Basic Home Recording Setup Through GarageBand

[FrankHudson]

I record a lot, but I believe others here are better at achieving recording quality than I am. My experiences and my provisional "guesses" at what works best for me differ from others here, and my confidence in my own choices is not so strong that I'm going to refrain from offering my own suggestions as to hardware.

But here's my free advice:

Your first job is to start to understand what it's like to record, what works for you to allow you to work with your voice and playing, selecting material and takes with an eye even to your friends/family audience, deciding what you will overdub, what you'll record "live/all at once," and figuring out where to record and if what you may find you need to do to reduce room our other sound issues there. There's no real way to "shopping list" that, it's something you learn by doing.

You could do with one mic, any interface, and a decent set of headphones. Planning to have more than one mic is likely a good idea however. I would consider the MXL you are considering a "disposable" mic -- but that may not be a terrible thing. You will be able to record your guitar and voice at once with it. You will hear any issues your room brings in -- because even cheap condenser mics are sensitive and will record things you ear and brain magically filter out.

Have you budgeted for a mic stand to hold the mic yet? You'll want that.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by TBman

After years of procrastinating and buying more mics than I really needed, I bought a couple of these ATS 4' x 2' x 4" panels. I don’t know what a vocalist would need in the way of room treatments, but I do know if you don’t have some sort of room treatment spending more money on mics won't get you there.

Room treatment doesn't change depending on whether one sings or not. The only thing that might change if one is using portable panels is that the panels may need to be higher since the mouth is higher than the guitar.

But since the topic has now been introduced... room treatment is almost always necessary for the home recordist to achieve good results. The rooms in our homes were not built with recording in mind and the reverberations produced in those rooms can often be detrimental to the sound you get when recording.

There are two ways to combat that:
1. Put the microphones close to the source in order to be able to record at lower gain levels, minimizing the amount of room sound you get on the recording.
2. Use various acoustic treatments to minimize the ability of the reverberations to reach the microphone.
While the first solution can sometimes be achieved, the second will deliver more consistent results.

This topic is covered in the second post on the "AGF Members Gear Masterlist and Recommended Tutorial Videos." Just scroll down to where you see "Room Treatment" in large letters.

[thestubbyone]

Originally Posted by TBman

After years of procrastinating and buying more mics than I really needed, I bought a couple of these ATS 4' x 2' x 4" panels. I don’t know what a vocalist would need in the way of room treatments, but I do know if you don’t have some sort of room treatment spending more money on mics won't get you there. I plan on getting one more to make more of a recording "booth."
Attachment 64644

Where did you get those panels from?