Disease Posted February 10, 2011 Posted February 10, 2011 Has anyone set one up in school? We are looking to set one up here, if you did set one up what setup did you go with. Cheers!
glennda Posted February 10, 2011 Posted February 10, 2011 Yes we have - its also used for our school radio station. We have one sound proofed room which has about 10/12 xlr points on the wall which link to a control room with a mahossive mixing desk and a custom built rack mount pc - then they use some radio/recording server and stream out to the internet (here) using windows media services or whatever - all done by the students! We are going to be moving it out of a hut in the summer and to a new purpose built studio. Toby 1
Disease Posted February 10, 2011 Author Posted February 10, 2011 That is the same thing we are looking to do, combine it with a radio station, I don't suppose you could list outthe kit and sftware you use
glennda Posted February 10, 2011 Posted February 10, 2011 I'll find out from the People that use it - Not entirly sure as we don't have much to do with it. If you near sussex and want to look at it your more then welcome
Guest Guest Posted February 10, 2011 Posted February 10, 2011 (edited) Has anyone set one up in school? We are looking to set one up here, if you did set one up what setup did you go with. Cheers! What do you want it for? Radio station, electronic music production, recording rock bands, recording orcestral bands, recording vocals... How much space do you have and what are the acoustics like in the room(s)? Do you need sound damping? Do you have another room to act as a booth, or are you going to buy a standalone booth? How familiar are your teachers with DAW software? Do they understand how it all links together. Do they understand music production rather than music as a taught subject... Edited February 10, 2011 by Guest
Disease Posted February 10, 2011 Author Posted February 10, 2011 Thanks Toby, we are in Hampshire so not that far. What do you want it for? Radio station, electronic music production, recording rock bands, recording orcestral bands, recording vocals... All of the Above. How much space do you have and what are the acoustics like in the room(s)? Do you need sound damping? Do you have another room to act as a booth, or are you going to buy a standalone booth?... We have enough space for a medium sized booth, it is a portion of the Main Music room, which is going to be stud walled off with a door and window How familiar are your teachers with DAW software? Do they understand how it all links together. Do they understand music production rather than music as a taught subject... He says he has used Logic at home but struggle to use CueBase. He wants a Mac to do it with and he is a music teacher.
glennda Posted February 10, 2011 Posted February 10, 2011 The Software we use is called Zara Radio. There is a free version available. I will PM you my email address if you can email me if would like to pop up. You just have to be very careful that they will actually use it after shelling out all this money - my last school went to great expense and purchased an all in one system for stupid amounts and never used it! Our teacher that runs it on the days its broadcasts (mon - wed - fri) has frees the period before lunch for his lunchtime and then runs the radiostation at lunch as if he where paid to be teaching etc
Guest Guest Posted February 10, 2011 Posted February 10, 2011 (edited) Logic seems a good choice for you then as it will cope with electronic and band stuff very well. It isnt a radio program though. Ideally you want atleast 1 channel per instrument, plus 1 channel per drum. This however could end up very costly for an orcestra. It really depends alot on budget (sorry should have asked that in the first place) as there are multiple ways of wiring it all up; 1 instrument per mono/stereo channel into 1 big ass audio interface. Mix done purely on PC. This gives you the most flexibility as any mistake made by a single person can be altered without any trouble. 1 instrument per mono/stereo channel recorded a group at a time to a click track to reduce the number of channels needed. Problem come when you come to put it all together it may be abit messy. Several groups of instruments into mixers then each mixer into a stereo channel on the PC for the mix. ie brass on 1 channel, percussion on another... Problem being if 1 person in a group makes a mistake (plays too loud, moves away from the mic, etc) the whole group needs to play the peice again. IMO if you are wanting to record an orcestra you want to get someone in who really knows what he is talking about. If its just a band it alot easier as the number of channels is massively reduced. The more channels you have the more physical equipment you will need, but also the more processing power you will need. The 1st thing you need to do is identify exactly what you want. How many channels do you want is a biggy. Do you want hardware signal processing or do you want to do it all on PC? Are you going to mic up your electric instruments like guitars, or link them up from the line out of the amp, or directly from the guitar to the audio interface? Does Logic studio cover you in terms of virtual instruments/effects? IMHO audio production is something where you cant go into it halfassed. Edited February 10, 2011 by Guest
Disease Posted February 10, 2011 Author Posted February 10, 2011 This is more a starter setup so in truth it will be bands at most, we were looking to get something like the small school radio studio station from schoolradio.co.uk, so I was really interested in what sort of things people had for their school radio and recording studios.
Guest Guest Posted February 10, 2011 Posted February 10, 2011 What about a Mbox Pro with the appropriate software and a few SM57 and SM58 mics, and a drum kit mic set? That will give you enough kit for a few guitars, a drummer, a keyboard, and vocals. A midi interface would be nice as it provides tactile control of the sound but its not a nesserity. Software wise you cant go wrong with Logic, but with an Mbox you have the option of going with Protools. If the Mbox is too expensive an M-audio interface with the appropriate number of inputs will be fine and also give you the option of using Protools M powered. Sorry, cant recommend anything for the radio part, but I can say for this you really really want some midi interfaces. Using a mouse to do anything beyond putting songs on will be very clumbsy.
El_Nombre Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 When I had my setup working here we used PCs and Cubase. It's great software tbh, little bit of a learning curve but in an afternoon you'll be away. Sadly, my setup was destroyed through neglect and vandalism, but in its day it worked a treat. Went with the all-PC setup as we had Ranger running on a second (curriculum) domain at the time, and had to do all sorts of gymnastics to get drives to map and soundcards set up. To save shipping the immense amounts of data back over the network to the student home areas (which would have upset the flighty servers and switches, not to mention the storage quota limit!) we set up a NAS mapped by local admin, then NTUSER.DAT copied over to all users so they retained the drive but were still locked down through Ranger and permissions. Terabyte NAS sat in the same cab the workstations were patched into, so recording was always done to that and the NAS backed up every other day (or rather night.) For soundcards I went with M-Audio Delta 1010LTs; lots of ins and outs and much bang for the buck. Bulletproof drivers also. Used a mixer and a rack preamp for mic pres and line/instrument ins. j17sparky is onto the right track there tbh with one mic per instrument, though keys you might want in stereo. For drums, you can 'submix' from a mixer in the drum room (as in, have a small mixer with a mic to each drum eq-ed and set up how you want it, then record the output from that mixer to two tracks in your software. Repeat/apply/modify the idea as appropriate for orchestra setups.) For guitars, you can also record using software/virtual amps inside the sequencer itself. That means a kid over headphones laying down his guitar tracks can be WAILING out the solos take after take but not disturbing the room! Same applies with virtual instruments like drums, keys and bass. Can make a whole song just over 'phones without ever seeing a 'real' instrument. Best place to check for all things studio-related is TWEAK'S GUIDE. For a sample of my favourite virtual instruments check out TOONTRACK'S EZDRUMMER, GUITAR RIG and A VST SYNTH RUNDOWN (be prepared to be blown away by Spectrasonic's Omnisphere...) Anyway if you need anything send me a PM but I've no idea about the radio side of things.
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