What i need for...

[GuttaLaser]

Hi ppl,

I'm talking here to the recording studio pros.

I want to build a little recording/mixing and rehearsal studio with a personal mix/monitoring system.

All the istruments will be direct to board (like Roland V-Drum, guitar and bass amp/cab modelers, keyboards etc... only the vocal/vocals are miced).

What I want is a mixer (or any other solution) with:
- 8 ch for the drum (kick, snare, hi-hat, hi-toms, lo-toms, ride, crash, china)
- 2x 2 ch for L/R electric guitars stereo
- 4x 2 ch for other L/R line level instruments stereo (vsts, keyboards, etc)
- 2x mono ch for wet and dry bass
- about 6x mono ch for mics

Here's the hard part:
Each mono and stereo channels must have 2 pre fader direct outs:
- 1 for the personal mixer/monitoring system
- 1 for the recording system (daw)
And all the channels must have an insert selectable pre/post fader.

All the post-production, mixing and mastering will be ITB inside the daw.

How can I do that? What I need? What is the nearest solution to that?

TNX

 

[Geezerjohn]

I have a few comments. If you are near a music store, go visit and check out different solutions. Companies spend a TON of money on marketing trying to get you to buy their stuff. Nothing like a first hand assessment to cut through all the BS.

By my math, it appears you are collectively needing 22 channels so I'm thinking a minimum of 24 channel board if you want a "live sound band" situation. It is not likely that you will be recording all of this at once, and more likely you will be recording individual players one at a time (perhaps over a scratch track), but you will be rehearsing everyone at the same time. For rehearsal, just two channels will probably be enough for the drums (if they are electric). You'll need more for acoustic drums, or you may be able to make do with a pair of overhead mics and a mic on the snare. High quality stereo sound is really not necessary for rehearsal.

For recording, you'll need a track for the click track in addition to the tracks you mentioned. Sounds like you need a board with several aux sends. Many boards have pre/post fader selection. Boards with submixes are much easier for mixing. Most of the studios I have worked in use Pro Tools. You might consider a Pro Tools rig for recording, and a Jam Hub for rehearsal. I run Pro Tools in my home studio. I have mixed and mastered several album projects for signed bands as well as aspiring artists.

The real question you should be thinking about is what you intend to do with the final product. Will you be recording for personal pleasure? Will you be recording to make demos (a waste of time). Will you be making commercial product? Carefully think through what you really need based on what the desired outcome will be. You can get a pretty good result if the project is for personal pleasure, but not if you have any aspirations of making a commercial product, (at least IMHO).

As for mixing and mastering, you will need a LOT of processing power. If you use mastering software such as T-Racks you'll burn through CPU like crazy. Even more if you are running a bunch of plug ins. I'm just sayin'...

I hope this helps you sort out what you need.

 

[Jeries]

Geezerjohn has A LOT of good points...

1. If you're doing electric drums you don't need more than 2 tracks- what you could do- is record a MIDI track then if you must eq/tweak the individual drums you could just flat out "reamp" the drums from scratch- or a program like BFD. (is that program still around even?)
There's really no benefit to individual tracks besides wasting resources

2. Speaking of wasting tracks- Stereo guitars aren't necessarily a good thing, or a desirable thing in many situations-

3. You might want to look into a Presonus Studio Live
you want sends for everything fine, but you could at least BUS the instruments before monitoring/front of house

BUT really- Geezerjohn brings up the most important point/question
What do you want to do?accomplish?

Let's say you complete your dream rig of everything you want, under budget and you're happy. There isn't much you can really do with that product. Your essentially building a live venue local band recording rig- you're basically becoming like the local venues that are nice sometimes and burn you a CD of your set after the show- because they live mix it, mix it with monitors, then burn it to a CD. (or export for mixing/mastering/etc).

My opinion is your making a lot of work to make a subpar product that has limited use.

It would be good for listening back on band practice or referencing but not for commercial release music

I also don't think you need a 'studio pro' you need someone that knows mobile recording well- and there's rigs designed for that

Not to be rude but- if you plan is to make CD's and do fully recording/produced music- recorded in this manner- you'd get not much worse of a result just putting a Tascam $80 digital recorder in the middle of a room.

Keep in mind about the post production- if you're using lets say an Axe FX, and a Roland Electric Kit- very little post production should be necessary. Those drums come out good sounding- as they should. But you're going to burn through resources running plugins of 8 tracks of useless electric drums.

My honest advice- buy that presonus mixer and use it as far as you can get- do the most you can with it- but don't go any farther than that for this venture.