Home Studios?

[ablethevoice]

I've seen the threads by other members asking what instruments we all have in our homes, and the one asking to see "our axes", (specifically guitars) but I'm curious:
How many of you actually have real, full-function home studios? What kind of gear do they consist of? What do you use it for?

I'll start. My humble studio is actually optimized for voiceover work. I'm using the RatShack top of the line (and honestly, that ain't saying much) dynamic mic (apx $55) and a discontinued RatShack 3 ch stereo mixer I bought new in box also for $50 (because it was discontinued for an identical model with different cosmetics). My recording is done with Cool Edit Pro v 1.2. I also have (I know I've mentioned this before but anyway...) an Ensoniq ESQ1 and an Ensoniq Halo (aka the E-Mu PK6), the Arturia virtual versions of the Minimoog, Moog Modular, Arp 2600 and Yamaha CS 80. For monitoring/listening, I use the many-times-aforementioned BPC Kenwood Spectrum 1050AX system. Not the awesome vintage quality stuff most of you folks have (hey! Gimme a chance! I've only recently come to realize the true superiority of vintage gear) but the Kenny system sounds pretty darn good - especially with no other system to A/B it against.

What with the bottom falling out from under our economy, my VO work is practically nil - not good for my wallet, but it does leave me with a lot more time to compose and record my own music which I'd like one day to perhaps have used as a score in an indy sci-fi or horror film. Even in the absence of any film producer contacting me to score his next great masterpiece, I'll continue to compose and record for my own pleasure.:yes:



What about you guys/ladies? What kind of studio do you operate? And what do you do with it?

PIC1 The mixer
PIC2 The Kenwood
PIC3 The keys

 

[x_25]

:scratch2: My studio is more of a portable affair. I drag it to all my friends houses for recording their bands (and mine in my friends garage).

I use a Behringer Xenyx 1622FX (I know its a PA mixer, but it is all I could afford/get my hands on) a Behringer USB sound card, 5x Nady StarPower SP-1 mics, and my laptop. Sound reinforcement is done via an Adcom GFA-1A and some car kickers. It isn't prity but it gets the job done. (sorry no pictures at the moment)

 

[ablethevoice]

Sounds like a tight little rig you got there. I run CEP on a 4 yr old desktop PC so mine isn't too terribly portable, but that's OK with me.

 

[x_25]

Sounds like a tight little rig you got there. I run CEP on a 4 yr old desktop PC so mine isn't too terribly portable, but that's OK with me.

I use all free software. A combination of The Krystal Audio Engine and Audacity to do all my editing and mixing. In total the setup has cost me about $250.

 

[Darkspeed]

Mostly "in the box type" home studio here. I sequence my music with a little program called Making Waves using Waves plug-ins. Edit and mix in Cool Edit Pro. Use a little Wavelab 5 here and there. On my Mac I use Peak to record and Audacity or Ableton as well, depending on the situation. I monitor with my Cyrus 2 amp and Stark Designs Sr 2 speakers or Wharfedale Linton 3 speakers. I really would like to get a couple Apex 420 mics or some other affordable large diaphragm condenser soon for recording vocals and other general recording duties as well as a nice I/O like a smaller MOTU or maybe the Focusrite Saffire (sweeet). But for now I'm pretty bare bones, no outboard gear really. Oh yeah and my drum kit and my brother's guitar rig is in my studio too. You'd be surprised at how nice of a drum recording I get with just the Mac's internal mic...The thing is super sensitive. And with Peak you can record thru the plug-ins which helps you not clip on the input. There you are..... North End Productions studio. Many hours logged. Later.

 

[monkeyking]

My main recording toy is the VS88oEX from Roland. Bought it when they first came out but now they're really cheap. 8 track digital with tons of flexibility and effects and it's very intuitive for a knob and fader guy like me. I've used it to record my own stuff and make demos for bands I've played in.

I use an ancient soundcraft 24 channel, 8 bus mixer for submixing groups. And of course, lots of mics, Shure 58's, 57's, Unisphere 1's, Behringer B-1 (excellent large diaphragm condenser for the money), really old EV instrument mics, Roland DR20's, and probably some others too. I also sometimes use my Pioneer Rt-1050 Reel to Reel for acoustic/vocal stuff as it has really warm and clean mic pre-amps.

I'm too lazy for much post-recording work so it's mostly amps and instruments and mics to get the sound I want on the way in. There's an unbelievable amount of reasonably priced quality recording gear available these days.

 

[the-real-mandak]

I'm using the RatShack top of the line (and honestly, that ain't saying much) dynamic mic (apx $55) and a discontinued RatShack 3 ch stereo mixer I bought new in box also for $50 (because it was discontinued for an identical model with different cosmetics).

Try to get hold of an Audio-Technica ATM33a, it is now discontinued but you can still find them around. It is properly one of the best low price condenser mics around and more important it can run on a 1,5V battery instad of 48V phantom power. It will clear up you're recording quite a bit and make the daly work much more easy.

http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/59839e17c695dade/index.html

 

[ic-racer]

Pretty modest setup, everything in a single rack:
Mackie 16 track mixer
Roland GP-100 guitar preamp
Digitech rack delay
Sony Pro Audio rack minidisk recorder
Fostex rack spring reverb
DBX compressor
Optimus 250 power amp
Gemini PA speakers (a little on the crummy side but FREE to me)
Tascam 125 and Sure SM57 mics

As you can see, no MIDI gear. A few months ago I got off the MIDI/Electronics/Computer/Keyboard merry-go-round and disconnected everything so that I could just concentrate more on my guitar playing.

What I am now doing is locating public domain backing tracks off the internet and making recordings with them, rather than programming the drums and keyboards in to MIDI myself.

 

[Fred Sanford]

I've had some semblance of a studio in all of my homes since about 1985. I'm still assembling my current one from a move last year. It took 30 trips in my van to move all of the AV & music gear, it all ended up piled high to the ceiling with a small path down the middle- one side of each of the rooms had stuff with magnets (speakers) and the other side had stuff that didn't play nice with magnets (tapes/videos/hard drives/CRT TVs/etc.).

It's finally an inhabitable space, but there's still lots of wiring to go. I'll have a 9-channel snake from drums to mixer, a 12-channel snake from the main room to the mixer, and there's a 16-channel that I might keep loose for live gigs. I also have another snake just for headphones. Mic cable is also being run around the house, so most rooms will have a jack on the wall with 2 XLRs and 2 headphone jacks. Lots of comfy iso booths that way.

What this used to function as (in my old houses in NY) was a way to get ideas & arrangements onto tape, as well as recording parties or the weekly jam sessions we had. The only times I'd do serious recording here was to put 7 tracks of drums along with a scratch band track, which we'd then bring to a friend's studio and build a song from with his ADATs and later ProTools. I have done a few complete demos here that came out well, though. Plan is to upgrade to 24-track digital some time soon, after I've archived all the analog stuff.

Equipment list is too long to type out, there's a lot of gear here. Quick tour:

Mixers:

Carvin MX1644
EV BK-1642
Tascam M50
...and another EV, a Rane, a Q-Mix, and something else.

Mics:

Shure SM58s/SM57s/55Ss/545s/lots of others
EV RE15s/RE16/664/676/others
Audio Technica Pro4Ls
AKG D112/D58/C418s/C419/others
Crown PZMs
...others I can't remember.

Recording decks:

Tascam 238 8-tracks (one in the control room desk, one in a road case for remotes or transfer to other studios)
Teac 244 4-track (control room)
Tascam 112 MKII (control room)
Tascam 202 MKIII (live PA systems)
Panasonic SV-3700 DAT (control room)
Alesis MasterLink ML-9600 Master Disk Recorder (control room)

Monitoring:

Yamaha P2100 power amps (x 4, control room & playback monitors, spare)
JBL/Urei 6260 power amp (vocal monitors)
Crown DC300A (vocal monitors)
JBL TR225s (vocal monitors)
Ramsa WSA-80 (vocal monitor)
EV wedge (vocal monitor)
JBL L110s (control room monitors)
JBL L100As (two pair, main room playback, workshop playback)
M&K V3B sub (control room monitors)

...plus loads of guitars, basses, amps, speakers, drums, drum machines, cymbals, percussion, keyboards, FX, patch bays, road cases, mic stands, crap, crap, crap, and more crap...the main studio room also has a nice 5.1 surround system with an NEC plasma & JBL L46s with a Velodyne sub, which has been perfect for playing along with live concerts or instructional vids.

Oh, yeah, and cables. Loads of friggin' cables.

For reference checks there's also a pair of JBL 4333A monitors upstairs, using a Pioneer DVL-91 Elite as a CD player, into a Marantz DP-870 DAC & Ashly SC-22 crossover & bi-amped with an Adcom 2535 for power.

Fun toys.

je

 

[hypertone]

PIC3 The keys

Nice ESQ1! I have one too. :thmbsp:

 

[vinyldavid]

I am currently working on putting together a nice setup.....this is all low low low dollar stuff, but....

Sound Workshop Logex 8 (20x8) console
PreSonus Inspire 1394 FireWire interface
iMac with Cubase/Bias Peak LE/Bias Deck (haven't figured that one out yet....)
Sony TA-1055
Realistic Minimus-12
Sony MDR-V6

I STILL don't have any mics, but when I do, I am going to get 2 MXL990/991 sets to start with...and then a drum mic set. I'm still in the process of repairing the board...gotta work on the phantom supply.

I'm also going to try to make this somewhat mobile, and build a cart for everything. Not truly PORTABLE per se, but movable...

 

[dshoaf]

My rig is:

Portable recording setup:

- Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop with PCMCIA Firewire interface card
- Presonus FireStudio 8 mic-input audio interface
- Cubase 3.1 DAW
- Mix of Rode, MXL, and AKG mics

Used for small ensemble recordings

- HP 6110 small tower PC
- PCI Belkin Firewire interface card
- Universal Audio UAD1 effects processor (use the LA2 and LA3 compressors mostly)
- Cubase 3.1 DAW
- Presonus FireStudio audio interface (moved from portable rack)
- Hafler P500 power amp
- UREI 813s monitors

No pics right now but I do have some decent recordings of some of the older jazz dudes who have since died. One of these is being released on a Jazz Archive disk by the local Jazz Society. All recordings I do are live/no-rehearsing as is typical of jazz so there's no need for much of the click-track/overdub activities.

I'm very pleased with the results and have pretty much stopped adding other things to the setup.

Cheers,

David

 

[ablethevoice]

Interesting stuff, everyone! Keep it going.

Hypertone: The ESQ I got luckily came with the latest software upgrade (v 3.5) and all the sequencer memory it can hold. Admittedly that's not a whole lot at all compared to, say for example, my brother's Korg Extreme. I read the specs on that thing and it makes my ESQ look like a Casio...well, not really
Anyway, I don't use too many of the ESQ's sounds - even ones I've created - very much, but I do use the sequencer. A lot It's easier for me to record complex parts which I can't play at full speed for whatever reason (I consider myself more a composer than performer). I don't sit and play the keys with both hands... I have to pick out the notes I hear in my head while the sequencer is running slower than the original piece is to be played. When everything is to my liking at, say 70bpm, I'll speed it up to 140 on playback and there's the piece. Then on to CEP for mastering and mixdown. I don't feel limited by having "only" 8 sequencer tracks because Cool Edit Pro provides up to 64 stereo tracks. Realistically, my system can only manage maybe 16 stereo tracks (though my works have never been more than 9 tracks) because CEP and multitracking use a great deal of RAM. I have 2 GB, but 7 or 8 six-minute tracks of 44.1kHz 16 bit .WAV files can eat up a lot of RAM fast. That's also why I don't record or master in 32 bit floating.
Anyway, I like the ESQ. Nice solid little tank. My only concern is the memory backup battery. I don't know how old it is. The ESQ' date sticker says 10/23/87 and it's quite possible I'm using an original battery.

 

[jt1stcav]

I "did" have a home studio...

I had a mini home MIDI studio back in '89, consisting of:

*An Intel 8088 PC @ 40MHz running MS-DOS only
*Cakewalk 4.0 DOS version sequencer
*Roland MPU-401 driver
*Roland GS SoundCanvas sound module
*A pre-GM Standard Yamaha portable keyboard
*Alesis MicroverbII digital reverbs (2)
*Yamaha REV100 digital reverb
*An entry-level Sony 18-bit CD player
*Panasonic SV-3700 pro DAT recorder
*Nakamichi DR-2 3-head cassette deck
*dbx 760X mic preamp
*Shure SM81 instrument mics (2)
*Sony MDR-7506 studio cans
*Klipsch Cornwall loudspeakers

The home studio was built around the 19 rank residence pipe organ my dad built for our house, fitted with a DIY MIDI playback interface from parts aquired from Devtronics, Inc. (now defunct). We created MIDI music files of our favorite classical organ compositions by typing individual notes into the sequencer from sheet music one note at a time on the PC's keyboard! These MIDI files were then arranged and edited for playback on the pipe organ, complete with patches used to arrange tempo, registration and expression changes. A rough mix of finished MIDI files were performed in real-time thru the organ which were then recorded live onto DAT masters, with selections burned to CD-Rs (adding slight digital reverb to the discs to add ambiance to the acoustically dead music room). A few 128kbps MP3s were lastly made and added to my website (if anyone's interested in hearing them, see my link below in my sig and click on My Organ Music page).:yes:

Years later I was laid off, filed bankruptcy, and pawned off virtually everything I owned, including the majority of the home studio! Aside from keeping the DAT deck and mic pre, everything else has been regrettably sold, including the pipe organ itself (but due to different circumstances...still sad, though)!

When my finances are in check again, I someday hope to have another MIDI studio (the pipe organ's out of the question unfortunantly unless I win the lottery)!