by CRAIG STARK
BRIDGING THE GAP
The phenomenal cost (often over $100 per hour) of renting professional recording-studio facilities tends to price them out of the range of all but established performers. Don't blame the studios. If you had to lease a large, specially designed space and spend $50,000 for a master recording console and about $1,000 per track for a sixteen-track recorder, you'd have to impose a similar tariff. That's small comfort, however, for individual performers or groups who may have more talent than cash and who are the very people most often in need of good "demo" tapes.
Sometimes a musician has a friend with a tape machine and a pair of mikes who will record a concert performance.
In the classical repertoire, an effective tape can often be made in this way. But with today's pop and rock music a live performance captured with a couple of mikes is rarely satisfactory. This is true because the desired tape sound is not simply what a listener would hear in row fifteen in a concert hall. The standard of comparison-a commercial disc-is an electronic product created by mixing together a number of synchronized, separately recorded individual parts, each on its own track. Later, each track can be processed through timbre-shaping circuits (equalizers) placed in any de sired acoustic location by the twist of a knob (the pan-pot) and given a fullness of tone not present in the original by means of artificial reverberation devices.
Although the final, re-recorded product (the mix-down to regular stereo) often seems to me a bit contrived, it's what today's pop/rock market demands. And, of course, it is technically beyond the means of the casual recordist.
A well-designed home studio can bridge this gap. StarkSonic Studios has operated out of my basement for years, and there are hundreds of similar "free lance" facilities throughout the country.
What you need is a scaled-down version of a regular professional facility, a little make-do ingenuity, and a lot of painstaking energy. But with that combination you can do the job, for the differences between top-quality audiophile and genuine "pro" equipment are often too minor to be audible.
Here are some basic ideas on equipment you'll need. (1) With planning and a bit of luck, a high-quality four-channel deck-if equipped for synchronous-track recording-will suffice for almost all multi-track requirements. For a list of machines offering this feature at consumer prices (using standard 1/4-inch tape), write to Dept. TH, STEREO REVIEW, 1 Park Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016, en closing a stamped, self-addressed envelope. (2) You will also need a mixer(a) to combine the signal from several mikes to go onto a single track and (b) to combine the four recorded tracks into a two channel mix later. Shure, Sony, Ampex, Tascam, and a host of other companies (would you believe Mom's Wholesome Audio?) produce such units, and one, Gately Electronics, offers professional-quality mixers, equalizers, and reverb devices in kit as well as wired form. (3) A second (two-track or stereo) recorder is also a must, both for mixing down multi-track recordings and for general duplicating. And, of course (4) leave some thing in the budget for mikes, stands, cables, splicing equipment, etc.
Worth considering, as an alternative to getting components piecemeal, is a pack age offered by Revox and Lamb Laboratories called the "Mini-Studio." This provides a two-channel recorder and a four-input stereo mixer with equalizers, pan pots, echo-send and echo-return controls, and even limiters, together with four Beyer mikes, stands, and connecting cables, all in easily transportable form, for the not unreasonable price of $2,760.50.
Setting up your own home studio will involve you in learning some new re cording techniques, but I'm sure you'll find the satisfaction of producing a really professional product is more than adequate compensation.
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Also see:
TDK (blank cassette tape, ad)
TECHNICAL TALK Is Phase Shift Audible?
PERFECTING SOUND REPRODUCTION--Are discs, tapes, and FM broadcasts as good as they might be?