Media composing - basic setup?

Hey folks,

My wife is looking to dig deeper into the world of film & media composition, so I told her I'd do some research...starting with you guys [Marius and Nikolas, I'm looking at you!]

What's a decent (affordable?) setup to produce quality results? What equipment/hardware is absolutely necessary?? How about recommended? Software? Samples? Computing requirements?

I'm a bit low tech when it comes to this sort of thing, and am myself taking a "recording studio" tack, but I'd love to get her set up with her own little workspace.

Any comments or suggestions are welcome from all!

:)

^^

This looks nice.....how much for one of these??!!

Oh dear...this is a difficult question actually because there IS no "absolutely necessary" really. It depends entirely on your budget. I mean, you'll need a pretty powerful computer either way, but just HOW powerful depends on what kind of media studio.

Basically, you can either set up a studio for producing things with live recordings, or you can base it all around samples, or you can sort of combine both (more expensive, obviously). If you're looking to resolve things mostly with live recordings, then you'll be spending money on an external soundcard/mixing board (like a mini-version of that monster in the photo), plus a sound booth or at least an adequately prepared space for recording your instruments, and of course the necessary mics to handle all the different kinds of instruments you expect to be using. You'll also need some software to pull it all into and actually produce the mix, but you can get completely adequate free things for that — Reaper on Windows and GarageBand (pre-installed) on a Mac.

Otherwise, with the samples-based route, you're looking at having a more powerful computer, some sequencing software, and sample libraries. For sequencing software, you CAN technically use GarageBand for some limited stuff, but if you want real flexibility then Logic Express (on a budget) or the full version is your only option. And it's a WONDERFUL one. That's for Mac. For Windows, you have a lot more to choose from, and it's more a matter of taste than anything else. The industry standard in most studios is a thing called ProTools which is massive and fairly unwieldy — certainly not ideal for a home studio considering it needs its own dedicated hardware and such. On a more modest and useable scale, you're looking at Sonar, Cubase, Nuendo, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure each of them has a "lite" equivalent in the product line that you can demo. At an amateur level, they're really pretty interchangeable in terms of features and functionality, so it's really more a matter of finding the one that you find most intuitive and budget-friendly.

As for sample libraries, it again depends largely on what style of music you're going to be writing. There are libraries that specialize in orchestral stuff and in guitar stuff and rock and so on and so forth, and then there are things like EWQL Colossus (actually Goliath now) which basically make a point of giving you high-quality samples that allow you to be adequately prepared (and in most cases even more) to tackle literally any style of music you'd concievably need, within reason. Sometimes, a combination of something like Goliath and perhaps a library dedicated to guitars or rock music is best, if you know you're likely to be writing a lot of music within that genre. Sample libraries are usually very expensive if you're looking for high enough quality to produce broadcast-ready mock-ups, so be warned of that.

I'll think on this and see if I can be more helpful. In fact, I kind of know I can because I have an article on exactly this subject in a magazine. I'll bring it tomorrow and give you more thoughts then.

STAY THE HECK AWAY FROM GARAGEBAND.

I've been trying to produce my girlfriend's tracks and it has been a nightmare converting her garageband files to something in the way of STANDARD.

The fact that garageband does NOT support MIDI export makes it, in my opinion, freaking radioactive.

The first question you need to ask yourself is:

What does my wife want to do? Seriously, what exactly does she want to do?

Converting garageband files into something standard is ridiculously easy if you have Logic, or know someone who does. Logic can open any Garageband files as if they were Logic projects.

Hahaha, yeah, I forgot to mention that little point about GarageBand. It plays with others about as well as an autistic hedgehog. But if you don't care about MIDI (meaning she's more focused on live recording stuff) then you're probably just fine.

@Gardener: the whole point of me suggesting using GarageBand is for when you DON'T have Logic, which is why Dannthr pointed out the flaw in my suggestion. If you've got Logic, then you wouldn't be using GarageBand to make music in the first place.

Hey, I have Logic and I still use Garageband to import MIDI files. Curiously enough it does that better than it's big brother.

(Also, you can use Garageband, then ask a friend who has Logic to quickly convert it into a Logic project. That's what I meant. But of course it's better to have a decent program yourself in the first place.)

No, man, Logic mucked EVERYTHING up--had a buddy convert them through Logic and there is all this MIDI trash everywhere, timings are off and Logic created about 10 or 15 separate MIDI tracks for each individual MIDI track.

Just stay away from that shizzy.

The only "cool" thing about *.band files is that they contain ALL of your audio takes in aif format, that's great for remixing, but it's still just a giant pool of 100s of takes.

You mac people are all kinds of goofy.

[Marius and Nikolas, I'm looking at you!]

Heh... I kinda missed that!

Ok, here's my take on things (but trust Marius and Dan as well, they're great guys! :D)

1. Computer: Mac vs PC. YES! both will do fine. Depends on what Natalie is used on ... using. End of story. There's absolutely no reason to go for the one or the other, except for:

a. If she will be working with other real, huge studios, in which case she might need to have simmilar setups (but this is a long way to go really).

b. If she already has a good PC (for example), then it might benefit to go for a good Mac.

You CAN get a PC for around $1000-$1500 with the above specs. Even less in the States, as far as I know. You can get a Mac pro for around $3000 (Marius? the amount is right?), but make no mistake. Get the computer from apple and RAM, hard drives, etc from other stores. You should save tons of money this way!

2. What specs.

Well, that depends on what she will be doing for music. Film/media is a vast field really. But in general:

a. CPU: the more the merrier, but with samples it's not absolutely necessary. A "simple" Quad core would suffice for todays samples.

b. RAM: The more the merrier with samples. No doubt there. If you can get a 64-bit system and 16 GB of RAM go for it! Other wise, 8 preferably, or 4 for minimum.

c. Monitor. I use one, but know that two are brilliant to use! 19" at least, to be able to fit mixers, samplers, etc in (even that will be insuficient actually)

d. hard drives. Here we are! With samples it's best to have different disks for big sample libraries. Because samples STREAM from the hard disk, you need a fast drive and not have it full of stuff, all coming out at the same time. So I'd suggest you get 3-4 drives. Keep on small-ish drive for the system stuff and programs. Any 70-150 GB will do. Have 1-2 drives for samples. These should be AT LEAST 10,000 rpm (or even 15,000 those velociter, or however they are called, are awesome), and somewhat big. If you consider that the EW pianos are 270 GB, the Garritan Steinway 38 GB, a normal symphonic library around 50 GB, go figure...

3. Midi keyboard.

I managed to live without one for 3-4 years and I didn't mind. The minute I got it though I was wondering how on earth I stayed alive after all!

With samples, and synthetic insturments you need a nice midi keyboard, big or small, it depends on how good she is with the piano. The midi keyboard should, very very so, have knobs, to assign them, pitch bend, mod wheel, etc. Most awesome VSTis work with such features and it's a pain to play stuff live, only to have to edit controllers later on.

I, personally, since I'm a pianist, have a very nice digital piano. I play piano, it makes sense. It has no knobs and NO wheels, so I"m missing this part, but will get a smallish keyboard to have it midi in and use it's own wheels and knobs with the big digital piano.

Names to google for:

M-audio

Edirol

Casio

Yamaha

Fatar

maybe more

All the above make keyboards, most have a top notch and other lesser ones.

4. sound card. Actually anything will do, AS LONG AS YOU STAY INTERNAL. The minute you want to record something with a mic, you should get a good soundcard. What Marius says pretty much. Decent converters come at a price. Mics as well, preamps as well. I'm prepared to actually spend around $2,000 when I get mics (at least that amount actually).

Names to google:

Appogee (extremely expensive AD-DA converters)

Lynx (can get very expensive. STAY AWAY from LynxONE)

RME (very cool stuff, very good quality as well as the above two)

Motu (cool as well, but I hear there are problems... various bugs. At least the customer service in the States is very nice, as opposed to Europe :()

M-audio, Edirol (I'd actually skip these, very cheap and quality wise it's not the best you can get, but either way, it's hard to notice).

5. Libraries. YIKES!

Ok. There are TONS OF STUFF out there. I'm starting to throw links and have fun.

Orchestral

EW (EastWest). google for soundsonline . It's one of the best known, very good libraries, consise, big, etc. They made a new player (PLAY) which seems to be troublesome to many people, except those with very powerfull systems. But you get the player along so you don't need a sampler. Prices start at around $300 for the first version, up to around $800 for the big one.

VSL (Vienna Symphonic Library). This IS considered as the best library, and the most expensive one. It does go up to $12,000 to get the full library, I believe, which is 750 GB. So you need more than one computer. Reason for the size is that they've recorded for EACH interval, portamento and legato samples, so once you change not you can trigger that and have very realistic lines (as opposed in EW, although PLAY seems to have an improvement towards that).

Kirk Hunter Studios. Smaller libraries, not exactly well known, but very nice guy, the samples ARE great, very tender and very "hot". The sound you can get is brilliant. BUT, you need a sampler to play those (Kontakt 3)

Garritan. He has the "smallest" and most wide spread library! GPO (Garritan Personal Orchestra). It's what QCC uses and 1000s of others. The sound is far from excellent, but it CAN take tweaking to make it sound better, much better actually. It's small (1 DVD), and priced at $199, so for a starting point it IS actually good. Plus the community there is great and you get to learn tons of stuff!

Other orchestral instruments

Samplemodelling. It would be a shame not to mention them. They have created a "hybrid" sample based insturment which is the best thing I've heard. They have the trumpet and the saxophone, thus far but going for more. Priced at around $300 each, they are well priced... but... only 2 at the moment.

WIVI (Wallander Virtual Instrument). A synthesis based insturment. It actually is very small (around 1/2 GB I think), and it has all brass and all woods. The sound is extremely realistic, since it has all kinds of nuances, etc, but the quality some times does sound somewhat synthetic. But with the right reverb and some samples you can do wonders!

pianos

EW made some pianos. Extremely good and extremely huge. 270 GB for 4 pianos. Priced at $400 or around there. The sound IS excellent and they are based to the new player PLAY (so bugs are possible, since it's new). The sound is perfect, however, even if it's missing the sympathetique resonance...

Garritan has the Steinway. THE Steinway. It sounds awesome, excellent for classical stuff. Priced at #400. It is 38 GB, or 67 GB the 24-bit samples. There are lighter versions, priced for less, with lesser "perspectives", but they still sound very very very good.

Synthogy has made Ivory, which was the first really big piano to come out. At around 10 GB for each piano, it WAS big 2-3 years ago. Right now the sound still sounds very very nice, for the Steinway, but it's probably a little old. Even if they update regularly.

Pianoteq. Now this is something bril. I love these guys. A synthetic, modelled piano at 15 MB (not GB). At $300 (I think), it's a steal, since you can make ANY sounds you want really, around a piano, it has no velocity layers (so it plays a different note every time you hit the note), sympathetic and sustain resonance, soft pedalling, etc. EVERYTHING. The sound is not as realistic as with real pianos, or very good sampled ones, but it's getting there actually.

Drums

Google for the following:

Toontrack: They have drumkit from hell (and ezdrummer 2), and they are really playable and extrmeely realistic. Rather on the large side, but very effective way to steer away from drummers.

Addictive drums. Extremely nice sounding, but don't know much more.

There was actually, at some point, some drums at 500 GB, which was shipping with the hard disk, but it elludes me right now.

Other stuff are more electronic ones. The excellent software Reaktor (commercial), but CSound (open source), can cover your needs, but are hard to master.

Sequencers

For PC you get Cubase and Sonar.

For Mac you get Cubase, Logic, DP and Pro tools.

See? Macs are MORE into music, than PCs, but this doesn't mean much right now! ;)

There is reaper also, which is shareware and free to try, so you don't burn. Sonar has a trial version, Cubase not. Logic, Pro Tools and DP do NOT have trial version, afaik.

6 Speakers.

What? What did you say?

If she is to be doing some real work, she'll need decent monitors. In this market it's what you pay is what you get!

If she spends $1000 she'll get some mid-low quality monitors. If she spends $3000, she'll get something which hopefully will last her for years to come.

No recomendations, until I know what Natalie wants to write.

Headphones are also an alternative, and even if people swear against them, I think they can work miracled. Bheyringer (sp) and Sennheiser, and AKG all have excellent top heaphones. I personally use the HD600 Sennheiser (there are the previous to last model, of their top quality headphones, the HD6500), which are around $200 in amazon. Wear before buy, since ears can get tired and the headphones DO NEED some time to "burn" and sound as they should.

The room she will be in, might also cause trouble. If she's in a difficult room, she might get reverbarations, bass reflections, etc, which she might need to take care of. You can go the DYI way, get some ideas and build some very cheap material stuff, to cover corners (bass traps), and walls (to take away reverbarations, and flutter, etc). Carpets on the floor, if it's not wooden, and curtains on the windows, thick ones.

That's all I can think, right now.

The pic you posted is not really that awesome. I don't think you even need a mixing desk. No need for 2 pairs of monitors, unless for doing AB, but until she gets some real gigs, no reason really, it's too much. The various keyboards are there for a reason, but I'm simply not into that, so I won't comment (as well as Virus (it's the red thing, although I could be mistaken, and be fooled in here :D)

Holy scraggy.

Great info guys!

Essentially, she's looking to go the samples-based route (I'm on a different track...but that's not for here). Wanting to have a decent keyboard/input device, and good sounds - enough to produce something mildly useable. Nikolas - you just gave me enough to wade through for a while; I got some hardcopy info from Marius. We're just in the research phase right now. Our first step will be to get some serious enough computing power to satisfy us both (her for the samples/sequencing side, and me for the audio recording side).

Fun stuff!!

Thanks again, keep it coming!

[also, the photo was one of the first that popped up that looked wildly cluttered enough to be impressive. The 64-track mixing board is probably overkill for us right now...I only have two microphones.]

Hey Nik,

Do the drum samples (?) you mentioned include other percussion besides drum sets? Marching percussion? African instruments?

AA,

Being the evil guy I am: You have the names and you can google it. Find out for yourself! ;)

Ok. a more serious reply now! :D

Toontrack, indeed uses some kind of plug ins system, and they do, indeed have percussion and more exotic stuff.

For orchestral percussion you're better off with EW, or even better True Strike 1 and 2 from Project SAM (which I forgot to mention, even if they are sponsoring this months competition, over at CGEmpire! Vincent will kill me :(). For marching band stuff there is the Garritan Marching band (GOMB I think), and JABB (Jazz Big band library, from Garritan again). There's also Sonivox, which I completely forgot (for which I'm unforgetable, but anyways...). Sonivox has a complete symphonic library for around $2000 and also a GREAT BIG BAND library, which sounds only amazing, at $2000 again. Not what Natalie and Robin are looking into, probably, which is why I forgot about it.

I'm going to weigh in here too.

It's best to start small, especially if you two are new to "digital music." Don't buy hardware synths, mixing boards, or even expensive sample libraries like VSL or EastWest. (By the way, EastWest's complete symphonic sample library is over $1000, while VSL charges that much just for the strings samples.)

If you already have (or are willing to buy) a decently powered Mac, you'd be surprised what you can do for super cheap. Here's what I recommend to start with: Logic Studio with a cheap MIDI controller (you can get them for under $100). Logic Studio has all the mixing tools you need built in, so you won't need any hardware unless you want to record multiple audio tracks simultaneously. It also has tons of samples, including orchestral, world, and 80's-style synths. They're not on the same level as the super-expensive ones, but they're pretty good, and it gives you a "complete" musical sandbox to play in. That plus the MIDI controller will run you 600 bucks.

The reason I think you should start with something like this is because you really won't know what you need until you've tried something out. If you decide later on that you want better-sounding string samples, no problem; just buy some. You still get to keep using everything else, so it's not like you've wasted money.

Good luck to both of you.

Check out the Presonus Firebox -- two mic inputs, a midi input, i think an aux input (RCA cables), and a killer (allegedly, I can't tell the difference) preamp to boot.

I have its big brother, the 8-input+RCA/8-output Firepod, and until the firewire broke on itit was killer. (we abused it pretty badly, dropped it, that sort of thing. rack-mount yours and it'll be great.)

As for small audio interfaces - Apogee Duet is quite awesome too, if you have a mac. It's more expensive than the Firebox but it sounds great. For the same price you can of course also get other interfaces with more inputs and outputs, but they never sound as good.

Looks great too, with just one big knob. I love that!

They're absolutely amazing - everything sounds like butter!

All the butter I've seen so far has been rather silent. Are you sure you plugged in those mics? :P

Stay way for sample packages- unless you wanna be broke. I don't even call them sample anymore! I call them "digital heroin!" ;)

(Joking aside) Samples are great and once you get a few great collections, you'll find yourself craving even more. The more sounds you have- even of the same types of ensembles, the more flexible your productions will become.

Just don't share needles folks.... I mean samples.

Nate