The Beginners Guide to Studio 1

By Ned Flaherty

The Control Room:

The control room is where all the inputs from the live room and the vocal booth are routed so that the audio can be recorded and manipulated by an au-dio engineer. In Studio 1s control room, the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) Logic is used to mix and record audio. An option for recording audio in the con-trol room is with Direct Input (DI recording) which allows performers to plug in their instrument to a preamp and play directly into Logic. Depending on the sound you are looking for, this may not be as good as micing up an amp in the live room as DI recordings will have a much more defined sound without a lot of the natural reverb that comes with recording in the live room.

With the con-trol room being the

main hub of the studio for recording and mixing, it obviously has a lot of equipment in it. Studio 1’s control room has 2 sets of near field monitors. Firstly, there are the KRK Rokit 5’s. These are powered

monitors that have a fairly flat frequency response, although they do have a slight bass boost between 100-200Hz.

There are also the Adam A77X’s which are also powered monitors. Also simil-arly to the Rokit 5’s the A77X’s have a flat frequency response. This is good be-cause it allows you to listen critically to how certain elements of the mix sound at different volumes.

The control room also has capabilities to record MIDI data with the Novation Impulse 49 keyboard available to use. This is a great keyboard as it has capabil-ities to control the software in use from the keyboard itself, meaning less time away from it trying to tweak settings. However if you have a MIDI device of your own you wish to play that doesn’t use USB, then there is an emagic AMT8 available to hook up to.

Also there are emagic Logic Control and Logic Control XT surfaces available for people who aren’t so keen on working solidly with a mouse and keyboard and prefer the experience of a control surface to produce on.

There are 2 audio interfaces in Studio 1’s control room, both coming from Focusrite. The Saffire Pro 40 and Octopre MK2 both work an an ana-logue/digital converter, as well as having up to 8 mic preamps or 8 line inputs. These inputs are routed from both the live room and vocal booth so that audio can be recorded, converted and then mixed in Logic. They both have the ability to deliver phantom power for condenser microphones, and the Pro 40 has 2 individual headphone outputs

for monitoring. On the front of each interface are knobs to tweak the gain and a small LED level meters to see how balanced the mix is. Paying attention to this is important to obtain a balanced mix for example if you are recording a drum kit and the kick is too loud in comparison to the rest of the kit, then the input level meter will show that and you can use the knob for its designated input to reduce the gain.

Just below both these audio interfaces is the Samson Sphone, a headphone mixer and amp. This is an important piece of equipment for everyone involved in the process of recording. Performers need to be able to hear what they are playing and sounding like, and engineers will need to be able to talk to them and maybe even listen to the mix through a pair of headphones themselves. The Sphone allows this to happen and also adds the benefit of having 2 band mixer for each output, meaning if a performer would like to hear more bass in his monitor then the engineer can make that happen without affecting the mix.

For direct recording in the control room there is the Focusrite ISA One preamp which allows you to directly plug in an instrument and record it into Logic after going through on of the audio interfaces. The preamp gives the sound of the instrument more body, and strengthens the audio signal being delivered to the interface. Some performers prefer the clean sound it can help to deliver, but may op for a miked up amp when looking for a more natural sound.

With the control room being where the engineer will be placed, he needs a way to communicate with the performers in the other rooms. This is made possible with the SPL 2381 talkback and monitor controller. This piece of a equipment does a few things. Firstly, the talkback function allows the person using it to talk to performers in another room through their headphones. This means engineers can give some direction on what they would like the per-

former to do, or vice versa without having to keep going between rooms. Then theres the monitor controlling which lets you control the levels of either the backing track or what the performer is playing so they can be happy with their monitoring. It also controls the near field

monitors in the control room itself without interrupting any of the performers monitors.

The Live Room:

The Live Room is seen by many to be the most important part of any studio. It provides a space with good acous- tics for in-struments to be played and recorded from. Stu- dio 1 has quite a large live room that contains a full drum kit , microphones, amps etc. that allow per-formers to get the sound they are looking for. Recordings are routed through 2 stage boxes in the live room, both with 8 inputs to plug in microphones via XLR cable. The audio is sent to the sound cards in the control room to be converted from an analogue signal to a digital one that can be manipulated in Logic. The stage boxes also have headphone putputs so performers can monitor what they are playing. The live room also has a wide range of equipment that is used in the process of recording.

Firstly, the main piece of equipment used in the live room is of course the mi-crophones. Without them no live instrument could be recorded unless it was through DI which isnt always an option. Studio 1 has a wide range of micro-phones that are used for different purposes.

The Shure SM57 is a dynamic microphone meaning it uses a coil of wire and a magnet to produce a current when the coil of wire is moved past the magnet due to sound waves hitting the diaphragm. It also doesn’t require power unlike condenser microphones. It also means it can deal with quite high sound pres-sure levels. It is also a cardioid microphone, meaning it picks up most sound

from the front of the microphones an only some form the side making it less susceptible to feedback and leakage. It can be used to record snares, toms and placed to record guitar amps. It has a fairly flat frequency response, although there is a boost to-wards the high frequencies.

Following the SM57 is the Shure SM58. The SM58 is another cardioid dynamic microphone that much like the SM57 is extremely popular in the industry as it is extremely durable. The SM58 however is more known for vocals, but can be used to record a many number of percussive elements too due to its fairly flat frequency response. It picks up a bit more in the mid-low and mid-high areas in comparison to the SM57 but will still deliver a very good representation of the sound being captured.

Next is the Audix f2. There are 2 of these in Studio 1 that are mainly used for recording the toms on the drum kit, but they can be used to record all sorts of sound from guitars, basses and brass instruments. Again, the f2 is a cardioid dynamic microphone and it is also very durable thanks to it cast zinc alloy body and steel mesh cover. The frequency response for the f2 is not as flat as the Shure mics. There is a boost at both the low and high end making it ideal for trying to capture those sort of sounds.

Studio 1 also has an Audix

f6 which once again is a cardioid dynamic microphone. It’s designed for instru-ments with alot more bass which is reflected in its frequency response. There is a big boost in the low end which is why it is mainly used as a kick drum mic.

There are also condenser microphones in Studio 1 in the forms of Audix f9 and the Rode NT1000. Condenser microphones differ from dynamic microphones both because they require power to function (usually between 12 and 48 volts) and how the function. Inside the microphone are 2 plates, a back plate and a diaphragm. Between the 2 plates there is the

phantom power running through, and when sound waves hit the diaphragm the distance between it and the backplate are reduced, therefore changing the outgoing voltage and changing the output signal. Because of how delicate the diaphragm is, condenser microphones aren’t meant to be used to re-cord high sound pressure audio as it could damage them.

The Audix f9 is designed to record instruments with alot of higher frequencies which is why they can bused as overhead mics for drum kits. It’s useful to pick up on the cymbals which might not be miked up, as well as capture the sound of the room. The frequency response graph shows that the f9 is fairly bal-anced, but is clearly boosted towards the high end.

There is also the Rode NT1000 which being a condenser microphone isn’t often used with instruments. It is primarily used for vocals, but has its uses as a room mic when performers want to get some natural reverb from their perform-ance. It’s can also be considered to be quite a good room mic when it comes to the frequency response of it. Due to it being very flat, with a boost towards the high end, it should be very good for capturing the sound of a room accurately .

The live room also has various sizes of mic stands, from small low to the ground ones to get a good positioning for a kick or amp mic as well as taller ones to get overheads into an even positioning to get the right sound.

The vocal booth:

The vocal booth is the smallest room in Studio 1, but is prefect for recording vocals with the acoustics of it being so dry. There are 2 XLR mic inputs as well as 2 headphone outputs so 2 people can be singing together or a small amp can be recorded along with the vocals. There is a Rode NT1000 condenser mi-crophone in the booth that is perfect for recording vocals along with the acoustics.