Generally, when users think about making an investment to improve their studio, the first thing that comes to mind is buying more gear. Of course, buying new mics, preamps, compressors and so on will improve the studio, but other equally important aspects shouldn’t be neglected, such as improving the workspace or your own training. In fact, once you have a minimum set of tools, the quality of your work in the studio will probably improve faster if you invest in things like acoustic treatment or education (YOUR education).

With that in mind, this article offers a series of possible courses of action for improving a home studio, divided into the following sections:

- Workspace: room improvements, acoustic treatment, ergonomics, gear setup, etc.
- Audio gear: preamps, EQs, mics, compressors...
- The computer: RAM, hard drives, displays, etc.
- Software, plug-ins, Digital Audio Workstation...
- Training: courses, methods, videos, techniques, lessons, etc.

Workspace
Acoustic treatment: this is the first step to take, without a doubt. There is no point in improving everything else if the room you work in misrepresents what you hear on the monitors because of incorrect placement, room modes or other problems.

A basic point is to make your listening position symmetrical with respect to the walls of the room. Also make sure the sweet spot (where your head sits) forms an equilateral triangle with the monitors, and that the tweeters point at your ears. Don’t be afraid to use a tape measure to make the necessary adjustments.

Once the monitors are properly positioned (relative to each other, to your position and to the control surface), the next step could be treating the first-reflection points with absorbent material and measuring the room’s response to check for room modes.

You’ll find more information in the articles “Controlling Your Studio” (www.ispmusica.com/articulo.asp?id=678) and “Acoustic Materials” (www.ispmusica.com/articulo.asp?id=750).

Of course, serious room treatment means hiring a professional, but you can make many basic adjustments without a big outlay.

Improve ergonomics: Buy a good chair and make sure all the gear you use regularly is within reach. Desktop racks are very useful, since they let you place the gear in a practical way while also allowing it to ventilate. Avoid placing noisy equipment nearby.

Comfort for the player: To get the best out of a musician, they must at the very least be comfortable. Sit in their spot and think about what you can do to improve it: chair, table, lighting, drink, the headphone jack, instrument stands, music stand, tuner, etc.

Control room and live room: To many this may seem like a luxury, but it is actually not that complicated to set aside one room for control and another for the live room (as long as you have a free room). There’s no need to think about installing a glass window, snakes and all the paraphernalia. Make a small hole low in the wall and run some cables through to receive the mic signals. Using a talkback mic you can communicate with the musician without any trouble and, if you really need to see the other person, you can use small cameras (like baby monitors).

Audio gear
Mics: Shure SM57 (www.shure.com). The basics. You should have at least one. With it you can record anything: percussion, electric guitar, vocals, winds...

From there, your next investment will depend on the instruments you typically record, but a first step could be a large-diaphragm condenser mic to improve your vocal recordings.

What next? Perhaps a matched pair of small-diaphragm condenser mics, which will let you make the leap to stereo recording, whether as a main pair or as room mics.

And after that? Again, it will depend on what you usually record, but a ribbon mic can add a special color to guitars, ambience, vocals... combined with the 57, a very good pairing for guitar amps.

And so on to infinity: the more options you have, the better. Which mics should you buy? Some brands that have scored well in our tests for value are Violet Design (www.violet-design.com) and Audio Technica (www.audio-technica.com), but there are many more.

Go to the ISP website and visit the sections “Digital Production -> Mics for Home Studio” and “Pro Audio -> Mics.” You’ll find many articles on microphones, both theoretical and product tests.

Preamps, EQ, compression: Although the preamps in today’s interfaces are very good, you should have at least one good mic preamp, as well as a good EQ and a good hardware compressor.

Unless you need to record something like a full drum kit or several musicians at once, this gear gives you a powerful signal chain. If you have to record several instruments simultaneously, it’s a good idea to reserve this chain for the most important instrument. In this field there are, literally, thousands of options in preamps, equalizers and compressors for every taste and budget. As with mics, ISP runs different tests every month, so if you look around the website you’ll find suggestions for every budget.

A very trendy option lately, for its practicality, is buying a lunchbox for 500 Series modules. These lunchboxes are enclosures that house several of these modules (usually six or ten), so the lunchbox can be filled up little by little. There are modules for every kind of gear: preamp, equalizer, compressor, de-esser, limiter, etc. The best known are API, but there are now many manufacturers with 500 Series products. Some new classics are:

Preamps: API 512c, LaChapell 583E, Purple Audio “The Biz MK”...
Equalizers: API 550b (four-band), Great River 32EQ, Purple Audio “Odd inductor” EQ, Chandler “Little Devil”...
Compressors: Pendulum OCL-500, API 525 Feedback, Purple Audio “Action FET”...

Module prices vary, and the six-slot lunchbox runs around €500 (more info at www.apiaudio.com and from the respective manufacturers). At the online store Mercenary Audio they are devoted to these modules; there is plenty of information on their page www.mercenary.com/500series.html (in English).

Patch panel: As you add more gear to your studio, you’ll see the need to buy a patch panel to make interconnecting it easier. How do you know when you need one? When, to avoid unplugging the cables that were such a hassle to connect to the back of the fantastic XXXX sitting right under the desk (did somebody mention desktop racks earlier?), you stop trying out an idea that just occurred to you along the lines of “what if I run this through here?”

If you plan to install a patch bay, don’t forget to budget for the new cabling you’ll need: a send and return from each piece of gear to the patch bay.

Monitors and headphones: We’re entering a whole universe again. There are, literally, thousands of options when choosing monitors.

If it’s your first time buying a pair, the best thing is to go to a specialty store and try a few with music you know (bring some CDs). Trust your ears and pick the ones you like most. After all, you’re the one who’s going to use them.

Remember that you shouldn’t obsess over having the best monitors; it’s better to know intimately the ones you have, as long as they meet some minimum standards. Today there are monitors you can work with in a home studio for under 300 euros. And if it’s not your first purchase, you’ve probably already heard of some, and others have been recommended to you... so you’ll know that, beyond a certain level, it is largely a matter of taste.

As for headphones, you should have at least one good pair, if not for yourself, then at least so that whoever is recording is comfortable. As with monitors, knowing the response of your headphones intimately can be a lifesaver.

The next step may be to have more than one pair of monitors so you can check the mix on different systems. Again, the second pair doesn’t need to be spectacular; the simple fact of switching between monitors makes the mixing process easier. For this, a monitor controller is really useful. Most of them also offer other functions such as talkback, volume, source selection, a headphone jack, etc. You’ll find more information in the article “How Do You Listen to Your Mixes?” (www.ispmusica.com/articulo.asp?id=1735)

Controllers: With so many functions in today’s DAWs, having a small controller like the Alfatrack (www.frontierdesign.com) can speed up your work a lot. Going a step further, there’s Digidesign’s Command|8. And of course, better still a C|24 (www.digidesign.com), and onward from there...

Other accessories: It costs nothing to keep spare guitar strings, a drum head or two, a tuner, picks, a sound level meter, etc.

The computer itself
RAM: you can never have too much, and with today’s very hungry virtual instruments and plug-ins it always comes in handy. These days it isn’t that expensive to have your computer loaded with RAM, but before investing, check your DAW’s manual to see how much RAM it can use. Sometimes there are surprises, and the limit is imposed by the DAW, not the computer.

External hard drive: You back up to an external hard drive at the end of every day, right? Nowadays 1 TB of capacity costs around €100, and there are many free incremental backup programs that will let you save all your material with a single click at the end of a day’s work. Just in case the drive you recorded on fails... because they do fail.

Naturally, there are many options, but for Mac iBackup (www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup) works very well, and on Windows Cobian (www.cobiansoft.com) has stood out lately.

UPS: One of the very reasons many hard drives meet their end is power surges and abrupt system shutdowns. Buy a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) and protect your computer and all its contents from these incidents. They start at €50.

Tune your computer: Many processes consume resources and are secondary. On the ISP forums you’ll find a lot of information on how to “tweak” your computer (Windows or Mac) for audio. You might also consider buying a new one and using it only for the studio, with no Internet, antivirus, firewall, print queues, fancy graphic effects, etc.

Display/Monitors: two is always better than one. If your computer isn’t very old, its graphics card will probably let you connect two displays to gain workspace.

Software, plug-ins, DAW...
Upgrade your DAW: Generally, new versions of DAWs (and of all software, for that matter) include many improvements, in both features and workflow. Keeping your main recording/editing program up to date isn’t that expensive and can bring many benefits.

Buy plug-ins: As with hardware, you can never have too many plug-ins. Today there are hundreds of makers of high-quality plug-ins. You can take a look at the article “A Tour of Plug-ins”

The world of VST plug-ins and instruments is very broad. If you’re on Pro Tools you can convert them to RTAS format using a converter like FXpansion’s “VST to RTAS” (www.fxpansion.com).

Training
Courses, books, articles: The best place in your studio to invest is in yourself. Read technical articles regularly, buy online courses and books on recording, mic techniques, mixing, etc. Some really interesting courses/videos are those from Multi-Platinum (www.multi-platinum.com), Groove 3 (www.groove3.com) or the new ones from Alan Parson (www.artandscienceofsound.com). (All in English).

Master classes are also a great place to learn. ISP has previously covered some of those taught by Michel Martín, and at the moment those from Microfusa and Esama also stand out.

Train your ear: listen to more music. With apps like Spotify or Deezer you have access to a large part of the music that exists. Listen to great productions and analyze how they were made. Learn from the greats.

It’s also worth training your ear to discriminate frequencies, depth planes, reverbs... The article “Ear Training” is a good starting point (www.ispmusica.com/articulo.asp?id=1218), based on classics like “Golden Ears” by Dave Moulton or “Understanding and Crafting the Mix” by William Moylan.

Use reference CDs: When recording and mixing, it’s a good idea to listen to familiar references to help keep your bearings. Build your own collection of reference songs, with tracks you like for how they sound overall, for the kick, the guitars, the vocals... Tracks you don’t like are also useful (for being, say, too bright), so you know when you’ve gone too far.

Keyboard shortcuts: Whenever you catch yourself performing the same action more than three times, ask yourself whether there’s a keyboard shortcut for it. There probably is, and learning it will save you time. After a few months of regularly checking shortcuts, you’ll clearly notice the difference in the speed, productivity and effectiveness of your work.

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