Introduction To The Multi Channel Studio

Hazards in a studio are something you should be very cautious about. There are three main ones you should be prepared for, which are fire, trip and electrical hazards. In the studio, we are well prepared for all three. For example, if a fire was to occur, there are three main points that should help. We have a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher, which you are able to use over electricals if needed as foam extinguishers may potentially worsen the flames. There is also a fire exit which leads straight to the outdoors and not through any buildings, and lastly a fire alarm, however this fire alarm has an added feature of light as well as sound. This is because, as you would expect, in studios, you have people in and out, working on their music, playing through the speakers or in their headphones, which would mean that a normal fire alarms sound would be drowned out by the music, this fire alarm notifies people with light.

Trip hazards are very important in this case, as, as you would expect, there can be musicians/ clients in and out, moving equipment and instruments. Studio A and the live room are connected by cables through the stage box, however because these rooms aren't connected, the cables run through the outside of both rooms, but under a raised floor, so there is no chance of tripping over them. There are cables in which we use inside, for example, to record a guitar, which are on show. However we can easily avoid any trip hazards by coiling them neatly if not in use, or keeping them out of obvious places that there are likely to be people walking.

My last example is for the electrical hazard. As electrical safety is very important for risks of fires or electrocution, once a year we have something called PAT (portable appliance testing), this is a trained electrician who comes in and tests for any safety hazards; also stickers are placed onto the cables,

written with the date on, of when they were last tested, ensuring that they are checked annually. Another rule set within the studio is no food or drink is allowed, this is for any spills that could cause electrocutions or damage to the equipment.

In the control room we have two sets of studio monitors (KRK E8's and Fostex), this is so we can balance out the frequencies as personally I think the Fostex have a little bit too much bass frequencies. It is also good for when playing back your music, you can hear what it sounds like through different speakers. Both sets are pointed inwards, as if they are creating a triangle between both studio monitors and the producer. This is because if there was to be any panning within your track, if the speakers were facing different directions, your ears wouldn’t be picking up the correct signals.

There is also a MIDI keyboard (Proteus /1), however this model doesn’t have a built in audio interface, therefore I have to connect it through a separate audio interface (MOTU 2408 mk3), this interface has 8 inputs and 8 outputs. In total there are 3 audio interfaces, which means all together we have a sum of 24 inputs and 24 outputs. An audio interface is a piece of equipment that allows you to connect instruments to a DAW or a mixing desk, the instruments must have a digital output, however if they do not, the interface also allows you to record using a microphone, for any acoustic instruments or vocals etc.

The main piece of equipment in the control room is the mixing desk (Soundcraft Sapphyre) which has 36 channels. These channels are connected to the live room through the use of the stage box in the live room, with the cables running under the floor into the back of the mixing desk and then into the audio interfaces. This control room is different from working in studio 1 as it is connected to the live room through just the stage box and the audio interface.

For example:

Channel strip:

The two uses of a mixing desk, half of the mixing desk is for recording and the other half is mixing and playback. The top pot is dual controlled. The top pot controls the input gain within the whole channel, but something you should be aware of whilst altering this is your clipping levels. The bottom pot controls the volume of the playback (tape return) if mixing. The +48v button is something I would use if in the live room and I was using a condenser microphone because it generally needs more volts to have the power to work. The line button is used if you are recording an instrument such as a bass guitar, etc, if you are connecting it straight into the desk you should have the line button down to receive your basses signal in your mix.

The phase button is used if you are recording using two microphones. This is because you have to phase the mics so that you do not get a weak signal when recording. You might use the phase button if you are recording a snare drum and are using two mics, you would have to phase one microphone, this is because both mics would be in direct paths causing a week signal. The low cut button is used if you are recording instruments that you have un-needed low frequencies that you need to cut out. It cuts all frequencies below 100 Hz.

The range is the reduction from the channel strip. If the button is out, it means you can hear a little bit of the original sound. The gate in button controls the release threshold. The release means the cut off of an instrument. The threshold is how much signal you're letting through. The hold turns the automation into a box, this is good for using on a kick drum because you can control the release, so you can cut off the tail end of the kick. The release controls how big the box is.

The next section in the channel strip controls the frequencies. The top pot you can see in the image above controls the high frequencies, meaning you can reduce or increase the high frequencies by 15,000 dB. Alternatively, the bottom pot does the exact same thing, however altering the lower frequencies instead.

Further down the channel strip you will come to this section of channel panning. This section is fairly easy to understand as it is basically assigning the channel to an input. For example, if I had my kick drum on the first channel and I wanted it to be in input 1, I would pressed down the '1-2' button and pan the top pot to the left, alternatively, if I wanted my top snare in input 2, I would press the same button down, however, I would pan it to the left for input 2. Furthermore, for the rest of the inputs, it is the same process.

Connectors:

The quarter inch jack is in an imperial measurement as it is an older cable. I used this cable whilst recording a guitar and a bass guitar. However, I could of also used this cable to record a keyboard too. I also had to connect a lot of the outboard equipment to the patch bay, in which I used a cable called a bantam lead which is 4.4mm, which is just a bit bigger than your standard earphone jack. However they do come in different sizes. These cables just allow you to send and return signals. If suddenly during the mix, you stop hearing one of your channels or you don’t hear the compressor starting to work on your

channel strip (which did occur in my mixing process) then it is most likely because you have lost the signal by not returning it to the channel through a bantam lead.

The patch bay is used to connect outboard equipment to the mixing desk so that these effects (plug-ins) can be used during the recording process. Each row I divided up into different channels on the desk, each containing 7 inputs and 7 outputs. The first output is called 'line in'. The second being INS, this stands for insert, this is, to put into computer/logic terms, a plug-in. When you use an insert in a DAW, it is when you add effects like compression, EW, reverb etc, however on a mixing desk, you can only add these features through the use of the outboard equipment. For example, once I had recorded drums, I wanted to add reverb to both of my room microphones, the kick drum and the snare. However, I had to then record the drums back with the effect on. This meant I had to group them by sending all of them to one output and make sure I was recording the wet signal as well as the dry signal. The dry signal is essentially the original sound, which mixed with the wet signal, would give you the perfect balance, creating your desired reverb sound. When using the patch bay, you must send and return, this is because, if you didn’t return it, you would lose the signal and wont get any playback.

Microphones:

When recording drums, we used a variety of different microphones suitable for what we thought sounded good on each drum. We used the Audix f14, inside of the kick drum, this recorded more of the attack on the skin of the drum when it was hit, along side a custom sub for the extra sub channel, which caught more of the resonance. We also used a Shure sm57 on the bottom of the snare, and a Shure sm58 for the top of the snare, although I had to phase them so that I wouldn’t get a weak signal when their waves collide. The reason we use two microphones on the snare is because the top mic records more of the attack when it is hit, whereas the bottom mic picks up more of the snares underneath that you wouldn’t be able to hear much of if we used one microphone on the top.

I used the Audix f10 for the rack tom and the Audix f12 for the floor tom. Lastly, I used two Shure sm7b's for the overheads. Both overheads have to pointed to the center of the snare drum, this can be done by taking a regular cable and measuring the same distance between both of the mics and the drum. All of the microphones that are specifically used for an individual drum must be placed pointing the center of the drum, this is because when it his hit, the sound waves bounce from the center. Also making sure that the microphones is not resting on the side of the drum, because it may alter the sound of the drum itself and may cause damage to the microphone.

The piece of outboard equipment I used the most within my learning sessions was the Joemeek SC2.2 Compressor. The compressor has majority of the same uses of a compressor if you were to use in a DAW. There are two sides to this compressor, therefor during my practice of using this outboard equipment, I used one side to compress a guitar and the other a bass guitar. When compressing my guitar, I had to create a loop between the compressor and the patch bay, so that the signal was able to return. We have the input gain which essentially makes the input of the gain louder. Next to that we have a dial named 'slope', this is another word used instead of ratio. Above these, we have five pots, Treble, Mid, Freq, Bass and Gain. An outboard compressor technically does the same job as if you were to use a compressor plug-in in Logic.

The piece of outboard equipment I used the most of was the LA-610 Mk ii for when we recorded the guitar and the bass guitar. It is used as a pre-amp and a compressor.

Auxiliary Send:

The 'aux' button that is place closer to the top on the channel strip is a button which should be pressed down whilst using outboard equipment such as a reverb, compressor or EQ machine. The auxiliaries are a mixing desks version of logics 'plug-ins'. We used the aux button a couple of our tracks to add a compressor to a guitar recording, and also when using the reverb machine on some of the drums (which were grouped to have the effect on a few rather than just one).

Direct Injection:

Direct injection is a way of connecting instruments to the mixing desk. The method of direct injection we used is plugging the guitar and bass guitar straight into the LA-610 mk ii compressor, and then connecting it into a channel through the patch bay. We used this method on all four of our tracks as every single one includes a guitar, as well as a couple include the bass guitar too.

EQ:

When you EQ a channel, it mean you can reduce or boost certain frequencies. You can remove unwanted frequencies from your mix or increase the levels of some you would like to come through more. We used EQ on our track involving a bass guitar, so that we could boost our bass frequencies.

Noise Gate:

Noise gate is to remove unwanted background noises from your recordings. You can do this by using a control called threshold to alter how high or low the volume you want it to be so that only some certain signals above your chosen level will pass through it.

Shelf EQ and Semi Parametric EQ:

A shelving EQ is a lot different to your regular EQ. A shelf EQ has to stay at 20Hz, however a semi parametric EQ can be altered to a certain frequency.