Tips for Home Recording

How to yield good results from your home recording

* Written by: Jovia D’Souza

Professional studios are trusted for quality productions. However, with the necessary equipment and the right home studio setup, you can easily record from the comfort of your home and still enjoy amazing results. A few tips will help you improve acoustics and recording setup in your home. To get the best results you really need to know what to avoid as far as setting the gear, microphone technique and acoustic environment.

Tip 1 - remember that recording environment will impact the quality of your recording. Start by ensuring that you avoid hard surfaces because they bounce sound round your room. Consider curtains, fabric, furniture, rounded furniture and carpets to eliminate reflective nature of hardwood floors, tiled walls and concrete walls or even countertops.

Tip 2 - Use reflection shields to minimize the sounds picked by microphone sides and back. It is a good idea to use a cardioid microphone that rejects noise from the back and sides.

Tip 3 - Avoid recording right in the middle of the room because this is where frequencies build up and where standing waves are. Instead, get closer to a wall that has hanging blanket and further from opposite wall. Recording inside your clothes closet can be good considering clothes absorb the sounds naturally and there is less echo room inside the closet.

Tip 4 - Go for closed back headphones when home recording. This ensures that the sound does not end up bleeding into the microphone. It is even wiser to get a headphone splitter box if you have more than one person recording.

Tip 5 - Setup the monitors in such a way that you make a point in an equilateral triangle. It is best that you stand 45 inches from each of the monitors that you are using so you can have an easy time listening.

Tip 6 - The closer you are to your microphone the louder the audio and the more saturated it becomes. For best results, position vocalist six inches from microphone.

Tip 7 - Be selective with microphone pattern. For instance, it would be a good idea to choose a cardioid pattern for single person recording, whereas omnidirectional works great for group recording or chorus recording.

Tip 8 - When using side address microphones, remember that capsules face outward and not upward. This makes it important for you to talk into the microphone side to get the best results.

When thinking about home recording, some of the things you will need include digital audio workstation, computer, mixing speakers or monitors, audio interface, headphones, microphone and a midi keyboard. The first step towards great results is of course, choosing high quality items and then getting it right with the home studio setup. If you are not very sure of how to go about the setup, you can find simple guidelines that you can follow. Using the guidelines you will achieve the best acoustic environment at home and get it right with the recording.

Home recording can be fun and convenient. However, your home studio setup determines the recording results you get. Find out as much as you can before starting with the recording.