We show you how to turn your humble abode into a recording studio, complete with control room

It’s never been easier to whip up greatsounding tracks, particularly if you’re into electronic or heavily sample-based music. Every DAW on the market today ships with an extensive collection of ready-made loops, hits, pads and riffs, not to mention all those bundled synths and samplers. And then, when you’re happy with your mix, there are plenty of truly incredible plugin effects available that can give you a loud, shiny master, sometimes using just one knob.

If you’re an electric guitar or bass player looking to put tracks together in your more rockin’ genre of choice, though, you’re probably more interested in capturing the feeling you get from your treasured collection of amps and pedals being played for real. And things are even more complicated for drummers, acoustic instrumentalists and singers. In short, if you’re an instrumentalist and you’re looking to really capitalise on your talents and training in the production of your own tracks, there’s no avoiding the terrifying world of sound engineering. You know… with microphones.

There was a time when you had to go to a studio to record – and at great expense, too – but now we have the option of doing it all ourselves. Since you’ve bought this magazine, you’ll probably have some kind of home setup already in place, and will have picked up a few tricks for getting the best out of it. Today, we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to mics, audio interfaces and speakers; we have powerful computers to run the show; and we can get hold of reasonably priced software to address almost any production issues that might arise. Nonetheless, when we see our favourite recording artists at work on TV or YouTube, we can’t help but yearn to be in one of those super-posh studios.

So, what’s so great about studios anyway? It’s just a bunch of rooms with some gear in them, right? And if we have the gear, why can’t we turn our homes into studios? It’s a given that studios have good mics and preamps, and all manner of extraneous toys to play with, but it’s actually all the other stuff that makes them such wonderful places in which to record. Our first attempts at home recording are often disappointing because the sound can be crap – it can feel like there are a never-ending stream of annoying things trying to sabotage the session.

Take noise, for example. It’s a problem – both keeping it out and keeping it in. Dirty signals can make recording electric guitars a nightmare. When you set up for a session for the first time, you inevitably end up searching for just one more female XLR-to-quarter-inch jack adapter. And why are the guitar signals so weedy, and where did that buzz come from? Studios, of course, have cupboards full of useful stuff for solving just these problems, because they’ve been there time and time again.

Audio feng shui

Apart from all the peripheral requirements, the main hurdles in the home studio are the rooms themselves. Good studios are masterpieces of acoustic design, whereas our own rooms contain all kinds of acoustic gremlins that can make it difficult to get a good recording – and even more difficult to hear it properly.

In this feature we’re going to look in detail at the problems you’ll encounter recording at home, and take you through some in-depth solutions. Starting with the most important space of all – the control room – we’ll show you how to get the optimum monitoring setup and solve the most common acoustic problems. We’ll debunk some myths, reveal some trade secrets and show you, step by step, how to make basic acoustic treatments that don’t involve gimmicky software or useless bits of sponge. And if you don’t want to go DIY, we have more acoustic options on p28. Now, the control room.

The all-important control room

It’s essential to get your control room right first, then sort out your recording rooms. If your monitoring environment is rubbish, how can you expect to make good judgements on the sounds you’re recording in other rooms, let alone try to mix and master it all when it’s recorded? Our quest for good monitoring and great-sounding rooms is thwarted by the unholy trinity of anti-bass, honk and reflection.

Fortunately there are sonic equivalents of garlic, holy water and silver bullets to help stave off these evil forces, which we’ll show you in the following walkthroughs – and these techniques apply equally to both control rooms and recording spaces.