Upgrading my humble home studio?

[Anaon]

Hello!

I'm actually thinking of upgrading my home studio. I'd like to improve a lot of things but as you may guess, I need to make some choices and upgrade the most important things in my audio chain.

A brief preview of my gear:
Soundcard: ESI ESP 1010
Preamp: Joemeek VCQ1
Mics: Studio Projects C1, Oktava MK319 (voice, acoustic guitar), Oktava MK12 (Acoustic guitar, overheads), Shure SM57, T-Bone RM700 (electric guitar)
Monitors: Alesis Monitor MkII passive + RA100 amp
Software: Samplitude Pro 9

I record guitars, drums, percussions, keyboards (VSTi) and vocals. I have some ideas about what I should upgrade first but I want your opinion

Actually I'm recording vocals and I'll have to mix my songs soon.

Your help would be really appreciated Thanks!

[DeepSpace]

The most important thing in the audio chain (leaving aside your ears) is room treatment, so I'd start there.

Next in line is the monitor chain, and after that the converters.

These first three things can make the biggest difference, but are the most frequently overlooked (or under-funded) in home setups. I would attend to them first before giving thought to one money pre, an outboard comp and maybe a high end mic or two.

Before anyone can make useful suggestions about any of the specifics, though, you'd need to give an indication of the budget you have available for this exercise.

[Tomer1]

I would advice the same:
Priority nu.1 - Room treatment.
2- Monitors
3- The ESI was rather bang for the buck 4-5 years ago but since there has been improvements in technology so there is always room for improvements\upgrade in terms of AD\DA,maybe try out the Echo Audiofire line or RME Fireface.

Summing: If your on a limited budget,stick with the ESI and spend your money on better monitors and room treatment.

[warhead]

I think it must start with a question to you:

What is the weak point in your sound? In other words, what part of riding around in your car or listening on your home stereo to your own recordings stands out as something needing to be improved? Without knowing this it's hard to say where you should spend any money, if at all.

War

[Weasel9992]

Originally Posted by Tomer1

I would advice the same:
Priority nu.1 - Room treatment.
2- Monitors
3- The ESI was rather bang for the buck 4-5 years ago but since there has been improvements in technology so there is always room for improvements\upgrade in terms of AD\DA,maybe try out the Echo Audiofire line or RME Fireface.

Summing: If your on a limited budget,stick with the ESI and spend your money on better monitors and room treatment.

I'd second that advice. Can't mix what you can't hear.

Frank

[CrankyRayHanky]

Originally Posted by Anaon

Actually I'm recording vocals

Oktavamod the 319- especially great on vox

[Anaon]

Ok thanks for your replies. I didn't talk about budget because I thought that it has to be in the same range of my actual gear. Well, necessarly a bit more expensive but I try to go step by step. I'm always searching for the best stuff for the less money (like anyone I suppose?) but I really don't mind about hype or trend gear

So my room looks like this:

Space behind my monitors, a 25m² room with stony walls.

There is some acoustic stuffs like this on the walls here and there.

Oh yes, what about the problems... It's hard to explain it well in english (even in french ) but I always feel that my mix are dead, the bass and mediums on my monitors are strange, it's never like I mixed it on other systems, it's good with headphone/mp3 player but it's awful on computer speakers for example. The Alesis MkII was maybe good to start but I'm not really at ease with them anymore

Actually my ideas was to but a better soundcard, like RME Multiface or something like that. I also dream about monitors like Adam A7... I don't know. A good clean preamp could be usefull too, the Joemeek is quite colored.

Your help is great and your opinions mean a lot to me!! Thank you!!

[Tomer1]

These stone walls are beautiful and I belive should produce a better sounding room them brick wall,
Anyhow you need Broadband absorbers and lots of them.
You can build these yourself or buy commercial products like Glenn's company offer for example, The first option is of course cheaper.

A proper detailed drawing of your room will make it much easier for use to offer better sitting location for your mixing area then these picture (as much as they are nice and make me envy of you )

The A7s monitors are a good choice for under 1k,
I have used them and produced great mixes in a well treated room.

Moding your Oktava could be a cost effective way to improve your mic arsenal without spending alot of money on a highend mic.

Preamp-
If you can solder I would advice you to check out Fivefish.com for a great clean transformless preamp kit, up to 70db of clean noiseless gain ,around 80 US dollars a channel.

[warhead]

Room treatment and monitors before new mics etc.

That would be my approach.

The A7 is a stellar performer in its price range.

War

[Weasel9992]

Yeah...I don't think your problems are equipment-related, at least not at this stage. You'll need plenty, and I mean *plenty* of low end absorption judging from the problems you're describing and the look/compostion of the room. Is that a ceiling slanted into the back wall there? If so, you'll need to tame the high end reflections off of that as well.

Your monitor positioning is little off too...they should at least come up 18" or so from the looks of it. You could stand to move your mix position back a couple/few feet too.

Frank

[Anaon]

I never heard about moding the Oktava but I will read about it what does it bring?

Ok I will try to make a drawing of the room but it will be funny (thanks Tomer1 for the pictures )

Do you have some examples online of acoustic treatment I should add? Well you may need the room drawing, I do it right now...

Weasel9992 > If i understand well what is a "ceiling slanted", yes the room is just under the roof so it's slanted like that ^ above my head

[Anaon]

So... I hope this will help, sorry for this bad drawing all in all, it's something like that

[Weasel9992]

Any way you could move that drum kit further out into the room so you could get those corners with bass traps? I'd also suggest doing as many bass traps as you can stand on the back wall. How are those DIY panels working for on the early reflections?

Frank

[Anaon]

Originally Posted by Weasel9992

Any way you could move that drum kit further out into the room so you could get those corners with bass traps? I'd also suggest doing as many bass traps as you can stand on the back wall. How are those DIY panels working for on the early reflections?

Frank

Before I add these panels and the feather beds, the room was really really full of reverb, now it's really better, but I don't know if I have the skills to judge how I can improve the room treatment

[Weasel9992]

I have no doubt that the panels and feather beds knocked down a lot of the high mids and highs banging around in that, and that's good. The problem you're describing with your mixes (and the geometry of the room) though tells me that you're not hearing the low end accurately.

While every room is different, there are some basic things you can do to solve most of your problems. Take a look at this room setup link: http://www.gikacoustics.com/room_setup.php That will give you a good idea of how to get started....or it'll give you some information that you can form questions with.

Frank

[Anaon]

Your drawing looks a lot better thanks, it gives me some ideas! It seems that I have to fill the corners of my room...

Apart from acoustic treatment, changing monitors and soundcard is the best way to go actually isn't it?

Does the RME Multiface will be a lot better than my ESI 1010 or do I have to change for something more expensive?

As you may guess, I want to upgrade my gear only if I feel that there's a huge difference in sound...

[Weasel9992]

Originally Posted by Anaon

YApart from acoustic treatment, changing monitors and soundcard is the best way to go actually isn't it? Does the RME Multiface will be a lot better than my ESI 1010 or do I have to change for something more expensive? As you may guess, I want to upgrade my gear only if I feel that there's a huge difference in sound...

I hear you. After treatment I'd look at your converters, then I'd look at your monitors...Warren suggest the A7's, which I think are a great deal too. If you do it in that order, each successive step builds on the last. At the end you have a really strong monitoring chain. Money spent on all three of these areas is never wasted as long as you do your homework and get the right stuff.

Frank

[Anaon]

It sounds great to me!! I read a lot of good stuffs here about the Adam A7 and they are not too expensive. So I have to listen to them but I add them in my wishlist

But what about the "converters"? I always thought that RME was great but I'm not really "up to date" about this kind of gear, and I don't want to use firewire soundcards. So it's still an obscure field to me...

[Weasel9992]

It'll be better than the 1010, for sure. And by "converters" I mean analog to digital/digital to analog. Probably the best value on the market right now (IMHO) is SSL's XLogic unit. Wow.

Frank

[Anaon]

Originally Posted by Weasel9992

It'll be better than the 1010, for sure. And by "converters" I mean analog to digital/digital to analog. Probably the best value on the market right now (IMHO) is SSL's XLogic unit. Wow.

Frank

Sorry I feel like a real newbie now but I'm a bit confused. When I read about converters, I thought we talk about converters from soundcards basically, don't we?

SSL's XLogic is a channel strip or something else?

[Weasel9992]

No, when I say "converters" I mean whatever you use to convert an analog signal to a digital one, then a digital signal back to analog. For example, in my control room I have a console; 24 of the direct outs go to an SSL XLogic conversion box, which then sends them back to the tape in's and to an RME HDSP 9652 via ADAT then back out again the same way. So my XLogic does all my converting for me.

Right now your ESP1010 is the way you convert audio signals to digital format, right? I've never personally used the multiface, but people who have seem to like it...I'll bet it'll be noticable improvement on the ESP1010. For about $1,500 I've heard good things about the T.C. Electronic Studio Konnect stuff as well.

Does that all make sense?

Frank

[Anaon]

Yes, thanks so actually I'm using the ESP converters... And I use as well my Soundcraft M8 preamp for recording my drum kit.

[Weasel9992]

The M8's preamps aren't too bad either. I've got one I use for remote gigs.

Frank

[Anaon]

I really like this M8 too, it's really useful to me

Any other ideas about upgrades?

[Smoke M2D6]

I used to have the same monitors, and when i figured out exactly where my mixes would sit on other systems I actually liked them alot. One thing I would suggest is maybe a emu 1212 pci card, and $120 Roominator kit from aurelex. Did wonders for me, and only cost about $320.

[Anaon]

Originally Posted by Smoke M2D6

I used to have the same monitors, and when i figured out exactly where my mixes would sit on other systems I actually liked them alot. One thing I would suggest is maybe a emu 1212 pci card, and $120 Roominator kit from aurelex. Did wonders for me, and only cost about $320.

The EMU 1212 is so good? I plan to buy another computer for recording elsewhere and I wondered what soundcard I could put in, so this EMU 1212 could be the way...

Thanks fro your opinion

[A LaMere]

I'll row against the river here and say that I'd maybe looking at buying some decent pre's... or a decent pre/input chain. Perhaps one of the GRNV channels or if you can afford it a 500 series lunchbox with a new pre/eq selection... etc...

The weakness that can be easily improved is the input chain..

You could possibly use more dynamic mics also... especially if your only dynamic is a single 57. An Audix i5 or just a different dynamic choice of some kind might be nice.. but then again, it probably depends on what you're recording... and how often you use a dynamic, etc..

The thing with room treatment is... how far do you really want to go with it? If you've got a home studio do you want to bring someone in to actually design treatment for you.. do you really need 'broadband' absorbers...? are you really frustrated with how your mixes translate when you work at home?? Do you take the mix out to the car and does it sound COMPLETELY different than what you were just listening to?

I have a studio 'in home' and get better translation out of it than any studio I've ever worked in... I've worked in different studios in different places all over the US for the last 10 or so years... For my home, I bought two crappy 'foam' absorber packs for a couple of hundred bucks each I think... simply to make the room more dead... and yep, it works just fine. A solution many here at the 'slutz would frown upon, but also one that works for me well... very well even.

The trick to making things translate is to simply learn your environment and monitoring imo. You can spend A LOT of money on room treatment and still.... you won't have a perfect environment as they all have their quirks.

The single best thing that I've bought in order to improve the quality of my recordings at home is a first class pre/eq/input chain... So it often gets my vote.

[Fred67]

As I in another thread asking for advice reg. converters or upgrading monitors, I must agree to what ALamere says.

I got myself an high-end pre a while back and that, to me, was a GREAT investment. My recording after that sounded more open, in your face, what have you.

Up til now, that was by far the best buy for me in a long time...IMO.

...and now, back to thinking about upgrading myself

Good luck!

[Anaon]

It's really interesting for me to have different opinions. Feel free to share them

I think it can be good to improve the acoustic treatment, it's something that I care for but as y ou guess, I'd like to do it by myself, more into the DIY state of mind more than opening a professionnal studio... So advices about acoustic treatment are really interesting too

About preamp, I was searching for a "cleaner" preamp to go with my Joemeek, someting more neutral, I posted in another topic for that but I'm not really convinced by a particular preamp. I think about a SPL Goldmike or an ART MPA Gold, both are not too expensive but I don't know if it's so good...

Thanks for your help!

[Weasel9992]

For what it's worth, I have two MPA Gold preamps. I changed the tubes in each (Amperex in one, Telefunken in the other)...they're fantastic pre's for the money.

Frank