In Summary

There are some things that all studios need. Whether you’re starting out and looking to grow your arsenal, or considering downsizing after years of retail therapy, here we outline some of the things that your studio will always need contrasted with those that can wait…

Going Deeper

Studios can be anything from palaces stuffed full of exotic things with coloured lights and screens, right down to small office-like nooks with just a pair of monitors nodding to the room’s true purpose. Despite the range of work coming out of these studios, they all have one thing in common: a reliance on a small core of essential pieces that keep the show on the road. With all the hubris and hype around certain tools, what are the things that are deal breakers and the items that are just bank-breakers?

Whether you’re working in a top flight room, or operating from the modesty of a home studio, there are some common things that make every facility tick. Here we sort the toys from the essentials to get to the things that will make or break your studio.

The Essentials

Silence Is Golden

It turns out that physics never get old. When mixing, or perhaps even more crucially when recording, silence, or being close to it is a precious thing. There may have been advances in software tools for noise removal, but none bar the most imperceptible outside sounds should make it onto the recording. Having an ultra-low noise floor for mixing is also great to have, but at least the odd distraction during the mix isn’t going to trash a recording forever.

Soundproofing can become an incredibly expensive space-eater in urban environments. It could be said that getting geography on your side is the most effective route to silent recordings; good old fashioned distance from noise, or some other means to silent recordings is something that all studios need.

Just A Love Machine

Computer/DAW

Unless you’re a committed tape junkie, the computer is the beating heart of any studio, hosting the all-important DAW and a plethora of audio plugins. Do you actually need those extra plugins? For now, maybe not, because the ones that land with practically every DAW will never be the weak link in your mix.

There was a time when studio computers took the form of tricked-out towers or rack mounted marvels, but that was only because the most a laptop could handle was the Excel sheet with the bill on it. Virtually any modern machine can take on DAW duties, with RAM-droughts, CPU spikes, and drive bottlenecks thankfully a distant memory…

Audio/MIDI Interface

As the all-important portal to and from the DAW, the audio/MIDI interface is non-negotiable. While a tiny number of studios rarely need to record audio, all need to hear it. Although these can take the form of multichannel monsters for countless numbers of mics, speakers, or cue mixes, they begin with the small desktop boxes that allow a pair of inputs and outputs. Studios with lots of MIDI hardware might need a box to pipe performance data as well.

No matter how simple or complex, without an adequate way to and from the computer and DAW, no studio can survive.

Rock The Mic

Microphones & Cabling

With virtually all studios capturing at least some of their own original audio, the microphone is non-negotiable. A casual search can turn up all kinds of unknown brands at too-good-to-be-true prices, but studios don’t need to spend much more to get a tool for life that can cover the majority of sources. Upwards of £80 / $100 or so can buy a tough dynamic that can handle many jobs or a base-model condenser mic that will stay the course on sources that need a hotter or more nuanced capture.

The same goes for cables. Cheap leads can stop the show, so anything with metal connectors is a good place to start, with Neutrik or Switchcraft plugs lasting the longest. If a lead has these, the cable itself is more likely to be up to the job, and learning how to solder can make things cheaper if you have the time and a box of cable and connectors. There awaits leads for your mics and cables that are exactly as long or short as you need.

Stands/Mounts

Another item that no mic (or monitor for that matter) can do without in the studio is some kind of stand, mount, or support. Any standard ‘tall’ stand with metal parts should be able to keep a handheld dynamic mic in the air, but stands for heavier large diaphragm mics are better in the grip of a trusted make such as K+M or Beyer. These have spare parts available to keep them going long after other stands have gone in the bin.

Hear Today

Monitor Speakers

Everything so far is meaningless without a pair of studio loudspeakers to hear the mix, and a pair of headphones for other monitoring duties. For smaller studios, room dimensions can conspire to give some pretty funky sounding peaks and dips in what you’re hearing. For that reason, no amount of fancy monitoring is going to deliver the expected result unless the room can be compensated for in some way, either by speaker correction or even just mixing with the room’s bumps in mind. Larger, better-behaved rooms are perhaps the best hosts to monitoring with a big price tag.

Headphones

Opinions vary on how useful headphones can be for mixing, but for cue mix duties they’re almost mandatory. Some use headphones in equal measure alongside speaker monitoring. There’s no doubt that wearing cans eliminates the influence of a badly behaved room, and can be a great second window on things like stereo imaging. For tracking, they are the time-honoured way of keeping cue mixes out of the recording. Closed-back ‘phones can work best for tracking, with open-backed headphones being the design of choice for mix engineers.

Wait Till Tomorrow?

So if those are the things studios cannot live without, what are those things that can possibly wait?

• DAW Controllers Don’t get us wrong, we’re huge fans of haptic hardware, with many users here on the blog relying on a fistful of faders. That said, pitted against a desert-island item such as your monitors, which would you choose? In a survival situation, some mouse riding might not be fun for surface users, but it does work for anyone with more pressing gear to get.

• Third Party Audio Plugins When it comes to the crunch, virtually every DAW lands with enough stock tools to get any mix over the line. Let’s face it, it’s the person in the chair that makes things happen, despite all the promises of life-changing ear candy from third party devs. Can we live without them? You decide.

• Hardware Processing Not so long ago, if you wanted the sound of a particular hardware piece, you needed to get that thing into your room. Many with a genuine basis for comparison will maintain this, understandably leaning on the The Real Thing because it’s there. For the rest of us, recording flat or making do with unsung stock audio plugins for the mix really isn’t that bad.

• External Mic Pres If you have the best song, expertly arranged, conveyed by a stellar performance, recorded with a great mic, placed right in the sweet spot, you might want to consider which boutique external mic preamp will complete the effect. If not, this one can wait till tomorrow… If it’s gain you’re after, even entry-level interface pres are beginning to out-juice the big kids.

As Time Goes By…

There might be a whole universe of gear out there vying for our attention (and budget) but does that mean that we need all of it? Virtually all engineers know the answer to that, but even the best of us can find ourselves hankering after that thing that is supposedly going to make our studio life better. There’s no doubt that out of all the items listed here, some that are essential in one studio might be able to wait in another.

Some items can be more ‘good to have’ than ‘can’t live without’, regardless of studio. Having a choice of certain things can help in any situation, such as having an alternative monitor pair, or more than just one mic that has been designated as for vocals or kick. It might be true that the control surface could be a luxury for some; the option to grow is always there and for larger facilities dealing with huge track counts, this is often right up there on the list of priorities.

It might be true that big studios need more of everything, but fundamentally all DAW-based studios are variations on a common theme. That means having a predictable core of items that drive things along in a similar way. This is good news in more ways than one; new engineers might be pleased to hear that they probably can already do a lot of the things that need to happen in any studio. In the meantime, they can grow their skills and inventory if they need to.