Teft’s Blog

A lot of people ask me when they first get started in building a home studio “what do you recommend I buy?” It’s such a broad question! So many choices, options, and paths to walk down. Do you dance with Digidesign and the ProTools money pit? Or do you amalgamate a digital audio workstation from Logic and Motu gear? Or do you go analog and mix everything through a mackie board? Or a combo of both? Ahhh! Options!!!

A common mistake is when somebody drops $3,000 - $4,000 on a microphone and only spends $400 on a sound card (audio converters). Big mistake! Lots of records have been cut with cheap microphones, but the difference is they were cut using analog tape. With digital recording, you inherently lose definition because the sound waves become steps (16bit has about 65,000 steps. 24bit has a few million). Analog tape is not restricted by steps (or bit depth).

I always advice people on getting the best possible audio converters there budget can afford. Emphasis on the “afford”! High-end mastering converters can out price Honda Civics! So stop lusting over that Nuemann U87 and get yourself the Apogee Rosetta 200.

The second question I get, after I tell people about buying the best audio converters they can afford, “is there anything I can do for my existing sound card/converters?” YES! If your sound card has a word clock input. Apogee makes a digital clock, Big Ben, and all it does is keep digital time. That’s it! But man does it keep great time!

Digital clocks help reduce something that plagues digital signals (adat, spdif, cd players, etc) - jitter. It’s your enemy. It’s responsible for smearing your audio signals and blurring your mix when you can’t get that bass to sit right (the room helps, too ). Clocks, like the Big Ben, do wonders for existing audio converters. The difference is almost night and day. Blurry undefined audio -vs- clear crystalline audio! The reason is cheaper sound cards use cheaper digital clocks.

The #1 thing I recommend for people when starting a studio is to invest as much money as possible into awesome audio converters. When your converters rock, you can record anything and it comes out sounding the way it should! Dry guitar direct input signals are rich and full of life, Shure SM57’s cut through the mix, radio shack mics sound canned in a good way, and your monitors render your mix the way it should sound!