Studio Log

Mobile Recording

Friday June 16th, 2006

After a lot of deliberation and a lot of shopping around and a lot of hypothetical discussions I am proud to announce that I've added a true multitrack mobile recording rig to the Szajna Dynasty arsenal.

It seemed an important step to take for several reasons. First, while I do a lot of MIDI programming and editing and mixing "in the box" I have seen the necessity to be able to track bands in their home environment.

Second, I spent some time thinking about how many of my favorite records were done in some strange house or an old castle with a truck full of equipment parked outside the building. Now that we have the capability to put all the equipment we need into a laptop and a 2U equipment rack it's easy to record as many tracks as it took Led Zeppelin to do Physical Grafitti. I really believe this will be a huge advantage for band projects as we'll be able to get high quality recordings of a group in their natural surroundings where the musicians feel at home.

My feeling has always been that most musicians give their best performances when they are comfortable, and that is seldom the case when the Studio Clock is ticking, the meter is running and the red light is on. I am convinced that modern mobile recording will allow us to capture a greater number of well performed, inspired performances than ever before.

The centerpiece of the system is Digidesign's 002R digital interface with ProTools recording software and a MacIntosh Powerbook. The 002R provides 8 high quality inputs and al Focusrite Octopre microphone pre-amp system provides 8 more class A inputs with compression allowing me to record up to 16 tracks at a time with very little strain on the computer.

Furthermore, it's a piece of cake to to port the tracks to my main ProTools HD system for overdubs, editing, mixing and mastering. I have tried the system out on two small projects in the past week and so far I'm very happy with the upgrade in sound quality that the Focusrite Pre's provide and the ease in setting up and tracking.

If you're interested in mobile recording give me a call soon. I am going to be offering discounted rates on mobile sessions through the end of September. Contact me for a quote and an estimate by calling 586-242-5868 or email me at steve@szdynasty.com.

Steve Szajna

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