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Your Home Recording Platform
Now that we understand and have identified our Home Recording Goals, it is time to start with the first fundamental gear selection consideration, your home recording platform.
Your platform is the center of your studio, it is like choosing the kind of house you are going to build. It is the foundation. You can build a different foundation, and always add on the foundation you have, but the idea is to choose the right foundation so you don’t waste any time or money and can just build additions ONTO and upgrade your foundation for the rest of your life.
Its obviously not anywhere near the cash or time investment as building a house, of course, and their are workarounds... So although this is a big decision, keep it in context.
This is a topic that contains many viewpoints, opinions, and options. The objective for this article is to condense and simplify the concepts to help you determine the most appropriate route for you to take in selecting and building your home studio.
Essentially you can go with a computer based recording rig or an “all-in-one” standalone recorder. I.e a multitrack recorder, or analog/digital mixing console.
Complicated, button heavy mixing boards are probably the first thing that pop into most people’s heads when they thing about a recording studio.
Thanks to advances in music technology and boom of the home studio market, there are game changing solutions for the budget conscious home studio producer. The technology allows us to do with several thousand dollars, what would cost 50-100k in hardware 15 years ago. For music makers, enthusiasts, songwriters, producers, this literally has changed everything. Forever.
This means that recording software running on a modern computer is the most efficient, flexible, and full featured platform for the modern music maker and producer. But just because the new school tools trump their hardware counterparts in cost, this is not always applicable in quality.
To simplify, let’s look at it like this. Highly talented and detail oriented sound engineers meticulously tested and designed top class circuity and top class sounding gear. It cost a LOT. Few could afford it, and few still can.
Computers and recording technology grew in capability and power and now much of the DAW software is engineered to model what the pioneers of our field created in the 1970s.
So all in all. While the technology of DAW music production software is far superior and makes much more practical sense to me, in almost every way, most modeled software effects aren’t going to sound as good as their hardware counterpart. BUT this isn’t always the case, and the software is getting better. So my point is don’t form hard and fast general rules about “hardware vs. software.”
But back to the topic at hand, which is a hardware based system vs. a software based recording system, and then some ways to narrow down your best path.
The options for your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)
Hardware vs. Computer Software For Your DAW Recording Platform?
The best practice for leveraging a home recording studio is to build 2-4 or more of the most high quality audio channels, and run everything through them.
There are advantages and disadvantages, but the name of the game is choose what will work for you and your future needs most.
Since this is somewhat of a critical decision, lets look through the pro’s and con’s of the three options:
Hardware Home Recording Platform
Pros:
In a word, simplicity. It’s all in one, portable unit, and you only have to learn one thing. Those who do not want to work with or try to wrap their heads around software, don’t have to. It is often a very pleasant and satisfying feeling to control your mixes by moving real faders and pressing real buttons.
Cons:
Although the simplicity of having an all-in-one unit may be appealing, i think that is a bit deceptive, because those boxes are anything but simple to learn. And even harder to fix and have serviced. In short you are stuck with it. And when you do want to upgrade, you have to learn a whole new unit. May not have automation!
Software Home Recording Platform
Pros:
Computers are powerful today. They are advanced and the plug and play software just keeps getting better and cheaper. It is flexible, and you can learn ONE main DAW production software program and then upgrade sounds and flexibility with plugins. It’s also easy to backup your work, find answers, and install new plugins directly into a new mix.
You should not have to worry about a major DAW just going away, so updates will continue and features will also improve. Hopefully.
But perhaps one of the biggest benefits of the computer based DAW, is the incredible power of AUTOMATION!
I can instantly recall EVERY setting for each song, and each mix version, forever. Pretty revolutionary.
Cons:
You have to deal with computers. You have to deal with technical gotcha’s, and deal with upgrades, hard-drive crashes, software bugs. If you are using a desktop computer, its much less portable. Although a powerful laptop with DAW software with a portable audio interface, and a few accessories, are an ideal portable music production machine.
Mac vs PC
Im not really going to get into this debate, because it is highly subjective, and can be a touchy subject.
I will say, i used to have a PC. I had all kinds of problems with it. Then i got a mac. I still have had some software problems, but i have never caught a virus, and i have never looked back. No one i know that uses a mac ever complains about it. Thats not to say you can’t make the same quality music, or the the recording software available for PC doesn’t measure up.
Hybrid Home Recording Platform
The hybrid DAW platform is the best of both worlds. It is what most savvy producers are using in both pro and home recording studios.
You may have heard this referred to as a midi control surface. There are some varying hybrid units that combine some different functions, but in general, we are taking a traditional mixer and by utilizing midi data we are able to have hands on control over the knobs and faders of our DAW.
This, can be combined with multiple audio and midi inputs, and can replace the need for an additional audio or midi interface.
The core functionality though, is to replace the analog and digital mixer with a MIDI data controlled “hands on” interface for your DAW production software.
Let me know if you have any other questions...
Best Regards, Jamie
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