Today’s home studios benefit from easy access to sophisticated recording technology, yet many musicians still use professional studios. There are several reasons for this: access to a larger recording space with excellent acoustics, a selection of great microphones, high-quality preamps and outboard gear, and experienced engineer/producers. Equally important is the fresh perspective that recording in a pro studio affords the artist.
Optimized Acoustics
If you want to capture the excitement of a rock band playing together, you can certainly record in your home studio. If the acoustics are so-so, plan on a lot of close-miking. In a living room with a vaulted ceiling, you can even hang the drum overhead mics high. Take the keyboards and bass direct. Squirrel the guitar amps off in other rooms, or record direct and use amp modeling. Overdub the vocals. Or you could book a professional recording studio for tracking.
Pro studios offer acoustic spaces optimized to record music. Sweetwater Studios, for instance, was designed by the renowned acoustician Russ Berger, and each studio sounds incredible. Pro studios obviously become a necessity for accommodating larger ensembles and orchestras. Regardless of session size, being able to back mics away and capture more “air” around the instruments in a good-sounding room pays sonic dividends in the final mix. But there’s much more to a pro studio than just acoustics.
Isolation booths with good sight lines enable musicians to perform together as if in the same room. Sometimes, the excitement in a live scratch vocal or sax solo is impossible to match as an overdub, and iso booths allow you to capture all the tracking session magic cleanly. Musicians perform their best when they can hear exactly what they need to hear, and a pro studio will likely have a modern cue mix system with a personal monitor mixer for each musician. In fact, everything from a studio’s air conditioning system to its wiring plays a part in the quality of your recording.
Great Gear
Of paramount importance is the studio’s mic locker, which you can think of as an artist’s palette that lets you paint with sound. Different mics have different sonic characteristics, and having access to a selection of great mics — and an engineer that knows where (and how) to deploy them in a particular acoustical space — is an invaluable asset. The best mics aren’t worth much if the signal is degraded by substandard equipment further down the chain, which is why high-quality preamps, equalizers, compressors, converters, plug-ins, and other processors are mission-critical. Before you book, check out the prospective studio’s equipment list to make sure it meets or exceeds your expectations.
Talented Engineers
Back in the day, professional studios typically employed a staff of engineers and assistants. By the 1980s, staff engineers had become, for the most part, an endangered species, eventually being supplanted by independent engineers hired directly by the artist or producer. Today, the democratization of recording technology has resulted in a wide variety of studios that are professional in every respect. Some of them, indeed, are in homes; others, in commercial spaces. Many of them can accommodate large ensembles. But perhaps the most interesting trend is that many contemporary studios for hire, once again, include the services of a professional engineer (often the owner) who may also be able to provide production services if needed.
Freedom to Be Creative
Engineering and musical creativity use different parts of the brain. If you are the producer and engineer in your home studio, you likely wear all the hats. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to focus your concentration on your music, rather than on EQing the snare drum? When you go to a professional studio, you’re hiring pros to handle the technical aspects of your recording. And for musical creativity, that’s a big deal.
The Ingredients of a Great-sounding Record
So you’ve decided a song desperately needs a trumpet solo. A professional recording studio will have the best local session musicians on speed dial. Hungry? If lacking its own gourmet kitchen, the studio will most certainly have take-out menus from the best local restaurants. If you prefer a laid-back atmosphere conducive to creativity, check out the many pro studios located in idyllic settings. Lastly, consider the value of the experience. You will learn something, and possibly a lot, about the art of recording, which you can then apply to other projects going forward. And perhaps one day you will own your very own professional studio!