 'major' DAWs used by audio professionals worldwide.

If you are using GarageBand, Reaper, Audacity, Audition or one of several other DAW softwares, then you are using something different to what most audio pros are using.

Now this is important - just because you are using a DAW that isn't commonly used by audio pros doesn't mean that you can't create work of first-class professional quality. It's just that you're putting yourself in a different place to the people who are leading the world of pro music making. To put it another way, if you were a motor racing driver, would you prefer to drive for Ferrari or another top team with a proven track-record of success? Or one of the other teams?

I'm going to throw this particular ball into your court - I've heard good professional work done with just about every DAW software there is, so the choice of DAW is entirely up to you. By the way, it doesn't make any difference whether you use a Windows computer or a Mac - they are both equally capable of professional work.

Working with your performer

I'll talk about the situation where you have a singer laying down the lead vocal of a song.

Firstly, you should be sure that the singer knows the song. Have them rehearse it, singing quietly, until the song sounds natural and flows smoothly. This is what we would call production rather than engineering. It doesn't require any equipment, just patience and good judgment. When you are satisfied that the singer knows the song well enough, it's time to set the microphone, set the gain on your preamp, and record.

Singer Chilli Gold, in a vocal recording session for Audio Masterclass

The way top professionals often record vocals is this... Record the whole vocal all the way through. Make any comments to the singer that you need to, then record it again onto a new track. Repeat this process up to six times. After that, most singers will get tired or bored and not perform at their best.

Now, select the best take overall. Listen carefully to each line of the song, and if there is a better version of the line in one of the other takes, copy and paste it into the main vocal track. What you are doing is selecting the very best parts of each of the six takes.

If when you have done this, you still don't have a perfect vocal track, call the singer back in and 'punch in' the problem areas. This is a very effective way to record and makes sure that you get the best from your singer. It works for other instruments too.

Recording a band

If you are recording a band, then the normal professional way to do this is to break the song down into 'basic tracks' and overdubs. The basic tracks would usually be the drums, bass guitar, rhythm guitar and perhaps a keyboard instrument. You would also record a guide vocal so that the musicians have something to follow. Sometimes the guide vocal turns out to be the best version because the singer is more relaxed!

When recording a band, normally the basic tracks - drums, bass and rhythm guitar - are recorded first (photo of Joe Clancy)

You would normally record several takes of the basic tracks. Just keep on recording while the performance keeps on improving. Professionals wouldn't hesitate to spend a whole day if necessary.

You might find that the beginning of one take sounds better than the others, but the end of another take is better still. If so, then as long as they are at the same tempo, you can edit them together.

Sometimes you might have a really good take, but there is a mistake somewhere. If it's just in, say, the bass guitar, then you can punch-in to correct that mistake.

Once the basic tracks are in the can, you would record the rest of the instruments, lead vocal and background vocals, separately as overdubs.

Equalizing and compressing

When you have finished recording, then it's time to start mixing. But not until you have optimized the individual tracks. Start with the instruments that you consider most important in the mix. If you solo each track in turn, you will hear some that would benefit from improvement.

Equalization plug-in by Waves

Let's say that you are listening to an electric guitar track. Firstly, it probably has too much bass end, that would get mixed up with the bass guitar and bass drum. There is rarely anything useful below 100 Hz or so in anything but a bass instrument. So you would use EQ to improve that. Next, you might hear something unpleasant in the sound. With a mid-range EQ, you would take out some level in whatever band of frequencies that is causing the problem. At this point, you should have the perfect electric guitar. You can repeat this process for the other important instruments. (The less important instruments would only be EQed in the context of listening to the whole mix.)

Compression plug-in by Waves

You can work with compression in the same way. Certain instruments do just sound better compressed - the bass guitar for instance is a perfect candidate for compression. It would take some time to explain everything there is to know about compression, but if you set a ratio of around 3:1, an attack of a few tens of milliseconds, a release of a hundred milliseconds, and a threshold where you can hear the compression kicking in, then you will have made a good start. Always be guided by what you hear. If you like the sound that you are creating, do more of what you are doing to make it even better. If it's not sounding so good, then back off. If compression doesn't seem to improve an instrument at all, then clearly that instrument just doesn't need to be compressed! There are no rules and every recording is different. You always just have to try things out and see what sounds best.

When your most important instruments and vocals are sounding good, strong, at their best with no problems, then you can start mixing. First set the pan controls so that the instruments are spread out like a band in front of you. This applies to electronically created tracks too. Normally the lead vocal, bass drum and bass guitar will be panned center. The snare drum will be panned center too. Mostly, everything else should be panned elsewhere in the stereo image. As you mix, you will continue to balance the 'weight' of sound between the two speakers using the pan controls.

Faders - the most powerful controls in mixing

Next, set the faders to get approximately the balance you want between the instruments. When you have this, you can consider further EQ and compression of individual instruments and vocals, judged against the whole mix. You can judge some of the processing on the individual tracks by themselves. But for fine-tuning, you have to be able to hear what the processing does in the context of the entire mix.

Mixing is an art learned through experience, so your first mixes won't be fully professional in quality. However there is no reason they should have faults of any kind. Don't be satisfied until you have created the best mix you can. When you have done that - move on. Your next mix will be even better.

Here's a tip - many newcomers to home studio recording worry about how loud the vocal should be. A good starting point is to get the instruments balanced the way you want them, then raise the level of the vocal. Raise it until you can just see it starting to show on the meters in the master track, then back off so that the meters hardly change whether or not the vocal is switched in. At this point, if you want to hear the vocal more clearly, add some EQ boost around 3 to 3.5 kHz. You might also put some EQ cut into the rest of the band (if you know how to buss tracks through an aux track, then this will be very easy to do). Remember that these are just starting points. You have to experiment and judge the best settings for yourself.

By the way, a fully professional mix engineer will spend a whole day on one song, and then tweak it again the next morning. That's how much care and attention the pros put into their work.

Improve your mix still further with mastering

Once you have created the very best mix you can, you can improve it still further with mastering. In mastering, you work on an already-stereo file and creatively apply equalization and compression so that it can compare well with professionally-recorded commercial releases.

Mastering plug-in by Slate Digital

If you listen to tracks by different bands or artists, say on a compilation CD or on the radio, you may notice that they all tend to have a similar balance of frequencies. And if you play a track you have recorded and mixed in your home recording studio, it sounds bassier, less bassy, toppier or less toppy. Or perhaps there is a difference in the mid-frequencies. In mastering, you will use EQ to correct this. The balance of frequencies in commercial releases tends to be similar because that is what, over time, professional mastering engineers have found that the public wants. Giving the public what it wants is always a good thing to do :-)

The purpose of compression in mastering is to increase the subjective loudness of the mix. Since this is always done in commercial releases these days, you need to do it too. This process combines compression, limiting, and often a special process of 'multiband compression' where the audio is split up into several bands of frequencies that are compressed separately. The object is to create a strong, powerful sound, but without it verging on becoming unpleasant. The processes used in mastering are powerful and have to be used with care to create a good strong sound that is pleasant, not edgy, to listen to.

What else would you like to know?

I am trying to make this page the easiest-to-follow, most straightforward, most effective guide to professional recording that there is, anywhere. If there is anything else you would like to know, or anything that I could explain more clearly to you, please do not hesitate to ask. My e-mail address is david.mellor@audiomasterclass.com and I can normally respond within one or two days.

Good luck with your recording!

David Mellor
Course Director, Audio Masterclass

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