There’s a new live Jack Mud performance of the song “Carolina” up this week. See it here.
Now seems a good time to share an update on the progression of my home A/V studio. I’ve been beefing things up slowly without spending much. The set-up is sparse but good for demos:
- Macbook Pro
- Samsung Galaxy S9 phone as my camera
- Adam Audio T5V monitors (speakers)
- Presonus Audiobox USB 96 (“middle man” mini digital mixer)
- Presonus M7 condenser mic
- Shure SM57 unidirectional mic
That’s all the gear I’ve been fiddlin with. A stripped down set up like this is limiting, sure, but I tell myself: who am I but some rank amateur recordist who wouldn’t benefit from more stuff anyways? My philosophy with the space is basic: get good bang for your buck. And if I have something I don’t need, ditch it. Life’s too short to hang on to bad relationships with gear.
So the full A/V set up with the phone cost $1,800 CAD. (Plus the 2013 Macbook which was a work computer. A similar one today would be $500. I highly recommend a refurb Macbook Pro.)
Cool stuff
These monitors:
Adam Audio T5VI’d never owned a quality pair of monitors before, but I’ve had good computer speakers which ran me something like $175 for the pair. No comparison when it comes to editing. For triple the price, the T5V monitors offer a much more honest representation of what was recorded.
For solo singer-songwriters, maybe it’s not so critical to seek the purity as it’d be if you were, say, mixing a bunch of recordings by a full band. But it’s still important if you seek the confidence that a mix will sound pretty good to most listeners. Cheap speakers mean anyone listening on good speakers might find flaw.
I tested monitors in the $180-$250 per range, the $250-$400 range, and the $500-$2,000 range. There were obvious improvements at each price level and all of them were much much better than your standard set of speakers, like these (my old Behringer ones):
Good for listening to music. suck as(s) monitors.This is an important takeaway. Spend $265 on a pair of really good speakers, or spend $360 for low end monitors, and the difference is pretty huge. Monitors are 10 times better.
I feel like the goal as a solo performer is to avoid complexities because that helps avoid mistakes. And all of your mistakes are so front and centre all the time and can’t be glossed over. Meanwhile, most upgrades tend to add complexity. But that’s not true here. Monitors are technically the same as any speaker in terms of the set up and they help you sound better while spending less effort on mixing. No Brainer.
Crucial gizmo
Presonus AudioBox 96One reason the quality of my older home recordings is poor is because I didn’t use a unit like this. It relays a much cleaner mix of the live input than you’ll get plugging a mic directly into your computer (even if you have a great soundcard). It also powers your mics. When you buy this unit for under $150, you also get quality recording software (Studio One), which blows my mind considering how expensive software like that was a few years ago. You mean we don’t have to pirate that crap on the web anymore!? Whaaaat!
I got a Presonus bundle that included a mic and headphones for $275. That was a mistake. The over-the-ear headphones that came with don’t insulate well. If you’re recording a vocal track over a pre-recorded track, they’ll bleed into your mic, even if you’re listening at a medium volume. They’re comfy and good for casually listening to music though.
The Presonus M7 condenser mic sounds a bit flat and not in a good way. I had the chance to try a few higher end mics when I was working with Dave Beatty at QED in Hamilton and they were heads and tails more true sounding and warmer. Aside from sounding too flat and untrue (false? bogus?), the Presonus mic doesn’t sound bright or warm either. We can do better.
There are a lot of brand new mics in the $200-$400 range that seem interesting. Or you can look at used stuff. I’m not quite sure where to begin mic shopping, but this is my obvious area for improvement. The Shure unidirectional mic I mentioned is pretty cool for live guitar, but my feeling is there are better ways to double mic live guitar plus voice. I’ll figure it out slowly but surely.