Not long ago I did a video tour of my own basic home recording studio. By way of comparison, here’s a still of Graeme’s home studio:
As you can see, it’s a bit more of a complicated setup. Here’s the complete kit list:
Apple iMac
Wharfedale Diamond active monitors
Aiwa hifi system (used as “grot boxes”)
Allen & Heath zed 14 mixer
M-Audio FireWire 410 interface
Soundtech compressor
Alesis Midiverb III
MXR 1/3 octave EQ
Akai GX-4000D tape recorder
Moog Little Phatty analog synth
A few things worth noting:
1. You don’t need a pro-level computer to do pretty advanced recording work. The iMac packs a punch, but it’s basically a consumer-level desktop computer. For running a relatively ‘thin’, efficient DAW such as Pro Tools (as Graeme does) it does the job. Of course, if you’re dealing with lots and lots of tracks, and dozens of complex effects, you might need to beef up a bit, too, or you’ll find yourself sitting around for long periods while your computer gets all hot and sweaty crunching the the data.
2. Graeme’s digital audio interface (the device that translates MIDI data or analogue signal into a digital signal a computer can deal with) connects to his Mac using FireWire, rather than the USB 2.0 connection most budget interfaces use. This is just because FireWire can carry more data, faster, than USB - allowing input and output on more simultaneous channels.
3. ‘Grot boxes’ are cheap, consumer level speakers that allow a producer/engineer to judge how a mix will sound to most ordinary end-listeners. It might sound great on the studio monitors, but they have to make sure that Joe Public gets a reasonable sound, too.
If you’ve got any questions about Graeme’s home recording setup, post them in the comments and we’ll get back to you. If all this looks a bit scary and expensive, don’t forget to have a look at my video of a basic home recording studio and the recording of the sound quality you can achieve with it.
