What software do you use?

[Explorer]

I am trying to find a good mix of hardware and software to improve the sound quality of my songs.

I'm using Sony ACID Music Studio to record multiple tracks. (but it has a latency problem with Windows 7, resulting to the second track going being out of sync with the first track).
I used MAGIX earlier, which has the same problem, and also on Windows Vista. So I now just downloaded Reaper to fiddle around this. Seems okay software, except that I would like something to add percussion and background midi instrument based on typing in chords (band-in-a-box does that, but that is way too expensive I think).

So what setup do other musicians use?
Advice about hardware setup is welcome also, I simply plug in a microphone and headset into my laptop which runs windows7. I can imagine that there are better ways to do this.

[Ghiúis]

Apple Logic Pro all the way, man. So slick and easy to use. I have several friends who are electronic music composers, and they turned me on to it. So worth the investment. My first Mac ever, but--wow.

The Logic software also comes boxed with Mainstage, which helps you put together live performance material. I recently saw Wilco in concert, and they had a single performer open for them. Her, her guitar, and a Mac loaded with Mainstage software. If you closed your eyes, you would have thought there was a 5 piece band on stage, complete with backup singers! Very impressive!

I have a PreSonus firewire which acts as a preamp for microphone, handles MIDI stuff, and is my link between my computer and the instruments. I can highly recommend their product. The box comes with software as well, and it is updated via streaming fairly regularly.

You definitely want something between your microphone and computer, otherwise sound quality is dreadful. PreSonus has a surprisingly affordable range of firewire setups. It is compatible with both PC and Mac.

If you are looking for a good microphone, I can recommend the Rode K2. It is a little pricey but you can use it both as a studio mic and a USB mic. I am planning to use it in USB format for podcasting. It is an excellent choice if you are looking for a great vocal mic with enough oomph to handle instruments too, esp guitar, whistles, and the like.

Hope that helps!

[Corwen]

I also use Reaper, very good, you can certainly sequence midi with it though you need a VST instrument. Native Instruments own VST host, called Kore 2, is free to download (though it is enormous). There is a free expansion pack too with more sounds, and it has some good drum kits and enough pad sounds for anyone. Don't know about typing in chords though, but its easy enough to find the chords you want on either Reaper's built in virtual keyboard, or on a cheap midi keyboard, play them into reaper, and then chop them up and sequence them as you like, since reaper allows you to chop up and loop bits of midi as if it was an audio file.

Janet, Apple Logic and Firewire audio interfaces are great, but neither will work with a PC.

Janet is right about you needing something between your laptop and the microphone. You need what's called a Digital Audio Interface, it acts as an external soundcard, and better ones also have outputs and allow you to control your monitoring and recording in a single interface. I have a M-Audio Fast Track Ultra, which has 4 mic/line inputs and 4 digital inputs, but you could get something cheaper if you don't need as many inputs. Two inputs is usually enough, so you can eventually get a stereo pair of mics.

Something else you need is a condenser mic, dynamic mics that you can just plug into your laptop never have the sort of sound quality you need in a recording, though they are the standard for live work. Condenser mics are tricky in that they need power, called phantom power and generally supplied at 48 volts through the mic cable. Your laptop won't do this, but most audio interfaces do. Make sure you get one that can supply phantom power. An alternative is to get one of the condenser mics that has its own battery, Rode do some cheap small condenser mics like the M3 that have a battery, this might be the cheapest way to record if you can't afford an audio interface that gives phantom power.

As Janet says Rode microphones are excellent, by far the best at a budget price. The Rode NT series is pretty much the standard for home recording. A large diaghram mic like one of the NTs is what you need if you are doing primarily vocals, a small condenser for instruments. There is no substitute for a large diaghram condenser for vocal recording, and they don't make one that takes a battery, so if you are serious about home recording vocals this is an essential item its worth building the rest of your set up around (including an audio interface with phantom power). Of course you will also need a pop shield, mic stand and shock mount too, sometimes you can get these cheaper as a pack with the mic. A stereo pair of small condensers is what you really need for recording acoustic instruments, along with a stereo bar which mounts two mics to a single mic stand (about £5 from Maplin), and a mic stand, though a single small condenser will do at a pinch.

The last piece of the puzzle, after DAW, DAI, laptop, and mic, are speakers and headphones. The minimum is one good pair of phones if you never record anyone else! If you record other people you need a cheap pair headphones, just so they can hear what they are playing along with, and another good pair so you can hear what you are recording and to use when you are mixing. Headphones had best be closed back ones, open back headphones will be heard by the mic and end up on the recording, making everything weird, tinny and muddy. I spent quite a lot on one pair of good headphones, and then found an excellent old pair of closed back Maxell headphones, about 30 years old but absolutely fantastic, in a charity shop for £2, which shows sometimes good stuff can be found cheaply!

It is possible to mix audio with just headphones, but it isn't easy and you always end up overdoing the bass. A pair of shielded near field monitor speakers are what you need, you can pay whatever you like for these up to many thousands! I have a pair of Behringer MS40 near field monitors, they are fine for home recording, very cheap and certainly good quality for the price. They are about the minimum you can get away with, and even then I'd want to take anything I recorded to be mastered by someone with better kit rather than master it myself, before putting it on CD.

Check out Sound on Sound's website for kit reviews before you buy anything, they also have a lot of articles about home recording. ALso the Reaper add on manual, REAMIX, is very useful.

[Explorer]

I looked up the stuff that Janet mentioned, but that is way too expensive for me, but thanks for the info because it gives me an idea of the sort of things I might need.

Corwen, thank you for those tons of details.

Allow me to tell you where I am aiming at.
At the moment my setup is really really simple. One Samson CO1U studio condenser mic directly plugged into a usb port on a laptop running Windows. I have no idea what a condenser mic' is, but you mentioned it and it is written on my mic, so I may be safe there ;-). It gets its power through the usb port. We have two headphones that seem to work okay, I don't think they spill into the mic, at least I never noticed that.

The music that we make is rather simple also. Usually 1 or 2 accoustic guitars (which I can't plug in), 2 vocals and some sound effects. Sometimes a flute or tambourine. (but we found that recording the tambourine is hard). I don't want to get too far away from what we can do live, so usually I end up with only two recorded tracks. The first one the lead guitar and lead vocals, second one with second voice, sound effects, guitar solos. But sometimes I just like to add tracks and effects to a song to see where it ends up.

I downloaded Reaper, and that seems to work nicely. (not sure if I will buy it, because I already bought Sony ACID).

Let me explain what sort of quality I am aiming at.
Not really fully professional audio, but we have been asked to make a cd a number of times now. So far we refused, because we want to give away our music for free (we simply play it at eistedfodds). But we are now considering making a cd anyway and give an anti-commerce statement by selling it as cheap as possible (like 2 or 3 euros). But we may want a somewhat better sound quality than we have now.

Even with two tracks I get some audible noise now.
This is an example of the quality I have now. The first one is 2 tracks (noisy).
http://uilennest.net/sounds/WanderingAe ... ep2010.mp3

The second one is just a single track, but at some point near the end Ingeborg sings along as backing vocals, but because she has a louder voice than me she sings further from our only mic than me. But it doesn't sound right.
http://uilennest.net/sounds/WanderingAe ... ep2010.mp3

So, it seems that I should focus on the DAI then right? One with two inputs that has phantom power. I guess a recording using two inputs ends up as a single track in Reaper?

[malcolmb]

Hi Nico

Most of the music I write is jazz and easy listening and my latest piece has just reached number 4 in the Soundclick jazz charts . I write and produce all my music by notation so I cannot offer any advice on hardware. But I am certain that the key to what you are aiming to achieve is the DAW. No matter the quality of your hardware, a good DAW will turn any music produced with even average equipment into a CD quality product. The heart of a DAW is layering and balancing tracks, mixing and mastering. I use Sonar Home Studio 7XL. It is a cutdown (and therefore much cheaper) version of Sonar Producer and Sonar Studio. Despite being a cutdown version, it has a vast range of tools for music production. I would certainly recommend it and would be happy for you to contact me by email if you would like to discuss it further. My email is:

malcolm_brown@msn.com

Blessings
Malcolm

[Ghiúis]

I am copying an email my friend Zac, who is an electronic music composer in the US, sent to me. There are types of software that you can get more cheaply but they require a bit more techie know-how. As a complete luddite, I chose to divert some of my student loans to setting up a recording studio that could be rated semi-pro at least. It can get expensive fast, I know.

When I was looking at doing a very very budget studio, my areas to spend bucks on to make a good sound were the condenser mic and the headphones. Amazon frequently runs specials on Beyerdynamic phones, which I have both closed and open, and they are top-quality. Amazon also has deals on Firewire setups if you ever come into Mac territory, we got ours at less than half the listed price because it was a slightly older model. A 20 euro plug adapter later (that was the new feature) and we were in business.

Rode has a lot of mics that are less than the K2 that I mentioned. They include some accessories with their package and are very good value for the price. I think some we looked at in the US retailed for around 200 dollars.

Audio Technica has a decent mic for around 160 US dollars, but I don't really like their sound in the studio--it is a better gigging mic in my opinion.

Here is the email, it may give you some ideas that--if you have the technical know-how--might be a more affordable way to get what you want. I did not check them out myself, so I cannot speak for how usable they are--but it may help.

Janet

Sound editors, sequencers--note that Ardour is an open source of Pro Tools!

A great free editor is Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
At $79, it would be tough to beat Wave Editor as a, well, wave editor. See below.

When it comes to sequencers, the money adds up fast. In ascending price order:
1) Ardour https://ardour.org/ It's what I use. It's free, but be prepared to enter a world of hacker craziness when something goes wrong. I love it, but it's not for the techie feint of heart.
2) Wave Editor from Audiofile Engineering http://audiofile-engineering.com/waveeditor/ Minneapolis musicians (and friends of mine) make this software, and it's effing amazing. For $79 you absolutely can not beat the quality of this software. However, it's a bit more of an editor with features that let you do sequencing. Traditionalists would hate it. The interface isn't like a "normal" sequencer -- it's more like photoshop where you think in terms of showing and hiding layers of sound.
3) ProTools, somewhere in the $100 - $400 range, is the industry standard, all the big studios have many tens of thousands of dollards of digidesign equipment -- they lock you into their hardware -- ardour is an open source clone of pro tools
http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?nav ... emid=33116
4) Digital Performer from MOTU is the software used in the UMN e-music studios https://www.motu.com/products/software/dp I don't know the price but the most expensive upgrade listed on their site is $395.
5) Apple's Logic http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/ has all the beautiful design you expect from Apple at a $499 price point. It's a newcomer to the field but is quickly taking over among younger artists and recording engineers.

[Ghiúis]

One more thing I forgot to mention--we are American ex-pats in Germany right now, and it is amazing how much cheaper this sort of thing is if you can buy from Amazon US or an American dealer. Depending on how customs work--we usually have a US friend send us our things over as a gift and pay some tax, but it still ends up being a significant savings over what we would pay here in Germany.

If you have any friends or contacts in the US, this may be a money-saving way to get your studio set up.

[DJ Droood]

So what setup do other musicians use?
Advice about hardware setup is welcome also, I simply plug in a microphone and headset into my laptop which runs windows7. I can imagine that there are better ways to do this.

I am pretty old fashioned,..I record into a sony minidisc recorder (one insturment at a time) that I bought off ebay for $30 bucks, but which works for me brilliantly. (not sure if they even make those any more.) with a Sony ECM-MS908C mic which I have had for 10 years and use on my camcorder as well..never a problem and I love the sound quality. Then I put the mp3 file of, say, the drums on my ipod and listen to it on my headphones while I record the next track, then I sinc it up, mix it down and repeat until I have something I can force my wife to listen to and say "that's lovely, dear."

I use a PC..XP...(although geeks say Apple is the only way to go for audio/video) and edit with free Audacity software, and also using the audio tracks of my Adobe Premiere video editing software.

Probably not the best set-up, but cheap, and in line with my musical talents.

Also, if I want to share physically, I only use memory sticks now for audio or video....cheap, reusable, small, rugged, ...DVDs and CDs are dead.

[Corwen]

I looked up the stuff that Janet mentioned, but that is way too expensive for me, but thanks for the info because it gives me an idea of the sort of things I might need.

Corwen, thank you for those tons of details.

Allow me to tell you where I am aiming at.
At the moment my setup is really really simple. One Samson CO1U studio condenser mic directly plugged into a usb port on a laptop running Windows. I have no idea what a condenser mic' is, but you mentioned it and it is written on my mic, so I may be safe there ;-). It gets its power through the usb port. We have two headphones that seem to work okay, I don't think they spill into the mic, at least I never noticed that.

Thats an interesting mic, that essentially includes its own audio interface. 48khz isn't great (88.2 is more standard these days) but its ok. Seems a shame that you can't use it as a normal mic into an external DAI, still its a large condenser so thats the best thing to have for your music where the vocals is the main thing. Good you have reasonable headphones, they do make a difference.

The music that we make is rather simple also. Usually 1 or 2 accoustic guitars (which I can't plug in), 2 vocals and some sound effects. Sometimes a flute or tambourine. (but we found that recording the tambourine is hard). I don't want to get too far away from what we can do live, so usually I end up with only two recorded tracks. The first one the lead guitar and lead vocals, second one with second voice, sound effects, guitar solos. But sometimes I just like to add tracks and effects to a song to see where it ends up.

I downloaded Reaper, and that seems to work nicely. (not sure if I will buy it, because I already bought Sony ACID).

I think you'll find Reaper does so much more than Acid that you'll end up using that full time (I also have Sony Acid and never use it these days). If you were to break down your recording into more tracks, ie separate tracks for each element, then you'd be able to mix them against each other and apply different effects to each track, pan the vocals apart from the guitar etc and the final sound will be a million times better with no more effort. Audacity is reasonable for recording audio and for basic multitracking, but in no way is a fully featured Digital Audio Workstation. Learn to use Reaper and the time will be rewarded.

Let me explain what sort of quality I am aiming at.
Not really fully professional audio, but we have been asked to make a cd a number of times now. So far we refused, because we want to give away our music for free (we simply play it at eistedfodds). But we are now considering making a cd anyway and give an anti-commerce statement by selling it as cheap as possible (like 2 or 3 euros). But we may want a somewhat better sound quality than we have now.

Even with two tracks I get some audible noise now.
This is an example of the quality I have now. The first one is 2 tracks (noisy).
http://uilennest.net/sounds/WanderingAe ... ep2010.mp3

The second one is just a single track, but at some point near the end Ingeborg sings along as backing vocals, but because she has a louder voice than me she sings further from our only mic than me. But it doesn't sound right.
http://uilennest.net/sounds/WanderingAe ... ep2010.mp3

Your tracks are so noisy that something must be fundamentally wrong with your setup. Digital recording, with a reasonable mic like the one you have, should be more or less noise free, there should be no audible white noise. I suspect something is wrong with the routing of the audio in your machine, possibly involving a conflict between the mics own software and the soundcard, or possibly you have the gain turned up really high to compensate for a low signal elsewhere, anyhow its too involved to get into here. I suggest you describe your setup and ask people on the Reaper forum, it really should be lots better than it is! You should be able to have at least 20 tracks running at once on your machine with no noise!

So, it seems that I should focus on the DAI then right? One with two inputs that has phantom power. I guess a recording using two inputs ends up as a single track in Reaper?

No, if you have a Digital Audio Interface with several inputs, you will be able to control the level of the signal of each input separately in the software that came with the DAI. Then in Reaper you create a separate track for each mic or instrument, arm each for recording and in the drop down section select the relevant input. Thus each mic or instrument, plugged into a different input on the DAI, ends up recorded to a different track in Reaper. The important thing is to get the levels right (controlled in the DAI software or possibly with a knob on the front of the DAI) so it neither peaks nor is too low, should average between around -12db and -18db and not go above 0db. The Reaper manual (the free one at the top of the page here: http://www.reaper.fm/userguide.php) should talk you through the whole process, but this way you can simultaneously record several tracks of audio in good quality.

For example, this is a typical setup for recording a single person playing and singing. I have a DAI with four inputs. One takes the large condenser for vocals, then two are for a stereo pair of small condensers which record the sound of the guitar (one is pointed at the guitar bridge and one at the fretboard). The fourth is for the pickup of the guitar, this has to go into a £25 DI box which stops the phantom power from destroying the guitar pickup, which doesn't require it, and converts the pickups unbalanced instrument level signal into a balanced mic level signal the DAI can handle. All of these signals end up on separate tracks where they can be mixed and balanced to give a good sound. Listen to Close my Eyes or Beyond the Silence on our website to hear how this sounds (http://ancientmusic.co.uk/sounds.html). I could just as easily use my setup for two singers each playing an instrument, recording both voices and both instruments (though they'll only get either one mic or their pickup which will sound less rich) onto separate tracks. The advantage of doing this sort of recording with everyone singing and playing at once is it sounds really 'real', the bad thing is that the mics get a bit of everything, not just the thing they are pointing at (this is called spill) which makes it hard to snip out mistakes or apply effects to each thing differently.

Anyway I'd try and get what you've got working for now, you should be able to do a lot with the kit you have, at least get a noise free recording and learn to use Reaper, before you splash out on more kit that, unless you sort out the audio issues with your laptop/mic is unlikely to work any better!

One last thing about reaper is that it allows you to have a go at mastering (what the author of the Reamix guide calls 'pseudo-mastering'), once you have produced some noise free tracks you are happy with get the Reamix guide (I think you have to buy it from LULU) and work through the mastering stages. This will make such a difference to your tracks, make them as loud and present as commercially produced tracks, that you'll be amazed!

[Corwen]

I've just read a little about the Samson mic, at Sound on Sound (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun06/a ... onc01u.htm) Are you using the software preamp mentioned in the article? It sounds like the samson has a relatively low signal and unless you are recording with it just a hands breadth from your lips (with a pop shield between you and it obviously) then it is probably recording at a really low level and you are having to boost it loads later which may be responsible for all the noise maybe? Try it with that applet if you haven't got that installed already, with it set up so it peaks at a reasonable level in reaper (-12db or thereabouts), and see how noisy it is then.

[Explorer]

Corwen, man, thanks for all that great advice.
Because of that I have already discovered something. I sing way to far away from the mic and have the recording level of the mic set too sensitive, that's why it picks up so much noise I think. I only had time for a quick test, but I got a better result already. And I can't believe how easy it is to get a nice stereo effect. I'm going to try to tweak things more tomorrow. And I'll look up at that software preamp that you mention also. Also, when I use Reaper, I don't seem to have the latency problem (to my surprise, because I thought that was a hardware/driver issue).

I went to the music store today, and they (ofcourse) said that a Audio Interface is absolutely required also. But that would indeed render my usb mic useless and I would have to buy one or two new ones of a similar quality. So I am going to try to save myself 500 euro for now and try to improve my current setup with some intelligence instead. And I will let you hear results. Thanks again for this help!

[Explorer]

Your tracks are so noisy that something must be fundamentally wrong with your setup. Digital recording, with a reasonable mic like the one you have, should be more or less noise free, there should be no audible white noise. I suspect something is wrong with the routing of the audio in your machine, possibly involving a conflict between the mics own software and the soundcard, or possibly you have the gain turned up really high to compensate for a low signal elsewhere, anyhow its too involved to get into here. I suggest you describe your setup and ask people on the Reaper forum, it really should be lots better than it is! You should be able to have at least 20 tracks running at once on your machine with no noise!

I understand the mic better now.
That preamp applet that you mentioned is no longer available, because the drivers that come with modern operation systems take over that function. (I can indeed set the levels from windows).
The mic has some white noise from itself, and some latency.

I don't get it as clean as your samples yet, but a lot cleaner than before.
This is a test recording right after my first cup of coffee in a noisy environment next to a room with the washing machine and a neigbor who is drilling holes into something.
But now I set the recording level of the mic to about 65% (is this what you call gain?), so that from about 15cm away it doesn't peak into the red. (I need to experiment with that a bit more).
It has three tracks now, I split the guitar and vocals as you suggested, and panned them away from each other (wow!).
There is still some white noise, a little bit of latency, but I think I'm getting somewhere.

http://uilennest.net/sounds/WanderingAn ... kt2010.mp3

[Corwen]

That track sounds a lot better, though still rather noisy. The Samson is a noisy mic, the SoS review says as much, but I am still surprised it is as noisy as it is, but perhaps with more experimentation you'll get the rest of the noise out of it. It is, ultimately, an entry level mic so I guess you get what you pay for! Its a shame that as you say if you get a DAI this mic won't be useable, but it sounds like you could do with a better mic anyway- even a good quality small condenser would be better than a noisy large condenser, and maybe you could get something for the Samson second hand. I'm afraid there is no substitute for spending a bit on equipment, unless you go the route DJ has done and get a hardware recorder with built in mics, you'll pay for this in flexibility, though its not so bad if you can then import the files into your PC and play with them there, and the sound quality will never be as good as a decent mic through a decent DAI. The cheapest decent mics are the rode NT series (NT 1, NT 2, NT2000) and their entry level small condensers (M3 etc, or NT5- which I have a matched pair of). Your music is good, so you deserve the ability to record it properly!

Panning is a wonderful tool, and there are all sorts of things you can do. If you have two tracks of guitar (the pickup signal and a mic, or a pair of mic tracks from the stereo pair of mics) its possible to pan them either side of the vocal. Even if you only have one track of guitar, its possible to copy it to get a second track, eq it slightly differently, add a few ms of delay and pan the twop guitar tracks say 60% left and right, leaving the vocal in the middle. Also panning the reverb slightly to one side is a good effect which gives a sense of space. Most reverb plugins have a pan control. The Reaper user guide and Reamix will talk you through lots of possibilities.

A DAI that can reduce latency through direct monitoring helps, as can playing with Reaper's audio settings, it can be set up to compensate for reported latency which at least means all your tracks are in synch with each other!

[Explorer]

Even if you only have one track of guitar, its possible to copy it to get a second track, eq it slightly differently, add a few ms of delay and pan the twop guitar tracks say 60% left and right, leaving the vocal in the middle.

Brilliant, I added that... and other stuff you suggested.
I got the midi working, but I didn't like the soft synth much, so my 'bass' is just another track with my guitar and a bass FX.
I got all the noise out at the beginning of the song with one of the Reaper plugins and it takes most of it out of the rest of the song also.
I think you saved me a couple of hundred euro's in new equipment, because the quality I get now is good enough for me at this stage.
So I'm going to buy you a beer next time I see you in Glastonbury.

This is the end result for now. Still some little glitches here and there, but good enough for an amateur. Thanks again for your help!

http://uilennest.net/sounds/WanderingAngus.mp3

[reilz81]

i use flstudio mostly but audacity is great for latency as its so lightweight another thing you could try is getting asio4all which is like a special driver package for sound drivers which imo offers some good latency on windows then using just straight direct sound but really decent latency isnt easy to come by on windows for that you need mac or linux with realtime kernel oh and ardour is an excellent piece of software but not for windows unfortunatly

[Kernos]

I looked up the stuff that Janet mentioned, but that is way too expensive for me, but thanks for the info because it gives me an idea of the sort of things I might need.

Nico, you might take a look at Audacity, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audacity, an open-source, freeware program. I have no idea if it is adequate for pros, but it is certainly good enough for hobbyists and casual users. It is available for Windows, OS X, Linux, BSD...

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

[reilz81]

your white noise could come from power cables i have had that issue in the past when i have used mics not something i do much cause i do stuff mostly digital through midi or directly through the pc if im micing some sound or something its with my mp3 player which has a very effective condencer mic inbuilt

the software i use is audacity cause its lightweight

these 2 are mostly for synth work reason and flstudio although you can send stuff through reason they havent had a dedicated recording module till recently and flstudio recently got recording features that are decent but i wouldnt use it as a multitrack due to how bloated it is

[Corwen]

In my experience you tend to get a hum from power cables, transformers and earth problems. White noise is often the result of impedance problems and line/mic/instrument level signals not going to the correct places, but it is worth checking all these things. There is also the final possibility that something is broken!