How to Build a Music Recording Studio
Whether you plan to use a spare bedroom in a house for the musician/recording hobbyist, or a dedicated studio to start a recording service business, today's electronics technology puts high-quality equipment at affordable prices in reach of everyone. Some basic equipment and room considerations should be made when building a music recording studio.
Things You'll Need
- Recording equipment Work desk Sound absorbing materials (rugs, drapes, studio acoustic foam) Cables Audio wiring
Instructions
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Assembling A Recordng Studio
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1
Draw a basic floor plan of the room. Indicate where to place the main work desk area and monitor speakers. If recording is to be done in the same room, show where musicians will be positioned. Small vocal isolation booths (like soundproof phone booths) are available in different sizes to accommodate most medium to larger rooms (available from http://www.vocalbooth.com and http://www.gretchken.com).
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2
Decide on a recording platform. Gone are the days of multitrack reel-to-reel tape recorders, which were the cornerstone of recording studios. Today's options include hardware-based digital recording mixers and computer-based recording. Digital recording mixers give the appearance of traditional mixing boards, with a row of faders, but they have the ability to record, edit and mix music. Computer-based systems require software (such as ProTools or Apple Logic), as well as an external A/D D/A audio interface (analog to digital and digital to analog).
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3
Control the acoustic sound of the room with the placement of rugs, drapes and sound-absorbing foam wedges and panels (available from http:/www.sweetwater.com). Reflections of sound in a room can interfere with making an accurate mix of a song, as the room may "color" the sound, adding or cutting the volume of certain frequency bands. The ideal situation is for the sound heard coming from the speakers to be "flat".
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4
Select monitor speakers for your studio, and choose a size and power output based on the size of the room. Active monitors have amplifiers built-in and are designed to connect directly to the line output of digital recording mixers and audio interfaces.
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5
"Dress up" cables and wires from microphones, speakers and musical instruments, and keep them neatly tucked away out of the path where someone could trip over them.
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6
Place extra chairs or a sofa within the stereo listening field of the speakers, where musicians and producers can evaluate playback mixes. Ample lighting should be available, as well as the ability to tone down harsh lighting. Dimmer switches, however, are not recommended in the studio, as they can cause a buzz in audio equipment plugged into the same electrical circuit.
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7
Build up a collection of auxiliary equipment and accessories, as money becomes available, to expand the abilities of the studio: rack-mounted signal processors (compressors, reverbs and equalizers), a variety of microphones, cables and patch cords, headphones, DI boxes (direct injection), and even musical instruments, such as guitars and synthesizer keyboards.
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