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HOW TO SET UP A PROFESSIONAL HOME STUDIO
by Mike Collins

Most composers working to picture will need to set up some kind of home studio or project studio at some point in their career. With the advent of the latest digital technologies and the explosion in relatively-affordable 'prosumer' home recording equipment it is now possible to set up an extremely professional studio right in your own home or in a small rented studio space. I am not going to discuss simple setups like 'portastudios' here, as these are still intended for making demos or amateur recordings - even though they can be capable of professional results. Instead let's look at putting together a serious setup which a professional composer or musician could aspire to.

Suitable Space

First of all, you need to find a suitable space - and 20 Square Metres would be a good size. Ideally you need a control room space and a recording space, so you could partition a large room into two, although you can get by with just one room if this is not possible. Another possibility is to build a small booth in a corner of the room in which one or two musicians
can play their instruments. Arranger Richard Niles, for example, has built a small studio at the bottom of his garden which consists of a room of around this size or maybe a little larger partitioned into two halves (control room and studio). The studio area is further partitioned to provide areas for a small grand piano, a drumkit and a vocal booth - and
with a sound-proofed box in the control room area containing his guitar amplifier. Talking about sound-proofing, you can pretty much forget about this unless you have a very large budget. Apart from taming any excessive reverberation or reflections using carpets or other good absorbers hung on the walls where necessary, the best you can probably do here is to avoid annoying the neighbours by recording at reasonable hours, choose the room
with the thickest walls which is furthest away from anyone else, and keep the windows and doors closed while recording to avoid sounds from outside getting into your microphones.
 
Mixing desk

You will need a good mixing console at the heart of your setup, and the best choices today are almost certainly either the Yamaha 02R, which I use, or the Mackie Digital 8-Bus console which Richard uses. The Yamaha has been around longer and will set you back around £5000 or so depending on the options, while the Mackie is only just available recently and will probably cost nearer to £10,000 depending on options. These mixers use digital technology and include signal processors such as compressors, reverb and
delays which previously you had to buy as 'outboard' equipment. Of course you may still want to add that special piece of outboard kit such as a TC Electronic M3000 or a Lexicon PCM90 reverb unit for around £1500 or a Joe Meek compressor for £1000.
 
Computer Hardware/Software

Probably the most popular recording equipment among professionals is the Mac-based Pro Tools system. This will set you back around £7500 for a professional system, and you will need to spend another £5000 or so on a suitable Macintosh computer with one, or ideally two 20" monitors, fast hard drives to record your audio, plenty of RAM, a CD-R machine to make CD's, and other typical peripherals. The Pro Tools system comes with its own software which is first rate for recording audio, but many people find that it is better to use a MIDI + audio sequencer software such as Cubase VST, Logic Audio, Studio Vision or Digital Performer. These packages work with Pro Tools hardware to record audio, but also have first-rate MIDI sequencing features along with music notation capabilities and cost from £300 to £600. Of course, if you are seriously involved in music arranging or composition, you will probably need a heavyweight music notation software package as well. Coda's Finale software is widely used by music publishers such as Chester Music and by composers such as Mike Batt and has all the features you could wish for at under £700. However, Sibelius are just about to release their £700 music scoring package for the Mac which provides the stiffest competiton for Finale - and now includes a music
scanning capability. Lots of other software is available - often as so-called software 'plug-ins' for Pro Tools, Cubase - or even Sibelius. So you can get software versions of Focusrite EQ, Drawmer compressors and other popular signal processors, along with special effects packages such as Arboretum's HyperPrism or Prosoniq's Orange Vocoder which let you create the kind of effects you hear used in films and on electronic music
recordings. You could easily spend another £500, or even two or three times this amount, if you want to add a few of these 'toys' - but you can achieve effects which would be impossible to create otherwise.
 
 Synchronization & Video Equipment/Sound Modules

If you are going to use Midi in your setup you will need a Midi interface and master keyboard, and maybe a synthesizer and a sampler. Recommended interfaces are the £250 Opcode  Studio 64x or the £650 MotU Midi Timepiece AV models; there are zillions of good Midi keyboards available for under £1000 (I still favour the old Yamaha KX88 or the similar Kurzweil model); the Roland JV1080 is probably the most versatile synth module for under
£1000; and the best samplers are made by E-Mu, Kurzweil and Akai - ranging in price from around £1500 to around £3000.

For music to picture you will need at least a VHS video player, costing between £200-600 - ideally one which lets you overdub onto the audio tracks. For professional work you could do with a Sony U-Matic (available second-hand for well under £1000 these days) or a Betacam SP or better if you can afford several grand. Having said this, things are changing with the introduction of low-cost video capture cards for PCs - so you could consider getting a Miro DC30 or similar card for around £500 to digitize the video you are sent. Of course you could spend £3000 or more for an entry-level Media 100 system, or £7500 for a more professional Miro DV1000 or an entry-level AVID system if you have the budget. And don't forget that you will need a reasonable-quality video monitor as well, which could set
you back another £500-1500.
For synchronization, the Mark of the Unicorn Midi Timepiece AV or Digital Time Piece units are highly recommended. The MTP AV is also a Midi/Computer interface and costs around £500 while the DTP provides just about every kind of sync input and output you will need and costs about £1000.
 
Microphones You will probably want to choose at least a small selection of versatile high-quality microphones, and I can recommend the Neumann M149 or the new M147 for vocals and wind instruments, the AKG C12VR or Solid Tube for guitars, a pair of AKG C414s for stereo miking pianos, drums or percussion instruments, and a pair of Shure SM57 or SM58s for vocals and general use. Costs range from, say, £200 for a pair of Shures, to £1200 for a pair of C414s, to £3000 or more if you go for the more expensive Neumann or AKG
models. You should also choose a high-quality 'nearfield' monitoring system which will handle the dynamic range of your recordings adequately and reproduce all the instruments accurately and without colouration. These speakers should be positioned quite close to your listening position so that you are in the acoustic 'near field' receiving primarily the direct sound from the speakers rather than reflected sound from the rest of the room. Popular choices include models from Dynaudio, Genelec, Tannoy and others. I use ATC SCM20's paired with a Bryston 4B 250 Watt per channel amplifier as these are relatively small and compact, yet they provide all the dynamic range I need for recording along with the clarity and detail required for editing and mastering. You should budget around £2500 for your speakers and amplification - although some models come with built-in amplifiers for a bit less. Yamaha NS10 speakers are also widely used for near field monitoring (and cost a lot less), but these have a restricted low-frequency response, a coloured mid-frequency response, and amuch-restricted dynamic range compared with the ATC's for example - so I
would definitely recommend avoiding these for high-quality recording.
 
Other hardware

So what else will you need? Well, you should get a DAT recorder to 'master' your recordings onto, and expect to pay around £1000 for a suitable professional model. You will probably also want a CD player such as one of the popular Denon rackmount models for £250 or so, maybe a record turntable such as at Technics SL1200 for another £250, and possibly a standard cassette player or maybe a Mini Disc player for around £150 so you can make listening copies of your recordings for your car or to give to friends. And
don't forget stands for your microphones and speakers, along with headphones for the musicians and cables to wire everything up - all of which can add more than few hundred pounds to your budget.

Adding all these prices up roughly comes to around £30,000, which is probably about the right price if you are equipping a room from scratch - not accounting for furniture, decorations, and any soundproofing or airconditioning you might decide to go for as well. You can get a result for half this price - but you will probably end up with some awkward
compromises - and, if you have the money, you can always spend many timesmore.
Now go for it!
 
Mike Collins © 2000

Email Mike: 100271.2175@compuserve.com

MUSIC SCORING SOFTWARE: Sibelius vs Finale
 
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