Most of my
music experience is performance and live sound. Sailing, I’ve been a
live aboard for 12 years and a tradesman for 8 (rigging sailboats). I have been in professional studios, worked with live recording setups in venues and done some recording on my own. For the sake of this discussion, I’m referring to “remote recording”, not a traditional
gear intensive home studio. And as a sound tech my most important consideration is sound quality; plump audio signals. the issue most home recording setup have is a lack of practical understanding of this. A full audio signal will yield a
radio quality track if its integrity is maintained through the recording chain. In low
budget less is best. So the two things most important: quality performance on sound
instruments with excellent setups, and well placed microphones.
For heavy effects, then cost becomes an issue as lower quality
outboard equipment will degrad the signals they process. Many home studios simply ignore the fact than stacking up low quality
gear will do nothing to improve the sound of recordings to anyone other than the home
engineer. No matter what anyone’s opinion is, there is in fact a baseline for good sounding recordings. That is simply full audio signals mixed well. So a good self taught engineer will spend many years working with a basic setup producing mostly dry recordings. We must “study” the naked audio signal through the basics digital recording apparatus before we can walk the fine line of lofi quality, and consumer grade recordings.
In other words, wisdom that serves in live sound; if the bass drum doesn’t have a plum sound, no amount of eq will correct it. It is always a matter of microphone selection and placement. This also included dampening schemes, especially in a studio
environment.
The bottom line, with digital, clean and frequency rich tracks are easy to capture with basic practiced skills. This fact opens “remote recording”, to the fact today, with practiced skill a $400 box of the right gear can capture excellent audio recordings suitable for mixing and mastering for
radio quality recorded
music.
In any sound
environment, it is ALWAYS a question of knowing what you have and how to use it.