Ken

Voice Recording Studio In Your Bedroom

June 6, 2017 by Ken 1 Comment

It’s easy to create a voice recording studio in a bedroom at home in 2019. Using a computer and just a couple other small bits of gear, you can easily record professional sounding voice overs at home.
Most people think you need to have a super expensive microphone to make really top-notch voice recordings. Either that, or they think you need to go to a professional voice recording studio.
Fortunately, neither of those things is true.
So why do so many people make such poor quality audio recordings at home? The answer is almost always this: a lack of knowledge.
I’m not saying you need to be an audio recording engineer to create professional audio at home. But there are some basic things you should know.
Without the basic understanding of a few simple things, even the most expensive microphone in the world won’t help you make professional sounding voice recordings. But if you DO understand these few important concepts, you can make even a really cheap microphone sound good.

So What Do I Need To Know?

Simply put, you need to know how to prevent and/or remove noise in your voice recording studio. When I say “noise,” I’m referring to any sounds that you do NOT want in your recording.
I assume the thing you DO want in the recording is your voice. That means anything that is not your voice is noise. Major examples include:

Room sound – reverb and echo from your voice bouncing off the hard surfaces of your room
Electronic noise like hiss or crackling sounds
Extraneous noises
- barking dogs,
- crying babies,
- air conditioning blowers,
- mouth noises (p-pops, saliva clicks, slip smacks, etc.)

That pretty much sums it up. If you know some of the main reasons why these noises happen, and then know how to either prevent them, or fix them if they do get recorded, you’ll be able to get the best quality possible from even the cheapest microphones.

Where do I Find This Knowledge?

I’ve written a handy guide, complete with videos, that will teach you how to improve the audio you record in your voice recording studio. It’s called Home Recording Awesomeness: 6 Mostly Free Tips For Making Your Audio Sound Expensive.
As the title suggests, most of the tips are things you can put into action immediately, without having to buy any gear or build anything.
You’ll learn things like how to use software (even free software) to get rid of noise in your recordings, since it is pretty darned impossible to prevent absolutely every possible noise from being recorded.
You’ll also learn some super simple things to do with a microphone that can make a huge difference. In fact I’ll give away the first tip right now. It’s simply – get your mouth closer to the mic.
I know! That sounds WAY too simple to make any kind of real difference doesn’t it? Well you can hear the difference for yourself in the video that accompanies this tip in the guide.

Hey, What About Those “Couple Of Other Bits Of Gear”?

Oh you remember that? Yes, in the first part of this article I said “Using a computer and just a couple other small bits of gear, you can easily record professional sounding voice overs at home.”
You probably have guessed by now that one of those other bits of gear is a microphone. Yes, you’ll definitely need one of those. But what kind?
I’ll assume that you’re just starting out and probably want things to be simple at first. So I recommend a USB microphone.

USB mics are great because you can just plug them straight into your computer’s USB port and start recording. But don’t just grab any old mic with a USB plug on it. You need something that will make you sound like a pro. There are lots of choices for lots of prices. But I recommend starting with the Samson Q2U, which is only about $50.
If you’d like to hear a voice recording I made with a Samson Q1U, check out my post Voice Over Recording Using Audacity and a $49.00 USB Mic.
While USB mics are a great bang for the buck and super convenient, most of them do put out a low-level hiss. Of course, with the 6-Tips guide, you’ll know how to get rid of that after the fact. But you can make the jump to a different kind of set-up that uses a standard (by which I mean “not USB”) microphone and something called an “interface.”
In order for a microphone to record into a computer, it needs two things (which are built right into a USB mic):

An analog-to-digital converter, and
A preamplifier

An interface box (well, sometimes they look like little tubes instead of boxes, but just go with me on this…:)) such as a Focusrite Scarlett, which is what I use, has everything a mic needs to record into a computer – the converter and the preamplifier.
The interface box plugs into the computer with a USB cable. Then you simply plug your mic into the interface box and you’re ready to record your awesome voice overs.
You’ll also need some software. For voice over recording, you may never need anything more fancy that the incredible Audacity audio recording software. Why is it so amazing. Well, mostly because it’s free :-P. But also because it can do all the basics – very possibly everything you will ever need it to do! That post I mentioned above (Voice Over Recording Using Audacity and a $49.00 USB Mic) has audio recorded with Audacity, as the title suggests.
The last piece of gear you’ll want is headphones. These don’t have to be expensive. But you do want a good way to hear the details of your voice recording to make sure it is as clean and free of noise as possible. You can usually hear little things in headphones that you can’t hear when just listening to your recording through speakers.
You can always upgrade the mic, interface, headphones and software at a later date. But these items I listed are pretty awesome already. If and when you decide to upgrade, you can do that a little at a time as your budget allows.
So now you know. You can set up a voice recording studio pretty much anywhere you can put a computer, microphone and – if you’re not using a USB mic – an interface box. I think a bedroom is as good a place as any:).
Now go out there and get voice over jobs!

Home Studio Recording: Creating Pro Audio In 2019

June 2, 2017 by Ken Leave a Comment

When folks hear the term “home studio” they often picture special rooms filled with expensive scary-looking equipment. But that is an outdated image. I’d like you to replace it with something else.
From now on, when you think of a home studio, I’d like you to picture your computer. There should also be some kind of microphone nearby. That’s it! In 2019, technology has advanced far enough to allow us to do amazing things.
In the “old days,” a home studio for audio production had to have certain pieces of hardware. And that hardware was usually large and expensive. For example, you had to have a mixer AND an audio recording unit. If you wanted to do multi-track recording, that mixer had to be a special kind of mixer that let you connect to that audio recorder in a certain way.
That is why so many people still envision mixing boards as part of home recording studios. But I actually caution AGAINST using a mixer. See my article Why You Should Not Use A Mixer In Your Home Recording Studio for more on that.

The Home Studio of 2019

All you really need besides a computer is something to plug a mic into. That something is an interface box, which connects to your computer via USB (or thunderbolt, etc.). These are usually small enough to fit in one hand! Some interface units – like the Shure X2U – are about the size of a lipstick tube. My interface of choice is a little red box called the Focusrite Scarlett.
So what should your vision of a home recording studio be now? Let’s try something like the picture below, a computer with a small interface box, and a microphone. There are headphones in this picture, but those aren’t out of place in any home computer setup. That’s it!

How Expensive Is the Gear In the 2019 Home Studio?

Technically, you can set up a home studio for about five bucks! That would include just a cheap “computer mic” (usually made of plastic) and free audio recording software. But if we’re being realistic, you’re probably not going to be able to record professional quality audio that way.
I would say that the minimum amount you’ll have to spend is about $54. I know! Crazy, right? That’s how much the Samson Q2U USB microphone costs. In my opinion, this is the most cost effective way to start recording good quality audio. And with a USB mic, you don’t need a separate interface box.

Is That All I Will Ever Need?

Depending on what you record in your home recording studio, then the $54 dollar studio may be all you need. For example, if you narrate videos, produce podcasts, and other basic voice-over recording, that may well be enough to make you sound professional.
But if you are a musician, you may want a bit more. If you want to do professional voice-overs, you may also want more, or better equipment.
The good news is that you can upgrade a little at a time. I am a huge fan of letting your need drive your purchases. Don’t just buy a piece of gear because it is supposed to be good, or because a sales person said you need one.
A few examples of how to upgrade would be to move to the microphone-and-interface setup I described earlier. This would involve a large diaphragm condenser microphone, which is a good all-around mic. An entry-level mic like this would be the Audio-Technica AT2020. And then you’d need an interface box to plug that into.
I have written a lot about gear to get started with an upgraded home studio. Check out my article series How To Build A Home Record Studio for more details on gear.
Also, here is a free guide I wrote that shows you how to get the best sounding audio in a poor room (most of us who record at home) – 6 Mostly Free For Making Your Audio Sound Expensive.

Why You Should Not Use A Mixer In Your Home Recording Studio, Pt 1

June 1, 2017 by Ken 36 Comments

Should you have a recording mixer as part of your home studio? I say no. I know, I know. You experienced recording folks are going to say “why shouldn’t I have a mixer as part of my home studio?” Well as with most things, the idea of a recording mixer is one of those “it depends” type of situations.
If you truly understand all the routing (gozintas and gozouttas, as I’ve heard them described), then using a mixer as part of your home studio CAN be useful. I use one to receive inputs from several sources (computer sound card, two different audio interfaces, etc.) and it is only for listening. My mixer, a Mackie 1202 VLZ Pro, sends nothing out except a signal to the speakers/headphones. Most importantly (for this type of mixer), it does NOT send any signal into the computer for recording purposes. And of course, if you’re recording a live band (straight to stereo – not doing multi-track recording), you’ll want a mixer for that.
But my general advice is this: you don’t need a mixer for a computer-based home recording studio; and trying to add one to your set-up may well cause more confusion and trouble than it’s worth. You should either be using a USB microphone plugged straight into your computer, or have an audio recording interface into which you will plug your microphones and/or instrument inputs. To hear and monitor playback, you’ll either use your computer’s speakers, headphones (preferably plugged into your interface and not your computer sound card), or monitor speakers plugged into your interface. There will be (on a vast majority of recording interface units) a volume knob to control playback.
So why am I writing this article? A reader recently sent me an e-mail asking for help with his home recording studio setup. He was using Reaper recording software (excellent choice!) on his computer, along with a mixer, a drum machine and a keyboard synthesizer, along with some mics plugged into the mixer as well. He wanted to be able to record several things simultaneously (or sequentially) onto their own tracks. But he couldn’t manage either. He said he’d record the drum machine on track one, and try to record the keyboard onto track two. But track two ended up with BOTH the drum machine and the keyboard.

Now this can be caused by any number of things, but as soon as I saw that he had listed a mixer as part of his home studio set-up, I was pretty sure I knew the cause of his trouble. I asked him if he could tell me how he had everything plugged in. Basically it was as seen in the picture on the left (which I drew using the Paper app on my iPad – free and very cool! But I digress).

He had an audio interface, but a very limited one, called the Behringer UCA 222, which is not designed for multi-track recording, but rather for you to plug in line-level signals from things like tape decks, mixers, and other consumer audio devices, as well as electronic instruments like keyboards, drum machines, etc. There are only 2 inputs, but they are designed to accept a stereo pair (inputs are L and R) of RCA plugs. There is also a pair of outputs to connect speakers/headphones to). So you can only plug in one thing at a time. Also, and this is important, there is no preamp in the UCA222 (see our article about what a preamp is here: What Is A Mic Preamp ). That means in order to plug a microphone in, you must first plug it into the mixer to use it’s preamp, and then plug the mixer’s output into the UCA. The trouble with that is the preamps in a mixer like the 1202, though decent, are pretty cheap by necessity. There are 4 of them on a 1202, and if they used top-notch recording quality preamps, it would drive up the cost of the mixer by a lot. The 1202 is mainly designed for live sound, not recording.
So the thought process goes like this. I only have a pair of stereo inputs on this interface (UCA222). But I also have a mixer that has lots of inputs! I can plug everything into the mixer and then just take the main mixer outputs (left and right) and plug those into the UCA222). Then I’ll plug the outputs from the UCA back into the mixer, and hook up my speakers to the mixer as well.
There is a major flaw in this set-up though if you want to do multi-track recording (have each instrument/sound be on its own track). Raise your hand if you see the problem. Exactly! Everything, including the playback, is going into the mixer, which is perfectly designed to – well – mix. [end of part 1 of this article. See part 2 here].

Home Recording Studio – Setting One Up On Your Computer – Part 1

May 31, 2017 by Ken 11 Comments

This is the first in our “how to build a home recording studio” series, designed to walk you through how to build a computer-based home studio. You’ll also learn how you can get the best possible audio for the lowest possible cost.

Setting Up a Home Recording Studio on Your Computer – Part 1

What do you think you’d have to do to record professional sounding audio for music, voice-overs, etc? Do you think you need expensive microphones, interfaces and other gear? Most people do.
Maybe you think you have to go into a commercial recording studio and pay their expensive rates? Well, you’re not alone. Most people do.
Here is the truth. With some basic knowledge (and not even “hard” knowledge) you can get professional sounding audio with gear less than $100. That is assuming you already have a computer – a normal, every-day computer.
Before we talk about gear and how to set things up, this is really important to know – good audio is NOT guaranteed just because you bought a Neumann microphone and Pro Tools recording software.

Knowledge Is More Important Than Expensive Gear

Regardless of your home recording studio set-up – If you know what you’re doing, you can get decent audio from the cheapest gear. But LACK of knowledge causes lots of folks to make crappy recordings even with expensive gear. I’ll give you 4 tips for doing this (the getting decent audio part). First a disclaimer. It is true that better quality/higher priced mics and other equipment can create better audio than the cheapest gear. But ONLY if you know a bit about what you’re doing!

If you know what you’re doing, you can get decent audio from the cheapest gear. But LACK of knowledge causes lots of folks to make crappy recordings even with expensive gear.

On the other hand, if you DO know what you’re doing, you can do something amazing. You can produce better audio with a plastic PC mic than someone with no experience using a set-up worth 100 times more!
How can I be so specific? Because during the first Home Brew Audio podcast, we compared the sound quality of some spoken-word stuff made with gear costing $5.00 against a setup costing $500. The result was obvious to even the most casual listener. The $5.00 studio was better! If you’d like to hear that for yourself, check out our post where there are two audio samples of what I’m talking about: The $5 Mic Versus the $500 Mic.
If your primary purpose for recording audio is to create voice-overs, podcasts, or video narrations, the news is even better. You’ll need a lot less gear compared to a music recording studio. So the path to truly excellent audio quality is much shorter and less expensive.

What Are The Basics of Recording On a Computer-Based Home Recording Studio?

A microphone captures the sound
A sound card or audio interface converts the sound to ones and zeros (digital audio).
A recording program reads the digital audio, allowing you to edit, save, etc.

The most important stuff often happens before the sound even reaches the microphone – such as preventing noise, for which we have a few important tips coming up. But first I’d like to introduce the basic home studio configurations.

The 2 Home Recording Studio Configurations

We see computer recording studios as having one of two set-up configurations:
Configuration 1: A microphone plugged directly into the computer, either via the sound card or a USB port.

Configuration 2: A microphone plugged into an interface box or other 3rd-party device designed to accept a standard 3-pin microphone cable.

So the most basic home recording studio will be a computer microphone plugged into a computer sound card (configuration #1), along with recording software on the computer. You can do that for $5.00 if you use a common plastic pc mic. But it would be really hard to get pro quality audio from that.
OK then, how do you improve audio quality regardless of what configuration you use? The answer is all about the noise. Noise -Noise- Noise!
First, we do as much as possible to prevent noise – preventing it before the sound gets to the mic, then preventing as much of the internal noise as possible, like electronic stuff (buzz and the like) from the computer, cables, interface, etc. Then we reduce and/or eliminate as much of the noise that inevitably does gets recorded as possible using audio software.

Why The Emphasis on Noise?

The goal of recording, say, a voice is to capture what that voice sounds like as accurately as possible. The more noise there is in the recording, the less of the pure voice you will hear during playback. So the biggest enemy of good audio is noise; and I don’t just mean hiss and lawn mowers and barking dogs and electrical hum and static, etc. “Noise” is anything that is not the thing you are trying to record (that is called the “signal“), and it can also include echos of the signal. This is usually referred to as “room sound,” which turns out to be the most common and oft-offending noise there is. This is the most common problem for any home recording studio.

Prevent The Noise

In a perfect world, you would have a great recording space where the room sound actually complements the signal. These types of spaces are rare, especially for those of us recording at home where we mostly use converted bedrooms and the like. The second best option is to have a vocal isolation booth, treated with materials designed to absorb echos to dampen room noise, allowing you to record only the signal.
If you can’t obtain (buy or build) a properly treated booth, the next best thing is probably to use products that help block or otherwise interfere with room sound noise. There are several products, like the sE Electronics Reflexion Filter, that are made of acoustic-affecting materials that you can mount on microphone stands.
In the next installment of this series, we will take a look at some examples of booths and baffles mentioned above.
See you then!
By the way, I created a video of this series. This 2-part video encompasses all 5 parts of this series of articles. Part 1 is below:

Our Review Of The Shure Dualdyne KSM8 Handheld Dynamic Microphone

April 29, 2017 by Ken 4 Comments

Shure-KSM8-Mic-Picture — Shure KSM8 Dualdyne

The latest in our month of mic reviews here at Home Brew Audio is the Shure KSM8 Dualdyne handheld dynamic microphone. I briefly talked about this mic a couple weeks ago in my post “World’s First Dual Diaphragm Dynamic Microphone.” That post also shows a video from the folks at Shure explaining what all the fuss is about this mic and its new technology. But this week I got my hands on one and ran it through several tests, comparing the mic to its popular sibling, the Shure SM58, and running it through our PA system so we could hear it doing what it was designed to do – be an awesome live vocal mic.
I encourage you to either check out my first post linked above and/or to visit the Shure site here to dig deeper into all the technical specs. This review will mostly discuss the basics and focus on what’s really important about any microphone – how it sounds.

What It Is

The “fuss” about this mic is that it is the first handheld dynamic mic with two diaphragms inside. Shure (the first mic manufacturer to create a mic you could on stage back in the 1939 with what became known as “The Elvis Mic”) says that they had to reinvent the way microphones are made in order to create the KSM8. The 2 diaphragms allow this dynamic mic to do some cool things. Here are the main bullet points:

It sounds natural across the frequency spectrum – basically meaning that neither the lows nor the highs are excessive or lost.
It rejects sounds from the side and the rear extremely well, which is really important on a live stage. This helps reduce feedback and makes the voice sound cleaner against other instruments, a crowd, PA monitors, etc.
It has a large “sweet-spot” – which means a singer/performer doesn’t have to keep the mic a very specific distance from their mouth to get consistent tone, like most live mics.
There is little-to-no proximity effect. This is related to the last point, and means your voice won’t sound extra deep when your lips are right up on the mic, and then sound really thin if you back up a few inches.

So How Did It Sound?

Awesome. End of review. OK, just kidding. Since the KSM8 is designed to be a live vocal mic, I thought the best test would be to listen to it through PA speakers. So that’s what we did.
First, I set up a Shure SM58 dynamic handheld mic for vocals, and a Shure SM57 (another dynamic mic) for my acoustic guitar (a Taylor 314ce, in case you were wondering:)). Then I connected my Zoom H2 Handy Recorder to the output of my mixer to record the results. Then I called in my wife – the lovely and talented Lisa Theriot – to listen to me sing and play one of our songs (William Tell from my album, “Outlaws and Bystanders“). I asked her to not look at the vocal mic so she wouldn’t be influenced by knowing which mic she was hearing. After playing a couple of verses and a chorus, I stopped and switched in the KSM8. She actually said she liked “mic #1 (the SM58) better,” which really surprised me. I changed places with her while she played and sang. And I most definitely thought her voice sounded much better through the KSM8.
As we stood scratching our heads, we noticed that our indoor setup was seriously wonky for amplified live music. The speakers were on the floor in the living room with a vaulted ceiling, while the listener was behind a couch in the kitchen nook where the ceiling was only about 8 feet high. So we decided a more fair test would be to set up the entire thing outside.
We repeated the procedure on a warm Texas day in the back yard with no room (or furniture) adding to or taking away from the sound. I also decided to record the sound “through the air,” rather than using a feed from the mixer. So I set the H2 up about 10 feet in front of the speakers to capture the audio. I listened to Lisa play and sing some more, and again preferred the sound of the KSM8 on her voice. The best way I can describe it was that with the SM58, it sounded like Lisa singing through a microphone. But with the KSM8, it sounded like Lisa was singing right next to me WITHOUT a mic. It was all the nuances and subtleties of her un-amplified voice coming through the PA when she sang into the KSM8.
And this time, Lisa very much preferred the sound of my voice when singing through the KSM8. Her comments were that the voice through the PA sounded richer and fuller than the SM58. Standing behind the mic, I had to agree. This is an outstanding vocal mic for the stage.

Audio Results From Outdoor PA Tests

Below are audio samples of our outdoor PA test.
First is the SM58

And here is the KSM8

Audio Results From Studio Tests

Next, I wanted to do some more controlled recordings – without all the extra factors that could affect the audio recorded through a PA and then onto a handheld digital recorder (like the mic preamps in the mixing board, the power amplifier and the speakers, etc.). So I took the mics up to the studio and recorded some voice-over/narration audio through a Focusrite 2i2 audio interface. I did not use any kind of pop filter on either mic, so you will hear p-pops. I didn’t notice a difference in the sensitivity to plosives between the mics.
First is the SM58

And here’s the KSM8

I think the difference is huge – the KSM8 sounding much better. It was more crisp in the mids and highs while simultaneously being “meaty” in the lower ranges.

Comparison Of Tone 6 Inches Away

KSM8-mic-response-over-distance — Figure 2.

The last part of those studio tests was recorded at a distance of 6 inches from each microphone. The reason for that was to compare the tone changes as I moved further back. One of the key features of the KSM8 is a larger “sweet spot,” which allows the user more freedom to move without the audio suffering tone changes. See Figure 2. Traditionally, with most dynamic mics like the SM58, you have to stay the same distance from the mic or else the tone changes quite a lot – sounding deeper (more bass) when very close to the mic (this is called “proximity effect”), and sounding thinner with more mid and high frequencies coming through as you back away. With the KSM8, there should be much less change in tone as you back away.
In order to better test that feature, I excerpted just the section of audio recorded 6 inches away, and boosted the volume on both. In theory, the KSM should still retain much of its low frequencies and sound more balanced across the frequencies. Let’s hear for ourselves. I recommend listening with headphones.
Here is the SM58 six inches away from my mouth

And here is the KSM8 six inches away

Again, I definitely noticed a large difference in the KSM8, which retained more low frequencies as the distance increased and sounded more balanced across the entire spectrum.

In Summary

There is no doubt in my mind that the Shure KSM8 Dualdyne handheld dynamic is a superior microphone for live vocals. The new technology allows for cleaner, more natural, and more prevalent vocals, especially when on stage with other instruments. The only quibble I have is with the price, which at $499 is 5 times the price of the SM58. But if your livelihood depends on great sounding vocals in a live situation, the KSM is worth the price.
To find out more, or to buy one of your own, CLICK HERE.