The following, is an article I wrote several years ago, for the magazine 'Sound Solutions'. Some of my opinions on the matters discussed have changed (as of Feb '2017). The original article has been minimally modified, mostly to link to current manufacturers. 

PROJECT STUDIO SETUP

A typical 'Project Studio' is one that is purpose built to serve the requirements of a musician. It is different from a bedroom studio, in that it is capable of delivering final masters. It is different from the dying breed of 'professional' studios, in that it is comparatively restricted in terms of space and infrastructure, but not necessarily in terms of sound quality.

I have often been queried on the things to be considered while building a project studio. Typically, the questions are similar to “what sounds better, Cubase or Logic; PC or Mac?” One musician-acquaintance believes that a Neumann microphone is always the best choice, while another believes that an Avalon preamp is sure to give him a "warm" and "natural" sound. Yet another person I know has bought a pair of monitoring loudspeakers that cost more than a small house, but has not bothered to treat his room at all. My opinion is that there is misleading propaganda, and pertinent considerations have been ignored.. So what follows, is an article on some important factors that contribute to the quality of the output of a project studio. While it is by no means even remotely comprehensive, I hope that it is enough fodder for further research by the interested reader / prospective Project Studio owner.

Before getting down to what can be addressed by this article, let us pray to the God of the situation.

The person(s) involved in making the sounds:

The sincerity of the artistes involved in any project is essential to its validity. People are the starting and ending points of all such work. The Studio, in my opinion, should be planned around people - making them comfortable and giving them as ideal an environment for creative work, as can be afforded. Also in context, are the characteristics of the tools involved in the creation of the sound; e.g. the instruments used in the making of music. The quality of the instruments is of very high significance to the end result; however, I think that any external variable is less important than the sincerity of the artist.

Key considerations with regard to making the artist comfortable are: a quality headphone system, effective air conditioning and ventilation (so critical for hot and humid climes), lighting, optimal visual contact with the music director or video display, appropriate colour schemes and other aesthetic enhancements, and general creature comforts to put the artist in a creative frame of mind. Many of these can be established at little or no expense, and can contribute towards results that can be hard for a ‘professional’ studio to match. Some or all of these things may eventually backfire, but a discussion of the same is beyond the scope of this article.

Bottom Line: Any audio chain is a GIGO system. You put garbage in, you get garbage out. As the ancient Chinese proverb goes, "You Can’t Polish a Turd". Try to make sure that what you’re recording is worth recording, in the first place.

The Sound Engineer:

While this article is intended to provide pointers towards a (sonically) successful project studio, the only real rule when it comes to recording, is, as the old cliché goes, "there are no rules"! There is no sure shot formula, no perfect microphone or technique, and no theory of sound engineering, that can ensure a good recording. Every session is different from every other session, and the spontaneous judgements that the engineer makes, are critical to the recorded sound. Sometimes he may have to swap an expensive mic for a cheap one. Sometimes he may choose to record the talent in the control room through a handheld stage mic, with the monitor speakers on (the way Icelandic progressive-pop icon Bjork has recorded with engineer Mark Stent). I have even heard a superb recording of an acoustic trio using a Royer SF-12 stereo ribbon microphone, while breaking the basic rule of the Blumlein technique, namely, ‘all sounds must originate from one quadrant’.

No recording or mixing situation is ever ideal. It is the prerogative of the sound engineer to study all the factors and make the artistically appropriate compromises that complement the music, rather than follow some theory of 'proper' recording practice. A sound engineer should ideally know the rules and technical recommendations, and choose to use, abuse, or bend them, depending on what his ears and instincts tell him. Ultimately, the ear of the sound engineer is his most critical tool, and the ability to adapt equipment, techniques, and spaces to serve the music, is his job.

Bottom Line: Cultivate your listening, judging and technical skills, or endorse the help of somebody who already has the skills. The finest gear in the world cannot save you from poor engineering. A good ear is worth far more than any piece of equipment.

The Room where the Sound is being made:

No recording system can escape from the acoustical environment of the performance (anechoic rooms excluded). Once the sound has been made, its immediate interaction with the world involves the environment in which it has been produced. This inevitably results in the addition of room reflections to the recorded sound. Every room / earthly environment has its own unique response to sound - the way in which it reflects sound. Also, every studio, no matter how it is treated, contributes some flavour to the material recorded in it. The studio should be planned so as to suit the material it is intended for. e.g., If the primary application is the recording of the human voice, extreme low frequency control may be circumvented.  Controlled amounts of mid and high frequency absorption and diffusion can serve you better. If you plan to record instruments with "sub bass" frequencies in your room, it should have the necessary amounts of low frequency control. If you plan to record a String Section, you are best served with at least a moderately big room with pleasing reflections, so as to allow the instruments to blend and breathe. If you can have only one isolation area, you may want to consider 'variable acoustics' in order to tailor the response of the room to suit the particular recording situation.

Bottom line: Before getting into your microphone, preamp, software etc., take a good, long look at your rooms and see how best you can optimize them for the intended applications. Get yourself as good a studio design consultant as you can afford. Pay attention to audio and electrical wiring, power conditioning and voltage stabilization. It will be worth it in the long run.

Microphones and Microphone Technique:

The microphone is the first and most important piece of technology that the sound source encounters.

Every microphone, no matter how accurate or flat the manufacturer claims it to be, has a particular character. No single microphone is appropriate for all recording duties. The microphone used must match the requirement of the recording. If it is clear that the most ‘dry’ or ‘intimate’ vocal sound is required, or if the particular room is not lending a suitable character to the material, the engineer is probably much better off using a simple dynamic microphone such as the Shure SM7b or the Electro-Voice RE20, than the significantly more expensive Neumann M149. There are several types of microphones - all purpose workhorses like the AKG C414 XLS, dark sounding ribbon microphones such as the Cascade Fathead, fast and detailed 'pencil' condensers such as the Oktava Mk-012; ultra accurate, but noisy microphones like the Earthworks TC20;  rectangular capsule microphones (which reject sounds from the vertical axis), such as the Milab DC-196; hybrid microphones like the Audio Technica AE2500; specialized microphones like the Yamaha SubKick, Shure Green Bullet, Placid Audio Copperphone; stereo microphones like the Peluso P-Stereo...  For the cost of one Neumann M149, you could have a selection of such interesting and different sounding microphones - the M149 is a beautiful piece of work, but it will never give you the versatility and the sonic palette of a bunch of carefully chosen, unique microphones.

Microphone technique is probably the most important tool in the recording engineer’s arsenal of knowledge. Choice, pattern and placement of microphones are the best kinds of equalization.

Bottom Line: Avoid buying expensive gear until you have a choice of microphones. Anything that comes after the mic only amplifies or modifies the output of the microphone. Get it good at the source. 

The Monitoring Environment:

Once the signal path is in place, it is ready for recording, subject to the creative, technical and practical decisions made by the recording engineer. The ready and always accessible point of reference based on which he will make these decisions, is the 'reference monitor'. For the reference monitor to paint an accurate impression of the sound, it is placed in a suitable environment, known to us as the 'control room'. It is imperative to pay attention to the choice and setup of the reference monitor and the control room, and these two factors are highly interdependent. Ironically, the monitoring environment should be neutral, and according to many experts, still bear some resemblance to the final listening environment.

Professional studios typically have full-range monitoring speakers often referred to as 'mains'. These enable the engineer to access the complete audible bandwidth. In addition, the ubiquitous 'nearfield monitors' are used extensively, presumably for ease of long term listening, and as a reference point for the approximate end user experience. The ‘end user experience’ is however rapidly changing, thanks to the inclusion of subwoofers in many moderately priced home listening systems. 

Real full-range monitoring from a single pair of speakers is usually too expensive for the average project studio and the cost of designing and treating the control room in order to accommodate the same is also exponentially higher. My suggestion is that the project studio should have near or mid-field monitors that very comfortably go down to 80Hz (below 200 Hz or so, sound becomes increasingly omnidirectional). These should be  complemented with a matching subwoofer that can be switched in and out of the monitoring chain. The reason for this is that mid and high frequency judgments are best assisted by all round clarity, which is difficult to establish when there is a lot of low end output, which in turn is very difficult to handle in small, inexpensively treated control rooms. Also a good pair of headphones can assist in making decisions on the sound of individual instruments, although it is generally recommended that final mixes are not performed on the same. A pair of headphones can also serve as a cross-reference point, along with the monitoring speakers.

Just like microphones, there is no such thing as a completely neutral or accurate speaker system. How well the engineer understands the particular monitor/monitoring environment is very critical to the outcome of the work. One good way to approach this, is to regularly listen to very well recorded commercial releases  on the specific monitoring system, at specific listening levels. 

Bottom Line: Once you have done your best for your rooms and microphones, focus on getting the best / most suitable monitors that you can afford, and spend a lot of time ‘learning’ them, in the particular environment.

Microphone Preamplifiers:

We have now entered the slightly less critical areas in the audio signal chain. Today, an 'IC' based low cost preamplifier found in a small Mackie mixing board does a very good job of what it does... the distinction between the Avalons and the Mackies is becoming narrower by the day.

Broadly, there are two kinds of preamplifiers... 'transparent' and 'coloured'. Transparent preamps go for the 'straight wire with gain' approach, meaning that the ideal is to have no distortions of any kind added to the signal during the amplification process. Coloured preamps made today are intentionally voiced to add subtle distortions which have proven to be desirable for many recording situations. 

While this is an opinion that may be offensive to many, I think that the average sound engineer will find it much easier to differentiate between different  makes of coloured preamps, than between different makes of transparent sounding preamps. An engineer may want a choice of preamps to complement various microphones and recording situations. The classic tube and / or transformer coupled coloured preamp designs that is useful  for a fat / vintage / rock-and-roll sound (e.g. Neve, API, Telefunken etc.) are still very popular though quite expensive. Some examples of (relatively) affordable  coloured preamps are made by Electro-Harmonix,  GAP, Universal Audio, Chameleon Labs, Daking and Vintech. Effective transparent preamps can be had for much less. Transparent preamps based around integrated circuits can be found in most small format mixing consoles and sound cards. There are also extremely well engineered and justifiably expensive transparent  preamps,  but I would not consider them a wise investment for a studio on a budget. 

If you enjoy the sound of low output dynamic or passive ribbon microphones, it might be wise to invest in a purpose built preamp such as the AEA TRP or RPQ.  Alternately, an additional preamplification device such as the Triton Audio Fethead, or a preamp that gives you 70+ dB of gain can be used.  This is relevant,  because preamps built into most sound cards and small format mixing consoles can offer.a maximum of 55 to 65 dB gain, and they tend to get pretty noisy when pushed hard. 

Bottom Line: Try to accommodate a few different preamps corresponding to transparent and coloured tones, in order to provide sonic options.

Compressors:

When recording dynamic material with transients peaking significantly higher than the average levels, it may be in place to insert a compressor/limiter in order to protect the A/D converter from clipping, while still keeping the average levels sufficiently hot. Under such circumstances, one must exercise utmost care, as compression has the ability to squeeze the life out of the signal by making it pump and breathe in a most unnatural fashion. Also, manipulating the transients, changes the basic character of sounds, making the sound very ill defined and mushy. For these reasons, compression is often left for the mix stages, where the settings can be tuned at length, without disturbing the flow of an artiste in performance. Quality analog compression is generally quite expensive and still not foolproof. FMR, Overstayer, Mohog, ART, Chameleon Labs, and GAP are known to provide good value for compressor money.

Compression can also be used as a creative tool, but a discussion of the same would take away from the core of this article. 

Bottom Line: Be ever aware of the evils and benefits of compression. Compression can kill dynamics, but (excessive) dynamics kill A/D conversion. AND, good compression is usually expensive. Find your own balance.

A/D and D/A converters:

In an analog recording system the representation of the music (on tape or vinyl) is analogous to the sound recorded sound, i.e. under suitable (though not practical) conditions, the nature of the music can be perceived by just looking at or touching the medium. In a digital recording system, everything is converted to 0s and 1s, and the naturalness of the music can get seriously skewed in the process. One Grammy-winning analog guru maintains that the ‘spiritual domain is the electro-magnetic domain is the analog domain’, and the spirit is lost in the process of conversion to digital. While I have no interest in 'spirituality', I must admit that my listening preferences are focused in the analog era.  

Digital technology, in the context of music, being less than a quarter of a century old, is still at a very nascent stage in its evolution. It is now commonly accepted that early digital recordings often suffered from poor conversion (a disease called digittus!), and some years ago, a major analog revival movement was the talk of the audio industry. However several things became evident: analog is neither practical nor convenient, nor affordable for most studios, and digital conversion is getting better and more affordable  at a rapid pace.

More  significantly, popular music today - both as a business and as an art form, can no longer be separated from the digital creation, production and reproduction tools that it relies on. Like it or not, digital technology is here to stay, and the foundation that it is built upon is the conversion process - from analog to digital, and from digital to analog. 

An interesting thing to note, is that most converters - both expensive and cheap - use core components made by one of few companies such as AKM and Cirrus Logic. The actual 'converter' may be the same, in a low-mid priced sound card and an esoteric outboard unit. What many don't realize, is that it is the filtering and analog circuitry around the actual converter, and the quality of the power supply, that actually make the difference! 

Names like DAD, Prism, Apogee, Mytek, Lavry, Benchmark and Burl Audio are frequently to be seen at the finest studios, and one would presume that this is true for good reasons. However, many successful producers seem to be perfectly happy with non esoteric converters to be found on sound cards by  manufacturers such as TC Electronic and RME. 

Bottom Line: Quality conversion is a must, but as long as you have a stable sound card from a reputable manufacturer, you are probably better off investing in other aspects of your studio.

THE BIG BOTTOM LINE

As stated at the outset, I have aimed at warning you not to fall for marketing hype that would have you believe that xyz product will make you the next big phenomenon in the recording industry. Any product is but a single component in a chain of variables. On a given day just about any kid with a sound blaster and a hundred rupees worth of electret condenser microphone can make beautiful sounds, but for repeatable, consistent and professional results, its not that easy. I must point out however, that not too long ago, I was a kid with a sound blaster, and I don't think that circumstances and equipment should ever keep  one from getting on with the music!

A Project Studio is certainly not the right place to do lots of things, and what it can do well will take a lot of patience, passion, and yes, money. But it will damn well be worth it.