What You Need For a Recording Studio

Recording Studio Stuff

Gear lists tell you what to buy. They say much less about the things that decide whether a recording space is pleasant to work in: where people sit, how cables are organized, how the performer is heard, and what they hear. Those are the details that make a session run smoothly or stall every ten minutes.

This post is about that second list. Sources are Sound On Sound’s January 2021 “21 Ways To Improve Your Studio”, Neil Rogers on keeping musicians comfortable (September 2020), Paul White on cue monitoring (January 2003) and Wikipedia’s recording studio article.

Decide how many rooms you have

Wikipedia says a typical studio has a live room and a control room, plus isolation booths and a machine room in bigger studios. Most home studios have one room that has to do everything. The SOS team says this means balancing accurate monitoring against a good tracking environment, and that in a small space it usually means keeping the room fairly dry. They suggest software reverb to add depth, or cheap reflective material set up temporarily when tracking.

A control room with blue accent lighting, a console desk and keyboards, and a big window

Image: A studio control room with a large window by Jessicaperkins99, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

My own suggestion: if you have a choice of rooms, put the computer and speakers in the quieter one and run the microphone cable to the other. Wikipedia’s reason for a machine room, which keeps noisy fans out of the recording, applies to a single computer’s fan too.

Make it comfortable

The SOS team says it is easy to get so focused on gear that you forget a studio is supposed to be a creative, inspiring place. They suggest a comfortable chair for you and another for your collaborator, good lighting, fresh paint, artwork and better storage. Rogers makes a similar point: anything that contributes to a relaxed atmosphere and a good “vibe” will have a bigger impact on most clients than a collection of mic preamps.

Keep cables and patching under control

The SOS team says fighting through tangled cables just to plug something in is a real buzzkill, and that a patchbay can keep things tidy and give you nearly instant access to everything. Their alternative for a small studio is a compact analog mixer with enough inputs to leave everything permanently plugged in. They also say to fix or replace the dodgy cables that “kinda work and kinda don’t”, since intermittent crackles and level changes are frustrating and good cables cost very little.

Plan a way for people to talk to each other

Rogers says a talkback mic in the control room doesn’t solve how the performer talks to you. He suggests one or two listen mics in the live room so that musicians don’t have to shout or stretch to reach a mic, and notes that a dedicated mic can have a compressor on it to pick up artists further across the room. The SOS team adds that a monitor controller can offer features such as mono summing, left and right mutes, instant speaker switching and talkback, which many interfaces lack.

Plan the headphone feeds

White explains two ways to feed headphones. In large commercial studios, each performer gets a feed derived from a separate pre-fade mix bus on the console. In a project studio there may be few free sends, so the simplest setup feeds closed-back headphones from the output of the recorder or mixer. White says closed-back headphones prevent the backing track leaking into the microphone, and that a headphone amplifier close to the singer lets them adjust their own level, and the multiple outputs help when two or more performers record together.

A desk with a computer screen, a keyboard and a speaker on each side, with a microphone and headphones at the front

Image: A friend’s home studio by David J, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Think about a second pair of speakers

The SOS team says even if you already have a capable set of monitors, a secondary speaker can give a useful perspective. This is more of a mix-stage item than a first-day one, but it affects how you lay out the desk.

A checklist

My own condensed list of things to plan before buying anything:

  1. Where will the computer go, and can you keep its noise out of the recording?
  2. Where will the performer stand, and how will they speak to you?
  3. How many people will need headphones at once?
  4. How will you keep cables tidy, and is a patchbay or small mixer worth it?
  5. Where do the speakers go? The series post Studio Monitors and Headphones: How to Hear Your Own Recordings covers placement.
  6. Is the chair comfortable for a long session?

This is quite a different list from a gear list, and it is far cheaper to plan on paper.

Sources