Recording Engineer School

Yamaha DAW

Let’s look at some different scenarios:

If you will be recording masters for local bands then you will need at least a mid-sized DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) which has about a dozen input channels.

Plus about ten microphones of various kinds along with mic stands and headphones for all the musicians.

You will require a much larger space than if the studio were just for yourself. So where will the studio be located? Live drums are very loud.

Equipment breaks down. Consider technical support. Is it readily available in your neighborhood or country? If not, then stay away from older or used equipment.

A maintenance engineer may be difficult to locate which could result in a loss of income when your studio malfunctions. Many clients in this business are not famous for their patience or even loyalty. The show must go on!

If you intend allowing other engineers to run sessions in your studio then your set-up and interfacing should adhere to industry protocol. Otherwise, they will have difficulty operating it and frequently interrupt your siesta to ask “Where are the inputs to the restrooms?”

If you will be recording music for videos and motion pictures and/or advertising jingles for radio or television, a digital audio workstation is the preferred choice of professionals in this business.

Producers and advertising agency people are renowned for changing their minds at the eleventh hour, so revisions and edits on a DAW can be made very quickly without having to resort to re-recording the whole piece from scratch.

Spoken word recording is becoming big deal to the cute Kindle and its family of book-reading gizmos. This requires a far simpler set-up. A much smaller mixer, less tracks on the recorder, minimal processing equipment, but a pair of really good condenser microphones.

Plus an extremely quiet recording booth or room with little or no sound reflection.

If you have high ambitions and want to record all of the above, plus superstars, now we’re talking big bucks. A world class state-of-the-art recording studio can cost upwards of a $250,000. Some companies have invested over $10 million in their facility.

Simply stated, they contain everything from 96 channel recording consoles to 48 track recording machines and a couple of hundred microphones, not to mention jacuzzis, pool tables, pinball machines and a private golf course in the grounds.

You would be wise to use the services of a professional studio designer and audio consultant before embarking upon such a venture.

An enterprise such as this needs to comply with a maze of laws, building codes, taxes and bureaucratic red tape. Are you prepared to deal with that?

Then there’s the business of live sound. Do you intend taking your equipment on the road to record live performances in clubs etc? If so, you’ll need a truck and transportation containers plus excessive lengths of cabling to meet the demands of different sized stages.

And let us repeat this all-important question . . . what is your anticipated financial budget? You must make a list for all equipment plus studio construction and add up the anticipated sum.

Now double it! That’s right — DOUBLE IT! Your projections will assuredly be wrong. Possibly very wrong. Do you still really want to build a studio?

We have talked about the requirements for various applications and environments. Once you decide which avenue you intend to pursue, make sure all your equipment is of virtually identical quality within that level. One weak link in the chain will destroy the higher quality that all the other pieces give. (27 more pages in the course) Click here to check out our webpage for a basic mid-priced home-studio set-up with which you could create pro-quality recordings. (There are 28 more pages on this subject in your course).