Home Recording Blog | HomeStudioEssentials.com

It's easy to get obsessed with gear. It's easy to think that the real key to making great recordings is using a $5000 microphone plugged into a $4000 preamp. And sure, it probably does make it a bit easier. But I really think that the equation on what it takes to make a great recording is something like 90% technique and 10% gear (not accounting for the quality of the music itself which is of course far more important than either in the grand scheme of things.)

I believe that as long as you have gear that can "get the job done" you need to stop making excuses and stop dreaming about pro gear and start learning how to use what you got! I'm sure there are plenty of GearSlutz out there who would point and laugh at my setup because I use a $300 preamp and a $800 microphone (on the other hand, I'm sure there's people reading this who would love to have an $800 microphone!)

But I really do not blame my gear at all when my mixes don't sound the way I want them to. I know that the real problem in such a case is not the gear, but me. It was me not knowing how to set the compressor or position the mic. Knowing how to use the compressor is more important than the quality of the compressor and knowing how to position the mic is more important than the quality of the mic!

This is why I think it's a huge mistake to spend all of your time shopping for your next upgrade in gear instead of learning how to work with what you've got.

One of the worst (and most common) examples of this is when people spend many hours testing out lots of different plugins instead of working with the ones they've got. I've been to sites where you can download hundreds of different free plugins to try out. This is an evil site that I plan on never visiting again. We're taught that more choice is always better but at some point it becomes paralyzing.

My advice is: Stop looking for perfection in your gear and stop looking for the latest plugin and start working on improving your recording and mixing technique.

And that's not to say that there's anything wrong with upgrading your gear or looking for a piece of gear that you really need. All I'm saying is that you need to get yourself to the point where you are focusing on recording and mixing (and not on acquiring gear) as quickly as possible. It's easy to drag out the "looking for gear" phase way too long.

As you may have heard, The Beatles music is finally coming out digitally but not in the way most people assumed it would (as downloads on iTunes & AmazonMP3) but instead on this Apple (Beatles Apple, not Mac Apple) themed Beatles USB stick. Along with the 320kbps (high quality) mp3s, this USB stick also includes The Beatles entire remastered stereo catalog in 24bit FLAC and that's what interests me.

As you probably already know (since you're reading this blog on home recording) 24bit is the standard for digital mixing and mastering these days. It's not until the final stage that the music is exported to 16bit for CDs.

When The Beatles music was digitally remastered for the new box sets (and now this USB which is a digital version of The Beatles Stereo CD Box Set) it was done so in 192kHz 24bit quality but of course we ended up hearing it in 44kHz 16bit quality (on the CDs.) These CDs still sound fantastic to my ears, but certainly I'm curious to hear the music in it's full quality.

The 24bit FLAC files included on this Beatles USB are not full quality, they are only 44.1kHz but they are still the highest quality versions of these remasters now available because they are 24bit rather than the 16bit that is on CDs.

There's a chance that The Beatles will eventually go the Blu-Ray route like Neil Young's Archives and include the full 192kHz 24bit files for our listening pleasure, but for now The Beatles USB represents the audiophile peak for The Beatles stereo catalog.

I really recommend anyone that is into recording their own music (or recording other people's music) at home buy The Beatles Remastered Box Sets.

Why? Regardless if you are a fan (I happen to be a huge fan of The Beatles) you cannot deny their huge influence on music over the last 40+ years. I think because of this, it's necessary for anyone who is serious about music to be familiar with their music and there's definitely no better way to get familiar with their music than with these box sets (they're all I've been listening to over the last couple of days and they sound amazing.)

Being ignorant of The Beatles work while trying to record music is sort of like being ignorant of Shakespeare and trying to write plays.

There's so much that can be learned from The Beatles albums. Both as far as their music itself and as far as their recording techniques. While their music was recorded over 40 years ago, it still sounds better than just about anything recorded today (to my ears) - why is that? And how can you incorporate some of the things that makes their music eternally fresh into your own music?

I think both the mono & stereo box sets are essential because they both sound great, but they sound great in different ways. The mono box set is quite amazing to hear for me as it's the first time I've heard their songs as they were originally intended to be heard (The Beatles were focused primarily on the mono mixes in the 1960s.) It's impressive how great they were able to get these recordings to sound working in mono.

I think there is a lesson in that too.

A trick I've been using and will continue to use after being inspired by The Beatles in mono is to mix my music in mono first. I try to make my mixes sound as good as possible in mono before even worrying about how it sounds in stereo. I've found that if you do your panning while you are in mono, you can usually find the perfect fit. That may sound counter intuitive to you but I recommend trying it for yourself.

An important part of recording music (or doing anything else that takes considerable computing power such as graphic design or video editing) is having an OS that works smoothly without giving you any technical headaches. An OS that works with all of your various sound programs without any hiccups.

That's why the 10/22/09 release of Windows 7 Professional is so exciting (particularly for those who currently have the pain in the ass that is known as Vista.) It works. It really does. I know this from personal experience because I've been a beta tester for it. But I'm not the only one - if you look around the web you'll find that many people have had great success with it.

I became a beta tester for Win 7 Pro precisely because of all of the problems I was running into with Vista. I couldn't figure out a way to deal with them (I won't list all the problems I was having as that would take me all day.) So I decided to try out Win7 to see if it was really all it was cracked up to be (I had heard a lot of great things about it on recording forums.)

Sure enough, all of my problems went away. And just as importantly, no new problems were introduced. So yes, I can give my own 100% recommendation to buy Windows 7 Professional.

Buy Windows 7 Pro

Buy Windows 7 Pro Upgrade
(upgrade from XP & Vista)

I've just purchased The Beatles As Musicians: Revolver Through The Anthology and I wanted to pass word to any other Beatles fanatic home recording people out there who may be interested in it because I think this book looks fascinating.  Of course I haven't read it yet to give any kind of real review of it. I'll try to get to that once it's delivered.

I've read a lot of Beatles books over the years but most of them have been focused more on the biography of the band than on the creation of the music itself. That's what this book is about and that's why I can't wait to get my hands on it.

There's also a second book by the same author (which was actually written after this one) which focuses on The Beatles earlier stuff (through Rubber Soul) but since I'm more interested in their later stuff I figured I would just get this one first to see what it's like before buying the second one.

Last night I took the advice of some folks who know a lot more about things like this than I do to replace the tubes that came in my ART MPA Gold mic preamp with some more expensive higher quality tubes that I bought online.

The MPA Gold is only about $300 but I've heard a lot of people say that if you replace the tubes that it comes with (which are cheap Chinese tubes) with some higher quality ones that you can make it so that it's quality is up there with a preamp with a cost over $1000. I don't know enough about this to say whether it's true or not. But it seemed worth a shot.

One of the cool things about this preamp is that it actually has two different inputs/tubes so I put in two different tubes so I could have some choice as far as different "colors." As each tube is supposed to have it's own sound.

I took some photographs of the process which took me about an hour. I'm sure a lot of people could have done it a lot faster but I had a lot of problems with my screwdrivers. Anyway, check out these photos:

The MPA Gold with the top taken off:

Took one of the cheap Chinese tubes out:

The USA built Sylvania tube I replaced it with:

Took out the second cheap Chinese tube. Put it up with the first one and another one(which I had taken out of my much cheaper MPA Art preamp previously.)
They all appear to be the same.

JJ Tesla ECC83 tube that I put in the second slot:

Where the tube goes:

Of course the important part is, what do they actually sound like? Well so far I've been pretty impressed. I've been using the MPA Gold both as a preamp for my Shure KSM condenser microphone and as a direct in for my bass guitar (I haven't tried it yet with my guitar.)

And last night after I replaced the tubes there did seem to be an increase in clarity and "warmth" but I'm not 100% sure. It's hard to say if it's not just a mental thing of wanting it to sound better so I don't feel like I wasted my money and time!

I'm subscribed to four different magazines focused on recording: EQ, Recording, Electronic Musician, & Tape Op. Of the four I only have a strong opinion on is Tape Op, it's great. I highly recommend it. The groovy thing is Tape Op is actually FREE! The not so groovy thing is that it only comes out once every two months instead of monthly like the other three.

And while Tape Op is free it's not like the others are expensive. Each of them works out to about $1 per issue so they aren't going to break the bank.

Sure, about 75% of these magazines is advertisements for the latest gear, but if you can get through all of that, there tends to be some interesting useful information in there.

And yes I consider the "reviews" that these magazines include to be advertisements too! I think I've yet to read a negative review of anything since I've been receiving these magazines (which is since January or so.)

I've been going through some growing pains lately with setting up my recording stuff (including a lot of cool new gear) on a new computer (64 bit, quad core, 8 GB RAM PC)  and most of those pains seemed to be stemming from Windows Vista.

A couple of days ago I got to the point where I was getting really desperate as I was not able to get Reaper (my new favorite DAW) working along with lot of other really irritating problems (including a malfunctioning internet connection.) I decided that maybe I should try to install Windows 7 on my computer (dual boot style) to see if that would fix some of my problems.

I had heard a lot of good things about it but I was concerned that I would be let down. After all it's only in beta right now. I thought maybe I'd be "trading one set of problems for another."

I downloaded build 7077 (64 bit version) and installed it yesterday morning (I got my key directly from Microsoft.) I was expecting at least some pains getting things working and I figured there was a good shot that a lot of stuff wouldn't work at all.

So far that has not been the case at all. In fact I haven't run into a single problem yet. Everything seems to be working flawlessly and not every problem that I was having on Vista is gone. I'm actually shaking my head as I type this because I can hardly believe it.

Obviously I can't guarantee that everyone will have such a great experience with it, I only know my own situation but for me Windows 7 has definitely come to the rescue. It looks like Microsoft has finally got it right. An operating system that just plain works. Awesome.

Now I just hope they give us (those who are beta testing Win 7) an easy way of purchasing it when the final release comes out without having to reinstall everything again. I'm totally willing to pay whatever they are going to chart for it, I just hope they don't make it a pain in the ass to buy it.

Edit: You can now Buy Windows 7 Online.

For some reason, no matter what I do I can't get this site to look right in IE. It's centering a lot of stuff I don't want to be centered and I have no idea why.

So yes, this site is best viewed in Firefox. I highly recommend Firefox for browsing the internet anyway, it's a lot better than IE. Download Firefox for free.

But I know a lot of people still use IE (unfortunately) so if anyone has a good idea of why I'm having this IE centering problem let me know (in a comment) because I would love to fix it.

EDIT: I was finally able to fix this problem (I needed to put text-align: left in my CSS otherwise IE assumed it was centered for some reason) ... But I still recommend Firefox over IE!

There's a very interesting interview with Sufjan Stevens in this month's issue of Tape Op. I find it amazing how many things he did "wrong" and still ended up with good sounding recordings. Check out this list of things he did "wrong" when recording 2003's Michigan.

1. Used 32 kHz sampling rate (instead of the usual 44.1 kHz.)
2. Mics: Only used two SM57s and one C 1000. No mic preamps.
3. Mixed the album on his headphones. He doesn't even own monitors.

What does this tell us? I think a lot of us (including myself) spend too much time worrying that we don't have the "perfect" studio setup. So what! Work with what you have. A lot of us have much better setups than Sufjan Stevens had for Michigan and I think that album sounds great. We have no excuses.