Not to be rude or anything,
but how could you drop $50,000 into a facility and not have any equipment
to fill it? Do you by chance mean $5,000 in building materials
and 4-5,000 in gear?

Also if you've spending that much on building, wouldn't you know
what your stuff is worth?

To guide you a little, the mics are great, keep them,
keep the instruments, you can always add to the collection.

You're gonna need a lot more recording equipment, console, recorders,
outboard gear, monitors, etc, etc, etc...


A friend and I dropped about 50K building a small studio facility.
Turned out pretty nice. Vocal booth, control room, spacious, etc.
With another 40K to 50K budgeted for start-up recording equipment, I
was curious about what everybody's "top three lists of essentials"
were. We'd like to concentrate on what we know first - basic rock
recording; guitar, bass, drums, vocals.

We've accumulated some stuff over the years of playing in bands, etc.

Roland VS2480 Digital Recorder
Mesa Triple Rec Guitar Rig
Tama Rock Star Drum Kit
Two Nuemann Mics (U-87 and TLM103)
Two Shure drum overheads (sm-81's)
Some other Shure drum mics (have to dig them up)


Worth keeping any of it? What are the next three most important
items?

Thanks

(Robert Higgins) wrote in message . com...
A friend and I dropped about 50K building a small studio facility.
Turned out pretty nice. Vocal booth, control room, spacious, etc.
With another 40K to 50K budgeted for start-up recording equipment, I
was curious about what everybody's "top three lists of essentials"
were. We'd like to concentrate on what we know first - basic rock
recording; guitar, bass, drums, vocals.

We've accumulated some stuff over the years of playing in bands, etc.

Roland VS2480 Digital Recorder
Mesa Triple Rec Guitar Rig
Tama Rock Star Drum Kit
Two Nuemann Mics (U-87 and TLM103)
Two Shure drum overheads (sm-81's)
Some other Shure drum mics (have to dig them up)


Worth keeping any of it? What are the next three most important
items?

Thanks

I hope you arent doing this for the money?

Mike http://www.mmeproductions.com

Robert wrote
A friend and I dropped about 50K building a small studio facility.
Turned out pretty nice. Vocal booth, control room, spacious, etc.

So what construction plan did you follow? Did you take enough readings and use
enough plans (hi-end) to get a good (25 or less) NC rating? I was planning a
studio (but the small bizz money fell through) and priced almost 40K
(materials only) on the floors alone.
I think if I'd been you (with the budget you had) I'd talked to and contracted
a pro builder to do it for/with you.
..

(Robert Higgins) wrote in message . com...
A friend and I dropped about 50K building a small studio facility.
Turned out pretty nice. Vocal booth, control room, spacious, etc.
With another 40K to 50K budgeted for start-up recording equipment, I
was curious about what everybody's "top three lists of essentials"
were. We'd like to concentrate on what we know first - basic rock
recording; guitar, bass, drums, vocals.

We've accumulated some stuff over the years of playing in bands, etc.

Roland VS2480 Digital Recorder
Mesa Triple Rec Guitar Rig
Tama Rock Star Drum Kit
Two Nuemann Mics (U-87 and TLM103)
Two Shure drum overheads (sm-81's)
Some other Shure drum mics (have to dig them up)


Worth keeping any of it? What are the next three most important
items?

Thanks

For basic rock recording and a $40-50k budget, I'd say your 3 most
basic needs above what you already have are a recorder, a console, and
monitors. I'll add a 4th, a mixdown deck. I know someone will
propose an all-in-the-box DAW solution here, but a RADAR24 "Project"
(upgrade to the Nyquist converters if you can afford it), a good used
analog console like a Neotek Elite, a pair of high quality mid-field
monitors like the ADAM S-3, and a Masterlink (with a higher-quality
outboard A/D and D/A converter) would give you an easy "rawk" solution
with equipment you won't have to apologize for and leave plenty in
your equipment budget for outboard and peripherals.

Ditch the Roland or use it for pre-production only; it's a good
songwriting tool but not a serious recorder at your budget.

The Neumanns are good, you can never have enough good mics in the mic
locker. A small variety of vocal mics, each with different character,
is nice if you will have traffic at your studio with different
voices...there is no mic that fits all vocal situations perfectly.
SM81's are good spares if you run out of good SD condensers. You
could use a stereo pair of mic's for drum overheads. Lots of better
ones out there (do a search here for "best small diaphragm condenser"
and you'll get tons of opinions). What are the other Shures? A few
good kick drum mics, guitar amp mics, and bass rig mic's would look
good on your list. Again, a Google search on rec.audio.pro for "best
kick drum mic", "best electric guitar mic", and "best bass guitar mic"
will give you lots more hits and opinions than you'll get on this
thread.

RP

"Vortex" wrote in message ...
Not to be rude or anything,
but how could you drop $50,000 into a facility and not have any equipment
to fill it? Do you by chance mean $5,000 in building materials
and 4-5,000 in gear?

No, actually I meant what I said.



Also if you've spending that much on building, wouldn't you know
what your stuff is worth?

What?




To guide you a little, the mics are great, keep them,
keep the instruments, you can always add to the collection.

You're gonna need a lot more recording equipment, console, recorders,
outboard gear, monitors, etc, etc, etc...



Thanks for clearing that up. Thought I'd get by just buying a grill
and some patio furniture. Whew...







A friend and I dropped about 50K building a small studio facility.
Turned out pretty nice. Vocal booth, control room, spacious, etc.
With another 40K to 50K budgeted for start-up recording equipment, I
was curious about what everybody's "top three lists of essentials"
were. We'd like to concentrate on what we know first - basic rock
recording; guitar, bass, drums, vocals.

We've accumulated some stuff over the years of playing in bands, etc.

Roland VS2480 Digital Recorder
Mesa Triple Rec Guitar Rig
Tama Rock Star Drum Kit
Two Nuemann Mics (U-87 and TLM103)
Two Shure drum overheads (sm-81's)
Some other Shure drum mics (have to dig them up)


Worth keeping any of it? What are the next three most important
items?

Thanks

(Mike) wrote in message . com...
(Robert Higgins) wrote in message . com...
A friend and I dropped about 50K building a small studio facility.
Turned out pretty nice. Vocal booth, control room, spacious, etc.
With another 40K to 50K budgeted for start-up recording equipment, I
was curious about what everybody's "top three lists of essentials"
were. We'd like to concentrate on what we know first - basic rock
recording; guitar, bass, drums, vocals.

We've accumulated some stuff over the years of playing in bands, etc.

Roland VS2480 Digital Recorder
Mesa Triple Rec Guitar Rig
Tama Rock Star Drum Kit
Two Nuemann Mics (U-87 and TLM103)
Two Shure drum overheads (sm-81's)
Some other Shure drum mics (have to dig them up)


Worth keeping any of it? What are the next three most important
items?

Thanks

I hope you arent doing this for the money?

Mike http://www.mmeproductions.com

Thanks for clearing that up. What would I do without you?

(Raymond) wrote in message ...
Robert wrote
A friend and I dropped about 50K building a small studio facility.
Turned out pretty nice. Vocal booth, control room, spacious, etc.

So what construction plan did you follow? Did you take enough readings and use
enough plans (hi-end) to get a good (25 or less) NC rating? I was planning a
studio (but the small bizz money fell through) and priced almost 40K
(materials only) on the floors alone.
I think if I'd been you (with the budget you had) I'd talked to and contracted
a pro builder to do it for/with you.
.

Does anybody actually read the posts here? Hello... Is this thing on?

With the price of analog recorders so cheap these days, I would buy a 2"
24 track machine. But of course that depends on your ability to maintain
it, or having someone available that can. There are many who say the
latest version of the Radar system is just as good, but I have not heard
it so I can't say. Same with the board, there are great deals on large
analog boards right now. And get a good 1/4" or 1/2" mixdown deck. You
could also get the Masterlink to make CD copies, but for serious
mastering send the analog mixdown to a good mastering house. As far as
microphones, mic preamps, compressors, eq's, effects, there are so many
good ones these days that we could discuss that for days, in fact we
have, right here on r.a.p. Do some research on google to come up with
some ideas. How much experience recording do you actually have? You may
want to budget hiring an experienced engineer for your sessions to make
the most out of the equipment you decide on and the facility you have
built. The ability of the engineer may trump all of these other factors.

-Rob

Robert Higgins wrote:

(Mike) wrote in message . com...

(Robert Higgins) wrote in message . com...

A friend and I dropped about 50K building a small studio facility.
Turned out pretty nice. Vocal booth, control room, spacious, etc.
With another 40K to 50K budgeted for start-up recording equipment, I
was curious about what everybody's "top three lists of essentials"
were. We'd like to concentrate on what we know first - basic rock
recording; guitar, bass, drums, vocals.

We've accumulated some stuff over the years of playing in bands, etc.

Roland VS2480 Digital Recorder
Mesa Triple Rec Guitar Rig
Tama Rock Star Drum Kit
Two Nuemann Mics (U-87 and TLM103)
Two Shure drum overheads (sm-81's)
Some other Shure drum mics (have to dig them up)


Worth keeping any of it? What are the next three most important
items?

Thanks

I hope you arent doing this for the money?

Mike http://www.mmeproductions.com


Thanks for clearing that up. What would I do without you?

(Rick Powell) wrote in message . com...
(Robert Higgins) wrote in message . com...
A friend and I dropped about 50K building a small studio facility.
Turned out pretty nice. Vocal booth, control room, spacious, etc.
With another 40K to 50K budgeted for start-up recording equipment, I
was curious about what everybody's "top three lists of essentials"
were. We'd like to concentrate on what we know first - basic rock
recording; guitar, bass, drums, vocals.

We've accumulated some stuff over the years of playing in bands, etc.

Roland VS2480 Digital Recorder
Mesa Triple Rec Guitar Rig
Tama Rock Star Drum Kit
Two Nuemann Mics (U-87 and TLM103)
Two Shure drum overheads (sm-81's)
Some other Shure drum mics (have to dig them up)


Worth keeping any of it? What are the next three most important
items?

Thanks

For basic rock recording and a $40-50k budget, I'd say your 3 most
basic needs above what you already have are a recorder, a console, and
monitors. I'll add a 4th, a mixdown deck. I know someone will
propose an all-in-the-box DAW solution here, but a RADAR24 "Project"
(upgrade to the Nyquist converters if you can afford it), a good used
analog console like a Neotek Elite, a pair of high quality mid-field
monitors like the ADAM S-3, and a Masterlink (with a higher-quality
outboard A/D and D/A converter) would give you an easy "rawk" solution
with equipment you won't have to apologize for and leave plenty in
your equipment budget for outboard and peripherals.

Ditch the Roland or use it for pre-production only; it's a good
songwriting tool but not a serious recorder at your budget.

The Neumanns are good, you can never have enough good mics in the mic
locker. A small variety of vocal mics, each with different character,
is nice if you will have traffic at your studio with different
voices...there is no mic that fits all vocal situations perfectly.
SM81's are good spares if you run out of good SD condensers. You
could use a stereo pair of mic's for drum overheads. Lots of better
ones out there (do a search here for "best small diaphragm condenser"
and you'll get tons of opinions). What are the other Shures? A few
good kick drum mics, guitar amp mics, and bass rig mic's would look
good on your list. Again, a Google search on rec.audio.pro for "best
kick drum mic", "best electric guitar mic", and "best bass guitar mic"
will give you lots more hits and opinions than you'll get on this
thread.

RP



Appreciate you reading and responding. I will definitely check into
the products you've mentioned here.

Thank you.

In article writes:

Does anybody actually read the posts here? Hello... Is this thing on?

My news feed has been down since Thursday evening. It's amazing how
much I accomplished when I didn't read the posts here. I guess now
that it's back on line I'll have to start slackin' again.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

Robert,

I was not dissing you or anything, actually I really wanted to see your
reply.

Not to be rude or anything,
but how could you drop $50,000 into a facility and not have any
equipment
to fill it? Do you by chance mean $5,000 in building materials
and 4-5,000 in gear?

No, actually I meant what I said.

Okay that's great. I know what you're ready to do now.


Also if you've spending that much on building, wouldn't you know
what your stuff is worth?

What?

You asked "Worth keeping any of it?"

That seemed like an odd question, if you know Nuemann & Shure mics,
you know they're deffinetly worth keeping, you can never have too many
mics, not to mention Neumann's and Shure SM81's around. Heck some
people would love a colection like that.


Thanks for clearing that up. Thought I'd get by just buying a grill
and some patio furniture. Whew...

You were a little vague with your description, and until you actually
told me if it was 5k or 50k, I wasn't about to recomend any equipemnt.

You might want to get the grill and patio furniture anyway. I know during
a break clients enjoy sitting outside, and besides, you gotta eat!

Seriously, you might want to talk to some Turn-key specialists, like
www.blevinsaudio.com or www.db-engineering.com
or http://www.proaudiodesign.com

Talk to them, they'll put you on the right track. It'll save you a lot
of time and fustration of trying to find what you need.

Don't forget any large format console is going to need to be professionally
set-up and comissioned with patch bay etc.

Good luck with the project.

Be a pleasure to chat anytime.

Mario

Robert wrote
Does anybody actually read the posts here? Hello... Is this thing on?

What are you talking about? It's easy to say we had the room(s) tuned and thats
all but being a recording guy takes a lot more that saying we had the room(s)
tuned.

I'm happy to make some observations and recommendations for you, but
you're a little vague about some of your details so I wouldn't mind if
you elaborated a bit first. Did you spend $50k building a building? Or
did you spend $50k doing the build-out and acoustical design of an
existing space? If you spend 50 grand just on the build-out, I would
think you'd want to get things right and I might suggest another 50
grand isn't enought to fully equip a full-on rock recording facility.
You could spend all that money on recording gear, or you could spend it
all on instruments to record. A well-equipped studio needs both.

But before you get into any of that, the first thing you need is
monitors. Ideally you would have considered your large monitors
beforehand and designed your control room around them. Trying to get
your existing room to work well with some random speakers you throw in
there will be more time consuming and expensive, and less effective,
than designing for your monitors in the first place would have been.
Studio monitoring is a whole discussion by itself, and it's a religious
issue. But it's definitely what you need to work out before you do
anything else. Typically you'd be looking for a big "far-field"
monitoring system, whether they be soffit-mounted or otherwise. And of
course you'll need amplifiers for them. Then you'll need at least one
pair of near-field monitors, most facilities have several pair for
reference and comparison. The usual discussion of Genelec vs. Dynaudio
will ensue, but if you have the money you could get both and skip all
the unsatisfying cheap crap that people without budgets have to diddle
with before they learn that they get what they pay for.

Okay, so after you have your monitors and amps (and headphones and
headphone amps) then I would decide on a 2-track format for mixdown.
If I were buying now, I'd be taking a good look at the Alesis
Masterlink and some good outboard converters, as well as a good analog
2-track machine. 1/2" machines are trendy now but unless you're trying
to appease a particular market that you already know exists, I'd look
for a good 1/4" machine instead. Buy one that's in perfect condition
and put some money into maintaining it.

Next I'd buy two Royer 121 ribbon microphones and a Great River
2-channel mic preamp (either the MP-2MH or the MP-2NV).

All that stuff there will bring us to about $25k and give you the
ability to make astoundingly good recordings, IF your room, musicians,
instruments, and engineering skills are up to the challenge. If not,
then no more gear will help you.

Spend the nest $25k on a console and a multitrack recorder. My
personal feeling at this time is that a new investor should probably go
with a Radar instead of an analog machine, unless you have some
knowledge about maintaining analog recorders and/or can find a
remarkably good deal on a reliable machine. If you do go analog, I'd
consider looking for a 2" 16-track or 1" 8-track machine. They're
better suited for real rock recording and generally cost less than an
equivalent 24-track machine.

As for consoles, you can shop for whatever is rumored to be the "best"
new mackie or soundcraft model, but I think you'll get a hell of a lot
more for your money with a used, late-model large-format console.
Late-1980s Ameks seem to be a huge value right now. I'm seeing good
consoles sell for like 3% of what they cost new 15 years ago. Expect
to put some money into reconfiguring things, rewiring patchbays, and
maybe a little maintenance but the idea is to buy something that's
pretty new and in good shape. You just don't have the budget for an
old Neve in any useful condition.

And that's the end of your $50,000. Come back when you lose another
rich uncle and we'll talk about outboard gear.

ulysses



In article , Robert
Higgins wrote:

A friend and I dropped about 50K building a small studio facility.
Turned out pretty nice. Vocal booth, control room, spacious, etc.
With another 40K to 50K budgeted for start-up recording equipment, I
was curious about what everybody's "top three lists of essentials"
were. We'd like to concentrate on what we know first - basic rock
recording; guitar, bass, drums, vocals.

We've accumulated some stuff over the years of playing in bands, etc.

Roland VS2480 Digital Recorder
Mesa Triple Rec Guitar Rig
Tama Rock Star Drum Kit
Two Nuemann Mics (U-87 and TLM103)
Two Shure drum overheads (sm-81's)
Some other Shure drum mics (have to dig them up)


Worth keeping any of it? What are the next three most important
items?

Thanks

(Robert Higgins):
"Thanks for clearing that up. What would I do without you?"

You've got a great attitude, dude. I'm sure your studio will be a great
success. Let us know when the going out of business sale happens.

Glenn Dowdy wrote:

So you're saying we should recommend that he buy stuff that we'd like to buy
slightly used and cheap in the future?

Glenn D.

In that case I recommend he load up on vintage Neumanns and prehaps a
few original C12s. Maybe a plate or two.

I tend to agree with most of what Ulysses said. 50K to equip a full on
rock-n-roll studio will be spread pretty thin. I'd probably lean toward a
ProTools system for its flexibility and acceptance. It may not be the greatest
sounding recorder in the world, but it will let you get clients that can't or
won't spring for 2" tape. It will let you trade projects with lots of other
studios. It has (for better or worse) a "marquee value"- people know it and
frequently ask for it.

If I had 50K to put into a control room, I'd probably think about dumping
something like 25K into a PT system with a bunch of good plugins, 10K on a
console (for it's mic amps, patchbay, monitoring section and routing), 2K5 for
a pair of Distressors, 2K for a good stereo mic amp to use most of the time,
2K5 on a decent pair of powered near/midfield monitors (dynaudio BM15as?), and
8K for wiring. Wiring will likely go over that if you don't do it yourself.

That doesn't begin to adresss racks or other furniture, power conditioning or
quiet boxes, room treatment, a headphone cue system mic stands, gobos, mic
cables, DI boxes, music stands, instruments like drums/MIDI/ guitar amps and
other stuff usually found in pro studios.

The problem with having 100K to spend on a studio is that it gets you a long
way toward outfitting a pro studio, but the places it falls short can be deal
breakers for bands/producers used to "pro studio" amenities. Around here a nice
glorified home studio with 15K worth of buildout and 20K worth of gear can
charge about $35/hr. A 100K studio might be able to get $40-45. Unless you
offer something unique and valuable that lets you adjust the rate upward, you
may just be ****ing away money. But hey, If your kidneys produce money, ****
away!


Joe Egan
EMP
Colchester, VT
www.eganmedia.com

In article writes:

I'd have thought 50k would buy you quite a lot of you're willing to look
around for good value second hand stuff.

You have to temper that, though, with the fact that they guy is asking
what to buy. This implies that he's not really experienced (though
this could certainly be incorrect) and therefore might buy something
totally wrong, or somthing right that requires a lot of work before
it's in usable shape. Buying from a dependable broker is usually a
safe bet, but then you eat up a lot of the "good value."

If it was me, I'd get a 2" analogue machine as, IMHO, analogue beats
digital hands down.

It's much more important to know what the clients want than to know
what you personally want. If he's going to spend $50K, surely he
intends to make that back in a reasonable length of time, and if he
can't fine clients who have $1000+ media budgets, he won't do it no
matter how good his work sounds. It's important to do the market
research before making investments. Not all markets are the same.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

Paul Tumolo wrote in message ...
(Robert Higgins):
"Thanks for clearing that up. What would I do without you?"

You've got a great attitude, dude. I'm sure your studio will be a great
success. Let us know when the going out of business sale happens.

Sure will. Let me know when you're not an idiot anymore.