good recordings on a budget

Improve The Quality Of The Audio You Record At Home – Tip 3

April 23, 2014 by Ken 6 Comments

For the past 3 weeks, we’ve been posting videos and articles that show you how to dramatically improve the quality of the audio you record in your home studio – especially voice recordings.
In week 1, we learned the fastest and cheapest, yet hugely effective tip of simply getting your mouth closer to the mic. Most folks record with the mic 18 inches away from their lips. But getting up close and personal at about 3 inches makes a LOT of difference.
http://homebrewaudio.wistia.com/medias/64mk4qe4vq?embedType=seo&videoWidth=640
Last week we talked about how important it is – if you are recording in a converted bedroom with no acoustic treatment (this describes a vast majority of us) – to use a cardioid mic, or the cardioid setting on a multi-pattern mic. This week’s tip is another, just like the previous ones, that will not require you to build or buy anything.

Record As Loud As Possible Without Distorting

Whether you’re recording through an audio interface, a USB microphone, or a PC mic plugged directly into your computer’s built-in sound card, you will be able to control the level of the incoming audio. With PC mics and USB mics that have no volume control knob (some USB mics, such as the Blue Yeti, do have a control on the side), you can use your computer’s operating system to control the recording level. The video above shows you how to do this in Windows. The process is similar with a Mac. Just about all audio interface hardware units have some sort of input level control.
So as you’ll see (and hear) in the video, if you record with too low a level (usually you’ll see tiny wave forms if this happens), you’ll want to “turn it up.” But doing that ALSO turns up the ambient noise. Record too loud though, and you’ll distort, which is really nasty-sounding. The trick is to find a sweet spot where you record JUST loud enough that your loudest bit of audio is just barely below the point where distortion would happen. When you record at this correct level, you won’t have much of a need, if any, to turn it up. So you keep the noise to a minimum. Check out the video for examples of all the scenarios.
Make sure you don’t miss any of the tips in this series. Put your email into the form below and get not only the rest of this series as it rolls out, but also the first 8 videos in our tutorial course “The Newbies Guide To Audio Recording Awesomeness 1: The Basics With Audacity.” This course shows you how to set up and start using your home recording studio for a budget of about five bucks (or less) in about 30 minutes.

We will not spam you with e-mails! We typically don’t send more than one message per week, and each of those will only be intended to help you make better audio recordings in your home studio.

Home Recording Studio Starter Bundle

January 3, 2014 by Ken 6 Comments

Focurite-Solo-Home-Recording-Starter-Kit — Home Recording Starter Kit

In partnership with B&H Photo-Video-Audio, we have put together a home recording equipment bundle – Home Recording Starter Kit.
[Update: Since Avid discontinued the Fast Track, we replaced the interface in this kit with the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2].
I designed this bundle with the primary goal of containing the bare minimum needed, at the lowest cost, to produce professional quality audio from just a regular computer in your home. There are a number of benefits to purchasing gear like this in bundles. It is convenient to not have to hunt and peck for each item when shopping – you just have to buy the one product. Also, you save money buying bundles.
The home recording starter kit – is primarily for people who want to record voice-overs, such as video narrations, podcasts, radio and TV ads, audio books, etc. It comes with a large-diaphragm condenser mic, great for voice recording but also a terrific all-around microphone. You then also get a pop-screen (to avoid “p-pops” when recording vocals), an XLR mic cable, a boom mic stand, closed-back headphones, and an audio interface (which comes with Ableton Live Lite 8 software). This type of set-up – a standard (not USB) condenser microphone plugged into an audio interface box which is plugged into the computer – is the foundation for high-end professional audio recording. I call it home studio configuration 2. Configuration 1 is a microphone (pc mic or USB) plugged directly into a computer. This home recording starter kit is $234.95. If you were to purchase each item individually it would cost you$282.88. So you save about $47 by purchasing the bundle!
If you find Ableton Live Lite 8 software isn’t right for you (it tends to be more for musicians than voice-over or basic recording), I highly recommend upgrading to Reaper software, which I find much more intuitive and powerful.
Here are the details of the package:

The Home Recording Starter Bundle ($259.95)

Focusrite Scarlett Solo – Portable USB Audio Interface
Pearstone 3-Pin XLR Male to 3-Pin XLR Female Audio Cable (10′)
Auray MS-5230F Tripod Microphone Stand with Fixed Boom
Audio-TechnicaAT2020 Condenser Microphone
Polsen HPC-A30 Closed-Back Studio Monitor Headphones

Top Notch Small Studio For Recording And Mixing A Band

December 7, 2013 by Ken 1 Comment

Focusrite-Control-2802 control surface — Focusrite Control 2802 control surface

Someone recently asked for advice about gear to record her all-girl heavy rock band. She specified a budget of about $6,200 and asked for recommendations for:

A microphone ideal for female voices
A mixer for a small but contemporary recording studio
A pair of active loudspeakers for monitors

First, it is important to point out that specific people and specific microphones may or may not make a good match. I once recorded a female singer who sounded fantastic through my AKG C3000. But my wife’s voice does not sound very good through that mic. For my wife, the Audio-Technica AT2035 sounds great, as does the Rode NT2-A. So you really need to try different vocal mics before you buy, if you can. A lot of music stores will let you try them out in the store at least. Some may even let you try them at home. Of course you can always rent if you must. Anyway, because it worked so well on several voices, not just my wife’s, I recommended the Audio-Technica AT2035 for the mic, which costs $125.
Normally, I don’t recommend a mixer in a home recording studio. They can cause more trouble than they are worth. See Why You Should Not Use A Mixer In Your Home Recording Studio for why I say this. However, it sounded like she really wanted a control surface for recording and mixing using a digital audio workstation (DAW) recording program like the industry-standard Pro Tools (current version as of this writing is Pro Tools 11). This will act like a mixer, but what it really does is allow you to control the knobs and sliders in your DAW with actual, physical knobs and sliders – which is what a “control surface” is, versus a “mixer”). Of course you can mix, but also you can do so much more with the unit I recommended, which is a Focusrite Control 2802. Here is a great video demonstrating it:

The Focusrite Control 2802 costs about $3,500.

She will also need a recording interface, which has analog-to-digital converters as well as mic preamps. And she’ll need at least 8 mic inputs for her band. So I recommended the M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8R for this. I also double-checked to ensure that the Fast Track Ultra 8R is officially supported as a Pro Tools 11 interface and it is. You can see all the supported interface units here. This interface costs $400.
The final piece of the equation was a pair of active monitor speakers. My recommendation here was the KRK RoKit 6 G2 Studio Monitors Bundle. This bundle consists of a pair of KRK RoKit 6 G2 68-watt 6″ two-way active nearfield monitors, along with stands for the speakers and cables. This bundle costs $347 at B&H.

The total cost of the above excellent small studio for recording a rock band is $4,371.58, which saves her $1,828.42. Not too shabby.
I should point out that in order to record the entire band at once, she’ll need a few more mics. So she can use that surplus in the budget for that;).

Recording In A Poor Room

July 23, 2013 by Ken Leave a Comment

Microphone in Acoustic Booth I just read an article offering tips on how to record good audio if you are stuck doing it in a poor room. My definition of a poor room is a rectangular room, usually a converted bedroom in your house. By definition a rectangular is poor because the way sound bounces around in one of those, you tend to get dead zones where certain frequencies are cancelled out, and other areas where certain frequencies get artificially boosted. Those things make it worse for listening (important for mixing and mastering) than for recording, really. Probably the worst thing for recording is to have bare walls, ceiling and floors that are parallel, which make for lots of echos and reverb (yeah, technically the same thing – shh!), which you don’t want in your recordings.
We already have an article on this topic here – How to Build a Home Recording Studio: Part 2 – Four Tips For Preventing Noise, and actually here as well – Recording Vocals In a Bedroom Studio. Preventing noise is really what it’s all about. And room echo is one category of noise.

Mattress

The tips in the article I mentioned started out by saying to use a mattress BEHIND the person recording (assumption was that you are recording vocals). The logic was that the voice would bounce off the wall behind the mic, reflect again behind the vocalist, bounce off THAT wall, and then bounce back into the sensitive end of the mic. So if the mattress is behind the vocalist, the reflection off the front wall will be trapped by the mattress and not be able to bounce off the back wall to enter the sensitive side of the mic. OK, maybe. But if you put the mattress in front of the vocalist, behind the mic, the voice won’t reach the front wall, so there will be nothing to bounce off the back wall. The real truth is that it will depend on your vocalist, your room, and what kind of mattress. So if you decide to try the mattress method. Be sure to try it both ways. Heck, why not try both. If you have multiple mattresses, you could build your own mattress vocal booth.

Add Plush Furniture

The next tip from that article is to add soft, plush furniture, which is actually sort of an extension of the mattress idea, which is to have more things to absorb the sound, the logic probably being that what gets absorbed won’t be able to bounce off the walls. Again, this may or may not work. Sort of related to this is something I did once. We had a closet pole from which hung several wool cloaks (part of our medieval re-creation hobby). I positioned myself completely surrounded – almost covered – in wool cloaks. That eliminated outside noise and echo.

Use Dynamic Microphones

I strongly disagree with this one as a top tip for reducing noise. While it is true that dynamic mics offer less sensitivity than studio condensers, they also are usually (until you get into mics costing well over $300) not good enough for things like voice-over recording or lead vocals for music. The author states that the trade-off is worth it. Trust me on this one. Unless you are using one of the expensive dynamics, no it isn’t. I do voice-over work AND sing lead vocals, and I do it in a bedroom! See my articles above for the countermeasures I use. It is VERY possible to do it in a poor room. No, it isn’t ideal, but it definitely CAN be done. Now before I start getting hate mail from owners of really good dynamic mics, let me say that it is ALSO possible to get excellent vocal sound from certain dynamic mics, such as the Electro-Voice RE20 and the Shure SM7b. But these mics are $449 and $349, respectively. So at the very least, I would qualify this particular tip by saying “if you can afford it, try a really good dynamic mic to help reduce room noise.” But if you are on a budget, you can get more bang for your buck with a large-diaphragm condenser mic, which can act as a great all-around mic. The two dynamics I mentioned are pretty much designed for vocal broadcast – for radio, podcast, voice-over, etc. But I highly recommend renting or borrowing one of these mics before buying, as it may not help much, if at all, with your particular room.

Use Close-Miking

This one I absolutely agree with. It’s in my list of the top things to do. In fact, I would say it should be the first thing you try. By getting your lips very close to the mic – like 2-to-4 inches – you help to sort of “crowd out” the other types of noise. Also, if you have a mic that has a cardioid pick-up pattern, close-miking can give you increased low-frequency response, which can be pleasing for voice-overs.
Like so many things in audio recording, there are very few rules that apply to everyone and every space. Try these things out and see what works best for your voice, your room, and your budget.
Happy recording!

Recording Vocals In a Bedroom Studio

June 12, 2013 by Ken Leave a Comment

Do you record vocals in a bedroom? Most folks who record in a home recording studio do so in a converted bedroom (or maybe not even converted – if you sleep in there too, I mean). Bedrooms are notoriously rectangular. I know, that’s a profound observation , right? Well, the reason I point it out is that rectangles (and a square is a rectangle too, which you should remember from your math classes) have opposite sides that are equal and parallel. That means sound will bounce around in a very predictable and interfering way, creating multiples and even nulls at certain frequencies. In English, this means that what you hear in rooms like this will NOT be a good representation of the REAL sound. Certain frequencies will be hyped and others will be barely audible or even missing entirely (wave mechanics is pretty interesting and very applicable to audio – I’m talking about destructive and constructive interference here, btw).

Why bedrooms can also sound bad while recording

So that is the main reason why having a studio in a bedroom can be problematic. But that stuff applies mainly to mixing and mastering, where you’re more concerned with what you hear. What about sound sources like vocals? How does a rectangular room affect the input of sound into a recording? The biggest problem is echo/reverb. You notice this most, perhaps, when someone records a video and the person speaking in the video is several feet away from the camera. It sounds all echo-y, right? And not very professional.

Here are some ways to fix the problem

Well you can fix that, or minimize it greatly, by simply getting closer to the microphone. I recommend just a few inches if possible, but things can still be improved greatly by having a mic just a foot or two away. You can hear and see the dramatic difference of this in video I made for the post How To Get Good Audio On Your Videos. [update: We also posted a 6-part series to help with this, which you can access here: Improve The Quality Of The Audio You Record At Home]

But there are other things you can do to get better sound on vocals recorded in a bedroom. I detailed them all in my post How to Build a Home Recording Studio: Part 2 – Four Tips For Preventing Noise. Since preventing noise of any kind (background noise from computers, lawnmowers, barking dogs, the TV downstairs, echo, microphone self-noise, etc.) is one of the the primary goals of recording good audio, the four tips in that post should help a lot, regardless of what kind of mic you use.

What about recording with reverb?

But there is one aspect I had not thought much about, which is singing. Once you are avoiding as much noise as possible while recording, is there anything about recording ind a bedroom that can still impart negative stuff on your voice recording? I recently read an article that suggested that bedrooms make your vocals sound “flat.” That’s not in the musical sense of being off-pitch, or in the frequency sense of being equally loud across the spectrum. The article used the term “flat” to mean boring or uncolored in any way by any pleasant reflections or natural ambiance. OK, I can buy into that. A lot of the best commercial studios have recording spaces that flatter a vocal with the natural reverb and spacious sound. But the author stated that one way to fix that was to apply a reverb effect BOTH while recording the vocalist, AND after the fact in the mix.
As a singer who used to record with reverb, I must strongly disagree that letting a singer hear their voice in the headphones with reverb improves their performance – at least not for everybody. I found that when I monitored my voice with reverb while singing, I was more likely to be off-pitch more often. It wasn’t until I made the decision to always record dry and apply the reverb (if any) only to the recording in the mix that I was able to get the most accurate pitch down on tape (yeah, back in the old days;)). It makes sense. Reverb may sound nice, but it does blur things a bit, giving you a nice sound maybe, but not an accurate one. You may be really happy while you’re singing, but then be horrified by the result. That’s how it was with me anyway. I admit that for some, it may help them relax and feel better while recording, which may be a good thing. But I think you should try to record without any reverb at all if possible. Adding it in the mix will help get rid of any “flat-ness” a bedroom may impart.
I hope all of those tips will help you get a much more professional result when recording vocals in a bedroom.
Cheers,
Ken