Equipping A Home Studio, Part 1

PART 1: THE BASICS. In the first part of this new series, David Mellor gives his personal slant on creating a studio that will stay with you as your recording skills and budget improve. This is the first article in a four‑part series.

Getting the most 'bang for the buck', as the US military put it, is the top priority of the home studio buyer. Few of us have money to burn and we want equipment that will help us make the most of our talent and set us on the road to success. But often people get the idea that there is such a thing as the perfect studio, and endlessly change and reconfigure their equipment in a hopeless quest for something that doesn't exist. In this series I'm going to tell you how I think you might go about equipping a studio. (I'm sure you have some gear already, so pick and choose the bits that interest you from what I say.) But more than that, I intend to make sure you're on the right track, so that you really do get the best out of your studio, and so that, whatever your musical ambitions are, you stand the best chance of achieving them.

Home Studio Golden Rules

1. Never sell.

2. Never upgrade.

Shocked? There is an incredible market in second‑hand music and recording equipment and many people, for whatever reason, find the need to sell their gear. But why are they selling it? Is it worn out? Have they exhausted its possibilities? Have they taken up gardening? Did they buy the wrong thing in the first place? And how much are they going to lose on the deal? Golden Rule Number 1 is to buy only those things that you can use until they wear out. Buy a good mic, new or second‑hand, and it will last you 20 years — literally. Buy a mediocre mic and it will always be mediocre, even on the day you buy it. Buy a good keyboard and eventually it will become a classic, and even in the interim period when it appears to have been superseded by newer models, it will still be as good as when you bought it — providing that it's well maintained, of course. Golden Rule Number 1 leads to Number 2: never upgrade. If you bought the right thing in the first place, why should you have to trade it in to upgrade to something better? Hang on to it and buy something else when you have the money. Add to your earlier purchases rather than replacing them, so that you're building up your facility and it's getting better all the time. Habitual upgraders may have a few of the latest models, but for the same amount of hard‑earned cash, your studio will be more comprehensively equipped. And these days the best is not necessarily the most expensive.

Of course, where there's a rule, there's an exception — and this rule is no exception. There is one high‑value item which must be upgraded as you progress. You will only need one, and almost certainly you won't be able to afford the best that is available at the outset of your home studio career. This is the mixing console. Everything else, including the multitrack recorder, you should use until it wears out. That way you get the biggest bang for the buck rather than the person who buys your equipment from you second‑hand. You could look for further exceptions, but don't bother — keep your mind on the music, like the pros do.

The Coolest Sounds Around

To make a great recording, you need great sounds. Your studio will need great mics, great keyboards and modules, and a brilliant sampler. Don't forget that the complete home studio these days has a pair of record decks and a DJ‑style mixer. I have to draw the line somewhere, so I won't be considering guitars, drums and other instruments, but the golden rules apply there too.

Let's look at the mic first, since vocals are the most important part of any recording, and even if you only do instrumental tracks, you'll still need a mic for sampling from acoustic sources. There are two ways you can approach the choice of microphones and other equipment. The first and safest is to look at what the pros use. If a successful engineer or producer uses a particular mic, then that mic probably has success written all the way through it like a stick of rock. Buy it! On the other hand, what is successful now may not always be successful tomorrow, so you might like to choose a less well‑known model in the hope that it gives you an advantage that few others yet have. I would say play safe with your first few mics. You're always going to keep them — remember? — and they will always turn in an excellent performance for you. But when you have a small but solid collection, be a bit more outrageous. Take a test drive so that you know what you're getting, and look for a mic with character. Pro mics start at around the £100 mark, so we're not talking massive amounts here. But a really good large‑diaphragm capacitor vocal mic, of the kind often seen in pro studios, will cost many times that sum. Even so, the major manufacturers are turning out good, solid middle‑of‑the‑range mics at reasonable prices. They will do an excellent job now, and you'll still find uses for them even when you can afford the top models.

Keyboards And Modules

I wonder whether a keyboardless studio is possible these days? Every studio needs at least one, and even if you can't play too well yourself, you can always get someone in who can. The major keyboard manufacturers change their models often, and what today is the sleekest, sexiest, most desirable thing around will be sold off at a knock‑down price in two years time. But don't worry. Buy the best and aim to develop a lasting relationship with it. You may get bored with it after a few months — that's relationships for you — but in the long term you'll find that you learn how to get more out of it, and achieve far more satisfaction, than those who continue to play the field (that's relationships for you too!).

I would definitely advise you only to consider manufacturers' standard top‑of‑the‑range models. You don't need an 88‑note piano‑style keyboard or wooden case (I'm sure you know if you have a special requirement for these features). Just the bog‑standard top of the range model. If you can't afford it, you might consider buying a lesser model, but look for something that you can live with and, as I said, don't plan on trading up later, because you'll lose out financially. Get the top of another manufacturer's range when you are able to. If you're buying your first keyboard, there are certain points you need to bear in mind. The safe option is to buy a keyboard with a good range of basic sounds — pianos, strings, basses, drums, and so on. These basic sounds are used all the time, and if you don't have them, you'll wish you did. Other keyboards which produce more specialised sounds and not the basics are best left for your second purchase. Of course, if you really want to be innovative, the most common sounds are best left alone, so feel free to ignore my advice — I wouldn't like to see everyone taking the safe option just because I said so.

You should buy a keyboard on the strength of the sounds it produces. Features such as editing facilities and number of outputs are also significant, but you will get more value out of a keyboard with great sounds that you can access easily, than one that sounds a bit iffy, yet has great editing facilities and squillions of outputs. I mention outputs because many users want to set up a MIDI‑sequenced home studio rather than one with a multitrack recorder. I'll tell you why this is a mistake later in this series, but for now I'll say that even if a keyboard has multiple outputs, they may be fiddly to use, and you may not be able to apply effects individually to a mix of programs. If I thought a keyboard sounded great, I would buy it even if it only had one stereo output. (In fact, I would buy it even if it only had a mono output, and I would use it with external effects!)

A useful alternative to a standard keyboard is a MIDI master keyboard and sound module, or modules. A master keyboard, sometimes called a mother keyboard, has no sounds of its own but is simply a controller. Some of these, if you look around, can be amazingly cheap and they will do their job effectively, if sometimes not elegantly. Of course you get what you pay for, and a top‑of‑the‑range master keyboard should last you a lifetime — plus it has no sounds of its own to go out of date, as one SOS advertiser has noted. Multitimbral modules can be extremely good value for money, and useful either in a multitrack studio or MIDI‑sequenced setup.

The Sampler

Every studio needs a sampler. Repeat after me...

The sampler is simply the most versatile instrument ever invented and it is limited only by the sounds you can find to put in it. Samplers are amazingly good value these days, and even the lower models in a range can perform as well as the more expensive items. Select a sampler on the basis of its control and editing features. If you plan simply to load in samples and programs from CD‑ROM (few samplers can't work with a CD‑ROM these days), a basic model may be all you require. If, however, you plan to create your own samples and programs, you need a wider range of features, and proper access to them. Unlike keyboards, where I feel that extra outputs often aren't worth the bother, you can't have too many outputs on a sampler, and usually they are almost as easy to use as the main stereo outputs. Maybe keyboard manufacturers should buy a sampler and take it apart so they can see how it should be done.

Buy only those things that you can use until they wear out. Buy a good mic and it will last you 20 years — literally. Buy a mediocre mic and it will always be mediocre, even on the day you buy it.

The reason why your sampler needs extra outputs is that with a decent memory expansion (16Mb is good, 32 is better) you can load up a variety of completely different sounds. You will almost certainly want to process these individually through your mixing console, and if sampling is the most important part of your work, this will be essential. When it comes to buying a CD‑ROM drive, take to heart the advice of the manufacturer of your sampler, because not all models of CD‑ROM drive work with every sampler, so the super‑terrific 24x speed drive you sourced from an ad in the computer press may turn out to be a non‑starter, if you're not careful.

You'll also need a means of storing your samples. I can see a trend emerging for samplers to have internal bulk storage. You can store on floppy disk, but you need a lot of disks and a lot of patience to store 32Mb on floppy — and then re‑load it later. The choice, in essence, comes down to removable magnetic hard disks or optical disks. You could have a fixed hard disk, but it isn't as versatile. The difference between magnetic hard disks and opticals is price — an optical drive is more expensive, but the disks themselves are cheaper, so you'll save money in the long run. Optical disks are also slower than magnetic hard disks, but the new LIMDOW (Light Intensity Modulation Direct OverWrite) types promise to up the ante. Oddly enough, you may be better off with a smaller capacity drive rather than a larger one. For one thing, your sampler may only be able to format a disk to a certain size and much of its capacity may be wasted. For another, having too much data on one disk makes it more difficult to organise, and if the disk becomes corrupted you may lose your entire sample library!

I should mention sample CDs and CD‑ROMs. Sample CDs are in audio format and you can play them on your ordinary CD player. This is fine for drum loops, because you can easily listen for the section you want, and you're probably only going to make a single sample program, which is dead easy. But if you want the sound of an orchestra, you really do need the CD‑ROM version, which loads up in a few seconds. The alternative may be hours or even days of programming. Bear in mind that sample CD‑ROMs come in different versions for different samplers. Although one sampler may be able to load samples and programs in a different manufacturer's format, don't expect them to sound right without a little tweaking, and sometimes a lot of tweaking.

All Hands On Decks

Record players, or 'decks', as they are known in the business, are not typical Sound On Sound territory, but they have become an important musical instrument in their own right. There's quite a mythology around decks and DJs, and it's often thought by the public that DJs create music on their twin decks. What some DJs can achieve with a pair of decks, and a special DJ mixer that incorporates a sideways‑operating crossfader to switch between the two, is nothing short of amazing, but they are heavily reliant on their source material — the white label records that are made in the studio and pressed in small quantities, and acetates or dub plates, copies of which are individually cut. In the studio, the source sounds from which the music is built are often taken from vinyl, so you need at least one deck in your studio. Since the vinyl will often come from a DJ's record collection, why not go the whole way and have the proper twin decks and mixer ready? Don't forget that you need copyright clearance for samples before release. MCPS (0181 664 4400) can help with this.

A DJ turntable needs to be direct drive, which means that there is no belt or idler wheel between the motor and the turntable — the turntable is effectively part of the motor. It also needs to be tough enough to take a few knocks — hi‑fi turntables need not apply. The cartridge and stylus need to be especially tough to withstand back‑cueing and scratching. The major manufacturers have specialist models in their ranges.

As I said earlier, a DJ mixer is different to a recording mixer. The market in DJ mixers is very fluid and it would be difficult to recommend a particular model, but look for smoothness of operation of the crossfader. That will indicate the overall quality. If the crossfader can be replaced easily — they get a fair bit of abuse — that's a bonus. Transformer buttons and kill switches allow the DJ to interact with the music from the twin decks in real time, in a way that would be difficult to replicate with traditional studio techniques.

Next month, computers in the studio.