- REALITY CHECK series Introduction
- REALITY CHECK #1: You Suck
- REALITY CHECK #2: Your Room Sucks
- REALITY CHECK #3: Your Monitors Suck
The only book I've ever lost sleep over was Mixerman's The Daily Adventures of Mixerman. In many ways, reading that book is what "woke me up" to the gulf that divides the home recordist from the industry pros. At one point, Mixerman needed to put in a gear order for the tracking sessions that lay ahead. After getting the "regardless of cost" go-ahead from the producer he proceeded to rent a vintage Ludwig drum kit (with a few other kits waiting on standby), plus 10 extra snare drums. Uh, hem...That's as far as we need to go.
When was the last time you had the pleasure of recording a vintage Ludwig kit? The last time you recorded drums, how many snare options did you have? One? Maybe two? Did you have a few extra kits lying around in case you needed to change out kit pieces? Never, none, and no.
You probably thought this post was going to be about how your gear sucks and how the pros have way better gear than you. Well, it kind of is. Great gear matters. If you've ever played through a sweet tube amp you already know that. But I'd be willing to guess that you have a nice guitar, or one awesome mic, or perhaps a killer pre-amp...maybe even all 3! So, you're totally ready to make recordings like the pros, right? Sure. But what happens when you need more of a Gibson sound but all you have is a Strat? What if the mic that complements your voice sounds awful on the female vocalist you brought in to track vocals? And, of course you love the coloration from your killer tube pre-amp, but what if you need it to be transparent? Ah, this is where the pros have an advantage over us.
In The Daily Adventures of Mixerman, after Mixerman dials in the drums, he turns to the guitars. He rents a bass head, a bass cab, a few guitar amps, and some guitars. The producer also brought in several of his favorite amps and guitars. Between the guitarist, the producer, and the rental equipment, they set up a wall (literally) of amps (quality amps, from Vox to Mesa Boogie) and had an estimated 50 guitars to choose from. Throughout the sessions, the three spent countless hours auditioning amps, dialing in the right tone, and arguing about the implications of sounding too vintage or too modern.
Contrast that to what we typically do in our home studios: We pick up the only guitar we have, dial in an acceptable (but not fantastic) tone from our combo amp, and mic it up with a single SM57 that's plugged in to a $200 pre-amp/interface. Upon playback is it any wonder why we feel like the guitar tone lacks something?
Now, your situation hopefully is better than this, although it's a fairly common set up for many home-recording folks. And I'm not even suggesting that you couldn't capture a broadcast-quality recording that way (more on that later). My point is that to capture a variety of great sounds on a wide variety of sources, you need to have A) great gear, and B) lots of it.
Great Gear
"Great" gear doesn't necessarily mean expensive gear. Quality gear will usually produce a cleaner recording, so if you got it, use it. But a quality amp might not be what that trashy indie-rock guitar part needs. I'm suggesting that "great gear" is gear that gives you the sound the part needs. The sad news is that the Neumann mic you bought with your child's college money might sound horrible on that glam rock vocalist. So, yes, quality gear is great, but appropriate gear is better. This brings me to my next point...
Lots of Gear
This is where pro studios have an advantage over us home-recording guys. They have lots of quality gear. In other words, they have a variety of sonic options to choose from, which greatly increases their chances of finding just the right sound.
Before I continue, let me qualify what I mean by "gear." There is a debate among home-recording songwriters as to whether they should track a song themselves and then hire someone to mix it... -or- ...should they pay a studio to track the song and then mix it themselves. Usually this question arises among people who are not qualified to neither track nor mix, but that's besides the point. Too many people these days think that DAWs are magic and that you can put crap in and transform it into platinum later. It doesn't work that way. The pros record with the best tools and mix with the best tools. Having said that, a song that has been tracked by a competent engineer using great gear is going to sound awesome in the raw and be far easier to mix. In the March 2011 U.S.A. edition of Sound on Sound, Ruadhri Cushnan talks about mixing the latest Mumford and Sons album. He says :
"In the end, it's about how good your source material is. Some people think everything can be fixed with a good mix, but that's not strictly true. A band playing well, recorded in a good room by a good engineer and a good producer makes the mixing process a lot easier. If the source material is not very good, you're going to have to jump a lot of hurdles during the mix. In the case of Mumford and Sons I was given really well recorded source material with plenty of options, so mixing was fairly easy and the results came out great."
Get it? You can't polish a turd. Spray paint will make it look better, but it's still a turd.
Therefore, for this segment I will only address the gear that assists in capturing a sound, from source up to the computer. I'll address the processing side later in "Your Gear Sucks, part II."
Quantities of Quality Gear
What kinds of quality gear are we talking about? Let's lay out a couple typical signal chains to see what gear shapes a source:
Vocals: Great room > great vocalist > microphone(s) > cable > pre-amp > cable > compressor/limiter > cable > EQ > cable > converters > cable > computer
Guitar: Great room > Great guitarist > Guitar > cable > pedal(s) > cable > pre-amp > cable> power amp > cab > microphone(s) > pre-amp > cable > compressor/limiter > cable > EQ > cable > converters > cable > computer
At every point in a chain, the tracking engineer must audition, select, and combine pieces of gear that will produce the sonic bliss they're looking for. This explains why pro studios have rooms full of vintage guitars/amps/cabs, sought after synths and keyboard instruments, $100,000 mic lockers, racks of coveted analog gear, and why some cables cost more than a trip to Disneyland.
In contrast, a typical home studio signal chain looks like this:
Crappy room > Okay guitarist > Mid-priced Guitar > $10 cable > M-Audio Fast Track interface > computer > guitar modeling software.
For those who have this setup, I'm not making fun of you. However, I am trying to point out the amount of time, expertise, and quality gear that went into capturing the awesome guitar tone on Joe Radio's latest single. Of course you can't get Joe Radio's sound with the above setup. Accepting that fact might just keep you from pulling out your hair thinking you can transform a Hyundai into a Ferrari with some minor body work.
Remember, the point of the REALITY CHECK series is to point out why many home recordists can't make radio-quality recordings. Crappy gear is only one reason. And it's on the low side of importance compared to the other points I've written about and will write about. Many of you are to able to crank out pretty awesome recordings with only a modest variety of decent gear. Awesome! Many of you have no need for quantities of quality gear because you're only interested in recording in one genre. As long as you don't need your Marshall stack to sound like a Fender Twin, you're set. Many of you do electronica and/or MIDI and have no need of the kind of gear I've been talking about. Lucky you! (Although, hard-core synth-heads will continue their quest to acquire every analog synth known to man). However, many of you use loops and samples for drums, orchestral instruments, voices, etc. All of what I'm talking about in this post has already been done for you. But I have more to say about the quality of samples/loops, and I need to address programming and aesthetic issues. I'll talk about all that in a later post.
One warning: more and better gear may not be what you need to improve your recordings. Many people "upgrade" because they mistakenly think that a $2,000 outboard compressor is going to solve all their compression problems. It will sound great, no debate. But if you don't know how to edit the parameters according to the needs of the signal, you're better off spending your money on Joe Gilder's Understanding Compression videos. (Plus, if you've been paying attention, you really need several nice compressors to choose from. Cha-ching!) Gear Acquisition Syndrome (G.A.S.) often strikes when the problem has nothing to do with gear. I'd be willing to bet that you need more education...not more gear.
The take-away for this week's entry is the same as the others: You can accept your limitations and/or take steps to improve your situation. Let's say you know what you're doing, work in a great room, and have a decent monitoring situation. If you can't get radio-quality recordings you may want to consider which piece(s) of gear you need to improve your input. But before you head over to http://www.sweetwater.com, I'd wait until I'm done with the REALITY CHECK series. There are several more posts that reveal limitations more devistating than having crappy gear. And you thought I was about to give you permission to satisfy your gear lust. ;-)
Enjoy the ride!
Special thanks to @Gilligan204 at for fact checking and making suggestions on portions of this post.
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