I am looking to spend maybe 6K on a mobile recording setup down the line, maybe almost 9 months from now, but I'd like to plan for it now.
Here's what I am thinking of. My experience mostly resides in Logic. It's also very very cheap with all the plugins, and I can use any hardware I want. ProTools is out automatically because I am forced to use their hardware, and the stock plugins suck. I don't want to spend tons of money on plugins to make up for crappy stock stuff. I also seem to work better in Logic. So I was thinking of getting a macbook and logic 8 for $2100 or so. Logic is cheaper with everything I need than ProTools is with bare stock plugins, and the hardware is a whole 'nother story. I don't need compatibility with other studios at the price point/demographic I'm aiming for.
Then an Apogee Ensemble, and a Presonus Digimax for some extra inputs. A bunch of SM58s that I can screw the head off of to make into 57s when needed, a few small diaphram MXL condensers since I have good experience with them and know what they sound like. I was thinking mostly used on the mics.. or is this not a good idea? I was also considering throwing two sm81s in for the finer instruments that I may record.
The only issue now that glares through is with headphone mixes. I'd probably need the ability to make more than one to suit the whole band. I'm not sure if that's something I should be worrying about at the hobbyist level. I could bus things around in Logic and then have drums, guitars, vocals, bass, or sax, drums, bass, and then put it into a mixer, but I'd need something that hooks up to multiple small mixers. this seems like it'd be expensive. The apogee has 8 outs, so it wouldn't be impossible. Those Nemesis things big studios use are very impressive, and seem perfect for this. The downside being it probably costs more for one of those systems than my whole budget.
The second is with HDs. If I had an external HD for recording tracks to, I'd still have the issue of HD death for the OS drive. I'm scared to record with any computer that doesn't have RAID 1 for the OS drive. If the HD died for the OS, with RAID 1, it wouldn't blink and would read/write to 1 drive instead of 2. But with one OS drive, if it dies, then I have to tell the group after all the work "sorry, I can't record you', and that would be terrible.
Those digital consoles, is all of the information such as the OS and effects for them stored on the HD, or in some ROM that has no moving parts? If so this would be more valuable than a laptop since I wouldn't have to worry about that kind of death, but it'd also be a huge step down from Logic in editing, mixing, and general flexibility. If the HD I am recording to dies I could just pop another one in, but I'm not that sure I could do that with a laptop unless I had 2 OS drives that were identical to each other. I've used a Yamaha AW4416 before a couple of times, it seemed like a real pain in the ass compared to Logic, but also seemed built perfectly for portable recording application. And the amount of signal processing in the box was amazing.
For monitors, I use Thiels at my house. They're a home stereo/audiophile speaker company but they aim for the same things may pro audio companies advertise but never deliver, like flat frequency response and time/phase coherency. I was thinking of investing in some room treatment for better home mixing. I have several sets of good headphones I could use to provide rough mixes for clients(Sennheiser HD280, Grado SR125, Shure E3c) and then give a free polished mix I do at home in a more "proper" environment for nothing after the fact.
I've had 2 internships, and am at the second one now. One at a crappy studio that I had some opportunity to record at, but not enough for it to be worth it being a ghetto, terribly/not at all run studio. Another at an absolutely amazing studio where I never have the opportunity to sit in on sessions if I finish my work and show interest in it, regardless of the full time free work I do.
I've come to the conclusion that I'm never going to learn a thing from internships, or if I do, the relationship of stuff learned to time spent will be close to nil. I may learn how that particular studio does things, but the whole concept of learning from watching other people work seems to be over. One of the people who has been here for a while even said it, "This isn't a teaching hospital." Little studios are too ghetto to learn anything from unless you have the opportunity to do what I want to do now(except they'll expect 70 hrs/week free work in return), and larger facilities seem to only care about pleasing freelancers. The idea of teaching underlings seems to have been outsourced completely. I don't see how I can learn much from a place where even if I get a full time minimum wage job, the most my involvement will be fixing up lounges, lugging other people's gear cases around, and bringing microphones/gear into the rooms for freelancers and going back to work.
I record people in rehearsal spaces in my spare time if the equipment is available at the space or provided by the band who has no clue how to use it. I've been doing this as a hobby, I ask for say $30 for the whole thing if it only takes a few hours or $50-$100 if it takes 2-3 days. I make it affordable enough so that people don't look at the clock, I avoid charging an hourly rate. I want to keep it fun but also get something done and get enough money to eat and catch a ride home in the process.
I've learned more in one day of doing this than in all the time I spent interning at the awesome, world class facility, and the crappier place put together. I think this just makes so much more sense. Learn how to record by recording. I never understood how unpaid maltreated slave --> engineer career path taught one anything unless the engineers had interest in teaching those who applied themselves. I learn by doing things, messing up, finding a way around it so I don't do it next time, and then doing it again. I don't see the opportunity to do that at a place where the rooms are 1.5-3.5K/day. I've been told there's fewer opportunities to learn because of how there are few staff engineers nowadays unless you learn yourself, and this seems to be the best way to do it.
I don't see any other way of learning how to do this. The idea of relying on the chance that someone else being nice enough to let me sit in and watch him, and maybe tell me something, seems like such a gamble. There's too high a chance to do a ton of work and have no learning opportunities. Maybe I'm wrong, but if I find out I am wrong, I can probably sell everything and get off close to where I started.
This thread is for suggestions, so by all means feel free to rip apart these ideas. The main goal of this is to learn by doing as much recording as possible.
