Warning: Mics and Cables Everywhere! Beware of Snakes!
Just when you thought things couldn’t possibly get messier, it’s time to break out the mic stands and start patching the mics into the mixing console.
One of the cleanest and tidiest solutions to interfacing multiple rooms to the control room is to run a snake from the console to each of the recording rooms. A snake (see Figure 7.13) is a collection of audio cables that have been grouped together to simplify things when two patch points are far apart. All of the ends of the snake are numbered to match the inputs of an input box on the other end, which takes a lot of the guesswork out of patching cables from room to room.
Figure 7.13. An audio snake.
Depending on your miking technique, acoustic drums can eat up a lot of mics and a lot of inputs on a recording console. Since this is a five-piece drum kit with three cymbals and a hi-hat, we will be using nine microphones on the drum kit: one microphone on the kick drum, one on each tom (three total), two microphones on the snare (top and bottom), one on the hi-hat, and two microphones overhead. Overhead mics capture the overall stereo image of the drum kit. Their main purpose is usually to record cymbals, but since it’s impossible to prevent bleed-through from other parts of a drum kit, the overheads usually pick up frequencies from all the other drums as well.
Since the bass amp is in the bedroom closet, we’ll also need one input for the microphone on the bass amp as well. The bass player would also like the balanced line out on his bass amplifier to go direct, so we will need to have one more mic input available.
This means that the bedroom requires a total of 10 microphones and 11 balanced mic inputs (located on a snake). Since the bass amplifier is in the closet and the doors will be shut between the rooms, there is no need to further isolate the drums.
In the living room, we’ve decided to do a simple stereo mic setup on the piano, which takes two microphones, one over the low strings and one over the high strings. Since the piano player is also singing, that makes a total of three microphones and three mic inputs. The acoustic guitar player would like to do a basic mic setup on his guitar but would also like to record the direct guitar signal from his pickup while he’s singing. This will require two microphones and three mic inputs. The percussionist will be playing tambourine along with her electronic percussion kit, and she’ll also be singing background vocals, so she’ll need two microphones and four mic inputs (because her Roland kit needs to be patched into the studio as well). The guitar player would like to record his guitar amp in stereo, so this requires two microphones (one on each speaker side) and two mic inputs. Lastly, the singer will require one microphone and one input.
The living room, then, requires a grand total of 10 microphones and 13 balanced mic inputs. Since you have several different musicians all playing in one room, it would probably be a great idea to separate the musicians with homemade studio baffles and use some packing blankets on the grand piano. The closet door will be shut for the electric guitar, so most of the bleed-through between microphones will be fairly easy to control. The bleed-through between the musicians’ vocal mics and instrument mics will be harder to control.
Now we know what we’re going to need. You can run a 12-channel audio snake into the bedroom and a 16-channel snake into the living room from the control room. You’ll also need 24 mic cables, 20 microphones, 20 mic stands, one direct box for the acoustic guitar, and two direct boxes for the Roland percussion kit. This also means that you’ll be using either 22 or 24 input channels on your 24-channel mixing board depending on where you decide to patch the Roland drum kit. Considering that you’re also using 18 to 20 tape inputs on your Mackie console, your board is almost maxed out.
Speaking of being maxed out, let’s take a quick look at possible costs to add this type of setup to a home studio.
Mackie 24x8 console $3,400
PreSonus FP10 (3 @ $600 each) $1,800
Shure SM57 microphones (8 @ $100 each) $800
Sennheiser MD421 II microphones (2 @ $350 each) $700
AKG C 414 microphones (4 @ $1,000 each) $4,000
AKG C 1000 microphones (5 @ $350 each) $1,400
Blue Bottle Cap microphone $5,000
16-channel audio snake $350
12-channel audio snake $275
Baffles, packing blankets $300
Video monitoring system $3,000
Headphones (7 pair) $700
Headphone amplifiers (2) $300
MIDI cables, patch cables, and unbalanced cables $900
Microphone cables (20) $400
Mic stands (20) $2,000
Direct boxes (3) $300
Not even counting the computer system, Cubase, the grand piano, special mic pres, or the cost of actual space, your cost has increased by more than $25,000. The good news is that most of this equipment doesn’t lose its value over time, so if you’re planning on recording a lot of bands or just recording one band a lot, this is a small investment compared to the thousands you could spend in studio time. On the other hand, you simply cannot compare the quality of a Mackie console and your bedroom to that of a professional recording studio.
I won’t go into detail on how to connect these mics to the console, where to place them, and which ones to use for which applications. You can use what I’ve explained in my previous chapters, your manuals, and other sources for that information. There’s still a lot of basic ground left for us to cover.
Note
Getting levels and setting EQ on an analog console is much the same as working on the Cubase mixer. I will go into detail on how to get the best sound for each instrument. I will say that you shouldn’t worry too much about setting EQ during the recording stage. A lot of professional engineers choose to spend less time with EQ when tracking and more time with EQ when mixing. During the tracking stage, your focus should be primarily on microphone placement, sound isolation, and performance.