Audio FAQs

Home Studio Set-Up

Here is some practical advice on how to set up a home studio, with tips on sound equipment, physical arrangements, and cables.

When setting up a working studio it is very important to take your time in thinking about where the gear will go, how you will connect it all together, how it will all interface with itself, and generally making it a nice environment to work in and be creative in.

The starting point of your new studios layout should always be the monitoring position. In a stereo system the two speakers and your head should make up the three corners of an equilateral triangle. That is, the distance between the two speakers should be the same as the distance between either speaker and your head.

This will produce a stable stereo image, and allow the speakers to project their sound correctly.

Once you have a suitable speaker placement and monitoring position, now arrange the rest of your equipment around you, starting with the most important and most used, and working down to the least important or rarely used. Think about making the regularly used equipment easily accessible, and position it in a place where you will not get annoyed each time you have to reach over for it.

It is easy to make the mistake of spreading equipment out, to make their studio look bigger. This may look better to your friends and family but what you will end up with is a studio that is hard work to operate, and therefore it will not be a productive place to work.

Before permanently cabling your studio, set it up and work in it for a day or so to test that everything that you like to use regularly is easily accessible, and not a chore to get to.

Think about how your equipment connects together, and write a list of permanent and flexible cabled items. This will help to organise the task.

For instance, the connections from your mixer outputs to your recorders' inputs are usually permanent. These can be set up once, and forgotten about.

However, the connections between your mixer's channel inserts and a compressor's inputs are temporary, you are likely to need to move this connection around, depending on which channel of the mixer you want compression to be applied to.

As a general rule all permanent cabling applications should be completed using multi-way looms, where possible - these are tidier, more reliable and consume much less space than multiple individual cables.

Temporary or moveable connections should be made via a suitable patchbay.

Patchbays act as a central nervous system to all of the equipment in your studio. They allow all of the equipment in the studio to be connected to the back of the patchbay, while the front of the patchbay is used to connect this equipment together using short, cheap patch leads.

Patchbays are cheap and readily available in today's market, from manufacturers such as Samson and Neutrik.

What cables to use

Many people underestimate and under-budget for their cabling.

Remember, your studio is only as strong as its weakest link. You can have the best equipment that money can buy, but if it is connected together with poor cabling it will sound poor, be unreliable and may even get damaged.

We recommend that you buy good quality cables as these are the core of the system. Money spent on top-quality cables is not wasted.

Room Acoustics

Room Characteristics

As a home/project studio, your room does not need to be anywhere near as 'correct' as a professional commercial studio.

It does, however, need to be pretty neutral, and not too reverberant.

A commercial studio will purposely design a room a specific shape, from day one, and build it with acoustics being the main priority. Your spare room, however, does not have this luxury. Hence this tends to cause a few problems when it comes to using this standard room as a studio.

The two main problems that are often encountered are:

• Standing waves / modes
• Reverberant character / response

The most important thing to be able to do in your room is to listen to music accurately, and be confident that the room is not over-colouring the sound that you are hearing.

Without spending a small fortune, it is usually impossible to make a perfect room. You can however drastically improve the response of a room relatively cheaply.

Identifying the problems

A great place to start when seeing how your room is sounding is to simply listen to some of your favourite music, whilst walking slowly around the room. Listen very carefully to the different elements of the music, especially the bass.

As you walk around the room you will probably hear the bass frequencies getting louder and quieter in different spots around the room. Remember where these are, as they are probably caused by standing waves and we will look at a few ways to remedy these in the next section.

Also try clapping loudly whilst there is no other sound in the room. Listen carefully to how the sound of the clap 'rings out'. If it rings for a longer time than expected, and is smooth, then the room is too reverberant. If the sound 'flutters' back on itself then there is a problem between some parallel surfaces that needs to be remedied.

A more accurate way of determining problems is by listening to tones at 100Hz, 1000Hz and 10,000Hz around the room, and listen for peaks and dips in the volume of these frequencies.

If you are lucky enough to own a spectrum analyser, or can borrow one, this is the best way to measure the response of a room. Play some pink noise through you speakers and measure the frequency that is actually being heard in the room.

Possible solutions

At this level most problems with the acoustic response of a room can be resolved by a mixture of absorption and/or diffusion.

Absorption

Absorption works by 'soaking up' sound. Absorbent panels or structures are placed in the room at strategic points to absorb either specific frequencies, or a wide range of frequencies.

Diffusion

Diffusion works by dispersing sound around the room in a random direction, to eliminate standing waves and flutter echoes.

Recording Vocals

The vocal line is often the most important part of of a song, and flaws in a vocal recording are immediately obvious because the human voice is so familiar.

However, you can get a good professional result by following a few guidelines and using some tricks of the trade.

The singer

The singer should be familiar with the material, physically relaxed, and under no mental pressure. Most perform best standing up in a comfortable but not over-warm temperature. If they are easily distracted send everyone but the engineer / producer out of the studio.

Concentrate on getting the singer's headphone mix right - some reverb helps. A system which allows vocalists to adjust their own listening level will make life a lot easier and a good headphone mix really helps to encourage a good performance.

Use a pop shield

Always place a pop shield between the singer and the microphone or you will get unnatural 'pops' on plosive 'b' and 'p' sounds that can't be fixed afterwards. The pop shield may be a commercial model or a DIY job comprising stocking material over a wire coathanger frame or even a fine metal or plastic sieve or chip-pan splash guard. Any of these will do the job without affecting the tone of the mic. Foam wind shields are virtually useless in combating pops.

Choice of mic

Use a good microphone: it doesn't have to be anything too special, but you should avoid low-cost 'bargain' models or those designed for use with home stereos or portable cassette recorders. Professional studios generally use condenser microphones, but a good back-electret mic or even a good dynamic vocal mic can produce excellent results.

The mic should suit the singer. Singers with thin or excessively bright voices may actually sound better with a dynamic mic, such as the Shure SM58, while those needing more of an open sound would benefit from a capacitor or back-electret mic. If you have several mics to choose from, try a test recording with each and see which is most flattering to the vocalist.

Use an appropriate mic pickup pattern - most project studio vocal recordings are made using a cardioid or unidirectional mic. These pick up less sound from the sides and rear. However, an omni mic of a similar quality generally imparts a more natural, open sound and that can be useful if you're working with a singer who tends to sound thin or boxy. If you work a couple of inches closer to an omni mic, you'll get close to the same 'direct sound to room sound' ratio you'd achieve with a cardioid.

Put the mic at the right distance - too close and you'll increase the risk of popping and the level will change noticeably every time the singer moves slightly. Cardioid mics also exhibit a bass-boost 'proximity effect' that varies as the singer's mic distance varies. However, if the singer is too far away from the mic, the room reflections will colour the sound, making it seem distant and boxy. Usually, a mic distance of around six to nine inches (15-24 centimetres) is ideal.

Minimise the room's influence on your sound. The mic picks up both direct sound from the singer and reflected sound from the room. Reduce the room's contribution by keeping away from the walls and by improvising screens using sleeping bags or duvets behind and to the sides of the singer.

Mic technique

Use mic technique to help control level - if the singer can be persuaded to pull back from the mic slightly when singing louder notes, there's less risk of overloading the recorder or mic preamp, and you won't need to use so much compression to even things up. An experienced singer can also lean into the mic on quieter, more intimate passages to exploit the proximity effect. However, to prevent an inexperienced singer getting too close to the mic, position the pop shield about three inches (7.5 centimetres) from the mic.

Mount the microphone on a stand if possible. Only let the singer hold the mic if to do otherwise would compromise their musical performance and make sure they keep their hand clear of the rear of the basket, as obstructing this area can affect both directional and tonal characteristics of the mic.

Go for the best vocal performance you can get but be prepared for more than one take. More often than not you'll have to punch in and out around phrases that need re-doing, but if you have enough tracks, get the singer to do the whole song several times and then compile a track from the best parts of each take.

Use of compression

Use some compression - even well-disciplined vocalists tend to sound uneven against the very controlled dynamics of a pop mix, so it helps to apply a little compression while recording. Use less compression than you think you'll finally need with a compressor that has a reasonably neutral characteristic. Aim to achieve 5-8dB of gain reduction on the loudest signal peaks. If the compressor has an auto mode, use it.

You can use more compression on the vocal track after it has been recorded. Try both subtle and heavy compression to see which works best with the track, though if you're using a lot of compression you may need to gate the vocal track first. This will prevent noise build-up in the pauses between phrases. It's at the mixing stage that a compressor with an obvious character can be used to make a vocal seem bigger.

Don't use a gate while recording - it can ruin an otherwise perfect take, so save it until the mixing. Use the gate before any further compression, but don't gate so hard that you remove all the breath noises preceding words, as these are part of the character of a vocal performance - the recording will sound unnatural without them.

Using EQ

Be careful with EQ: on most budget desks the EQ only sounds decent when used sparingly or to cut unwanted frequencies. Mid-range boosting usually results in a nasal or phasey sound, so use as little EQ as you can. If you've picked the right mic, and taken the time to fine-tune its position during recording, you shouldn't need much corrective EQ anyway. When EQ is used for creative purposes use a good-quality outboard equaliser, because the difference between a budget EQ and a really good one is immense. Avoid using too much high-end, as this will enhance sibilance, bring up background noise and may make the end result fatiguing to listen to.

Use only a little reverb - vocals recorded in a dry acoustic environment need reverb to give them a sense of space and reality, but don't use more than the song really needs. Generally, busy songs need less and slower ballads with more space in the arrangement can use more.

If the vocals are very brightly* recorded, they may cause any added reverb to sound sibilant. Instead of de-essing the vocals (which often sounds unnatural), try instead de-essing just the feed to the reverb unit. You can also experiment with the reverb type and tonality to minimise sibilance and spitting.

* A 'bright' sound has presence, meaning a tiny amount of echo.

If you do have to de-ess vocals, try to use a split-band de-esser rather than the simpler compressor with an equaliser in the side-chain, as the split-band approach produces fewer undesirable side effects. Try to avoid sibilance by moving the mic slightly or by using a different mic, rather than trying to fix it afterwards. Pointing the mic slightly above or below the singer's mouth sometimes helps.

Using echo

If using echo or delay effects on a vocal, try to get them in time with the song, either by calculating the delay needed to match the tempo or by using the tap-tempo facility if one is available. For a less obviously rhythmic echo, try a multi-tap delay with irregular tap spacings.

Listen from outside the room and see if the song has the same balance as something you might hear on the radio. The vocals are the most important part and should be well forward, but not so far forward that they sound 'stuck on' to the backing.

Computers & Music

The use of computers to produce music has come a long way since 1982 when the protocol for MIDI was first standardised. This allowed a common binary code to be used by software sequencers which enabled sequence data to be accurately synced with external hardware audio recording systems as well as controlling external hardware such as synthesizers, drum machines and effects ( e.g. reverb) units.

Modern computers now allow for complete multitrack recording systems which combine the recording and management of both MIDI sequence data and audio data within a single environment, commonly known as Audio and Midi Sequencers or Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Commonly used software applications include Steinberg Cubase, Apple Logic, Cakewalk Sonar, Digidesign Pro Tools and Propellerheads Reason. These applications also allow for software "virtual instruments" instruments such as Spectrasonics award winning virtual synthesizer 'Omnisphere' and software effects processors (or 'plug-ins') to be used in conjunction with MIDI and audio data. In this way, nearly all of the elements of a traditional analogue recording studio have been combined within the computer. This development has been aided by improvements in computer interface ports - i.e. USB (now USB 2) and Firewire, which allow for faster and better quality firewire and USB connected audio interfaces. This in turn has led to the ability to record and play back more individual audio tracks simultaneously and higher sample rates when converting analogue audio signals (external to the computer) to digital audio data (within the computer).

However, recording studios often use a combination of external analogue hardware and computer software in order to benefit from the best of both technologies. Many recording engineers cite the warmth and detail present in professional quality analogue hardware which often seems to be missing in digital processing. It is, for example, common practice to use high quality analogue mic preamps such as a Focusrite ISA One or Universal Audio Solo prior to routing the signal into an analogue to digital audio interface when recording a vocal to a computer hard drive and then, during the mix process, to route that recorded track through high quality analogue studio outboard equipment, such as compressors, reverbs, peak limiter, gates and other dynamics processors before mastering the final mix back on to a a computer driven DAW. The choice of microphone being used also has a considerable bearing on the sound and being the first item in the signal chain, it's also the most important. Different types of microphones (such as condenser, dynamic and ribbon) and different brands and models are all suited to particular applications and it is very difficult to compensate for an inappropriate mic once the signal is within a computer. But once all sound sources have been recorded and processed using the most suitable analogue equipment, digital processing within a computer environment provides the speed and flexibility for overdubbing, mixing and editing that recorded material. Having said that, it is now common practice for producers and engineers to combine both software and real instruments and/or analogue equipment to achieve new sounds and textures.

Control surfaces such as the Mackie Universal Control also reflect this evolving combination of analogue and digital technology. A control surface is effectively a hardware mixer which controls the audio and/or midi signal paths within a DAW. It gives the engineer or producer the hands-on feel of a traditional mixing desk coupled with the benefits of digital processing such as the ability to automate real-time changes in EQ and track levels as well as storing all parameters of a mix session for recall and use at a later date. (The only way to do this on most analogue mixers, apart from high end automated pro analogue mixers built by names such as Soundcraft, is to note down by hand every single control setting or to take a photograph of the desk itself!).

While it seems obvious to state that the real quality of recorded sound within a computer driven studio is effected by the quality of the analogue signal before conversion to digital audio, it's worth noting that many recent recordings regarded as having 'high' production values have been accomplished using the ambient sound of the recording environment or room. To quote recording engineer Elliott Scheiner discussing the latest Donald Fagen album 'Morph the Cat':

"I think a lot of the sound of the album is the room that we recorded in. I didn't set out to do anything different. I simply did what I always do, which is to capture what the musicians are playing. I seldom try to make things sound different from what is played in the recording room.

Of course, not everyone has access to a large live room for recording, but judicious use of acoustic treatments can make a big difference to the way in which a room will react to sound. More recent innovations such as the SE Electronics Reflexion Filter, a portable vocal booth which attaches to a mic stand, can be of equal importance to the quality of a vocal recording onto computer as well as the type of microphone, mic preamp, studio outboard and audio interfaces being used.

The other interesting point that this quote raises lies in the phrase 'what the musicians are playing'. While there are increasingly powerful software tools for pitch correction such as Antares Autotune and applications such as Steinberg Cubase have very flexible and intuitive functions such as 'quantising' for correcting rhythmic errors, there is rarely a substitute for high standards of musicianship when recording live instruments. There is also a broad consensus that high quality analogue equipment is better suited for recording 'real' sounds and/or instruments. In the words of young British engineer and producer Dan Grech-Marguerat who worked on Scissor Sisters' latest album 'Ta-Dah':

"I love electronic music and think computers are a great tool, but when recording live instruments, the more analogue equipment you use, the better the sound."

So computers have become a fantastically powerful resource for music production but in the end are only a part of a complex process which uses many different methodologies to achieve its aim, and which will continue to evolve as musicians, producers and recording engineers find new ways of combining both existing and emerging technologies.