Man, you know what. I think I've actually got these guys on friggin myspace. Do believe that ACM@UCO has a myspace page and I'm friends with them. I'm gonna ask them if open ear or closed ear earphones are preferred FFS.

ahhh Bose no good?


aorn I'm not sure on total budget of anything really, still in the early stages of planning. But I just know that headphones isn't something I'm going to try to save cash on. I'm going to spend good money for good quality in this department.

You should pm electrical. I hear he's kind of a big deal.

The recording is just to make sure you're not a complete noob with no experience. It's not like you need to submit a professional quality demo like if you were looking for a job. If you could make something that good, then you wouldn't need to go to school.

Obviously don't send in something you record on your iphone, but they don't expect you to be spending thousands of $ buying professional-level equipment to build a home studio to record this.

LirvA, do NOT buy headphones that make stuff sound good. You need reference (neutral) headphones that accurately present how stuff actually sounds. Go to the pro audio desk at guitar center and ask around.

Yeah, Bose is awful. Obviously better than basic headphones that come with any device, but that's why it gets high marks from just the average public. They don't know any better, so they buy into the marketing, and they jump from the iPod earbuds to Bose. Try finding a pro that uses Bose, you won't. Ask any audiophile what they think of Bose. Bose doesn't even sell professional audio equipment such as Shure, Sennheiser, and Audio Technica, which all make very good headphones.


Good to hear you won't skimp on the headphones. There are plenty of options, and plenty of places on the web you can do research. GL.


Head-fi.org is probably the best place to find info about headphones.



Depends on what he needs the headphones for. If he needs it for that purpose only, then I'd buy Sony MDR V6 or the AKG 701.

I'm just here to say Good Luck LirvA!

and a man needs a maid

just someone to keep the house clean...fix some meals and go away

Glad you found this thread sir.


I'm actually going to play the ambitious cat card. I'm pulling out all the stops.

I'm going to record album. Bam. Gonna do it. Gonna record an album (9 songs minimum), pick the best 3 and use them for the application, and I'm going to get the entire album copyrighted and release it independently. I'm goin all way with this. I needs to get the **** up off my ass and get my **** in gear, and to do that I believe I need to completely OWN this and just ****ing put EVERYTHING into it, record a ****ing professional quality album, ****ing OWN IT, not let ANY ****ing record company or corporation or anyone get any ****ing piece of it, and get a band together and play around.

I are musician cat.


This. ARE. MINE!!!

thanks to all the good luckers




And indebted thanks to all inputers. 4 srs

i really wanted to go to recording school. never got around to it, wish i knew more about it.

No way. Monitors are very important man you should not be mixing with headphones.

G5 + pro tools + reason= win

[x] home recording enthusiast/semi-professional

OP in my opinion I would ditch the Roland VS-1880 idea. You're incredibly limited with those as it relates to editing, post-audio, etc.. You really don't need a new computer - I run Cubase SX-3 on an old, ****ty toshiba satellite laptop and it's produced some great things over the years.

As far as recording drums... I've been playing for roughly 17 years. When it comes to home recordings, it's gonna be damn hard to get a professional sound unless you have awesome mics and plenty of them. I personally sequence all my drum tracks (on either Reason or FL Studio) as I have a library of pretty mind blowing samples. I've been able to put tracks together in my apartment that no one would ever know weren't recorded on a live kit. Even other drummers. I've also done this for hire for a couple bands and charged $50/hr.

The reason I'm mentioning this is that I'm always down to share the wealth and could use the good karma as far as collaborating/helping with drums.

If you want to hear some stuff, PM me your email and I'll send you some examples.

You can now run Pro Tools 9 WITHOUT Digi hardware, and you can run it standalone (with no hardware at all)!!!

+1.

+1; and room treatment.

+1.

Best piece of advice so far. ^

------

I'm a serious hobbyist and friends with quite a few professional and semi-pro recording engineers (networking ftw!) and the consensus is that it will be pretty much impossible to create a home recording setup capable of creating commercial-quality recordings without spending in the neighborhood of 5-15 thousand dollars. Spend any less and you will be disappointed. The thing that has been omitted so far is that you will need a lot of room treatment, not only for the tracking but also for the mixing (if you plan to mix it yourself_. The price of a good set of absorption panels, bass traps, and professional installation can easily run you up somewhere around 5k for that alone.

People expect to do this all the time on less. I've heard the results. They rarely sound commercial.

I'm not sure what your budget is, but 5-15k sounds like a lot, and even if you can afford it, it will not be an approach that is cost-effective since you are planning on recording somewhere between three to nine songs.

If commercial quality is what you want, you can book 2-3 days at a professional studio for $500 or so a day. Put the effort into practicing your songs and be realistic about the time it takes to record a track - you simply won't be able to book an hr per song or something like that. Also, you should be able to get a session drummer at a reasonable price.

------

Cliffs:

- The DIY approach is silly unless you want to drop 5-15k or more.

- The most cost-effective and time-effective way is to find a pro studio equipped with pro engineers and get it all done there.

------

Addendum:

Also, you should really figure out if the main criteria for getting into this particular school is the aural quality of your recording or whether they are putting a lot more stock into your level of technical proficiency with an instrument. In the latter case, you play well, man, so don't sweat it that much! But this hasn't been clarified and it is probably the biggest factor in deciding upon the optimal way to approach this.

OP, as stated earlier, 57s on the amps/drums, 58s on the vocals. I've been using the combination for a few years and it's just unbeatable on your budget. Also, they're pretty damn durable. I've hauled them around, seen them passed around, dropped etc. and they still keep on ticking. Personally, for live music (mostly rock/country) I'm married to my EV N/D967 Supercardioid for vocals because I never trust the sound guy at a random bar to know enough to make me sound as good as I can on a 58, but only because it takes a **** ton of gain before it starts to lose effectiveness. Helps when you're relying on blown monitors and such. But for the studio Beta58As are the nuts imo.

My main question is are you the one doing all the playing/singing? You said you were hiring a pro drummer. How do you plan on laying down the tracks? Are you relying on the drummer to lay it and then you play the bass et al afterwards? Is it going to be a combined effort? I wouldn't skimp on musicians. Obviously, the program needs your money most likely and will take you as long as it seems like you have SOME idea of what you're doing and the means to pay them, but you don't want your own ability causing conflict in your recording. It's just easier if someone else you really trust is doing the work on the other end.

How good is your guitar amp? Are you really married to it? Any thoughts on selling it and moving to something non-tube like a Peavy Bandit that will get you enough sounds and free some funds to invest in the other side of things? You can always invest later in a new guitar amp when it becomes necessary.

Just some things to think about.

Want to start a death metal barbershop quartet?

I rarely go to this section of the forum, so I missed this.

I own and operate my own studio so I can answer any questions as well. Looks like a few people with some know-how have already chimed in so I missed the boat.

You're not going to get professional quality recordings at home without spending a fortune. It's just not going to happen. Your setup is only as good as it's weakest link and from the looks of it, there are a lot of weak links.

You'd be better off interning at a real studio. With the state of the recording industry, studios aren't flooded with clients like they used to, so there's a lot of downtime that you could do what you're wanting. You'll need to get in there and prove yourself worthy and capable, but if you can build a good relationship with the people there, they might even come in and help you out for a small fee (sometimes even free). And you'll get to do it on professional gear.

Start building your home setup in the meantime. Focus on being able to record a great quality single instrument first (vocal, guitar, bass) and when you've saved enough, get another piece of gear and eventually you'll accumulate a decent setup. Start looking around at the 500 series lunch boxes. The boxes run anywhere from $350-800 and hold 4-10 pre-amps/compressors/eq's. The cost for the inserts in those runs anywhere from $300-$2000 but the options are insane nowadays. I wish those were more popular when I first started building my place. There are some unbelievable pieces floating around now.

I was gonna go the live drum route cause thus far I haven't been able to do anything passable with drum machines. I've got FL studio and this other drum machine called hydrogen, and I dunno I guess it's the samples I've got or something, maybe I need some better ones, cause the stuff I've done with it definitely sounds like a drum machine and not passable for live drums by any means.

Absolutely would be 100% open to using a drum machine if I can get a real good sound and make it passable.

pm incoming imo.

I might be getting too ambitious and need to think about scaling back a bit. I can't go to any studio cause I've got to do it all myself.

As far as criteria, I believe it to be the former.

Yep I'm gonna be doing all the playing and singing. As for the drums, if I can get a passable sound out of a drum machine I'll definitely go that route as I won't have to A. pay someone, and B. worry about tracking a good drum sound.

If I do go with the live drum route though, I'll probably play bass along with him and track drums and bass at the same time, or just track drums and do bass and everything later, depending on how many inputs I can record at the same time.


Very very married to my amplifier. I'd shoot myself if I sold my tube amp for a solid state peavy.

I'm a tube snob :P

One of the good things about this school is the final project is actually recording like a 4 song EP, so I'll be getting to use a professional studio for free which is really awesome. Another good thing about it is I guess the networking is really good, so I'll be meeting some good contacts it sounds like. And also, I'm not exactly sure how good it is, but I'll be getting an Associate of Applied Science degree, and it would be sooooo ****ing sick for me to get a freakin college degree. In my family, like me and my brother, and pretty much all on my father's side, no one went to college. No one has a college degree. So that's something I definitely want to get.

What would you guys get to build around this sound card? (which I currently have)



http://www.zzounds.com/item--MDOAP2496



I mean do I need a mixer? What do I need other than a microphone?

A castle!

Totally agree with this. These are all the mics you will need and for damn cheap. 57s and 58s, you just can't go wrong.


And yes, you will need a mixer if you are even remotely serious about this.

Mixers aren't even that expensive. You can get a very decent one for $200-$300. I'd recommend looking at Mackie mixers because they are small, cheap, and get the job done.

Or you can just buy a multitrack recorder, most of them have mixers.