EastLake will be launching a new EL Online service that will help home studio engineers get the most out of their recordings. Below is a long winded explaination of what this means :-). 

OK folks, lets go over home studio recording:

First off, this new revolution in home recording, in my opinion is great! Its given artists a chance to reach a whole new creative plateau and expand their craft.  It puts tools once reserved for multi-million dollar studios in the hands of, virtually, anyone. As the years continue on, it gets more and more affordable to have world class recording tools. But despite a select few people there continues to be a divide between home studio recording quality and commercial studios. The honest truth is that anyone with these new studio tools can make radio quality recordings, but a few major learning curves and real world issues will hold you back.. Lets go over these :-).

1) SPACE! Its not just for NASA anymore!: Kidding aside, the acoustic space you record your material in has a major impact on how the sound will translate overall in the mix, both in the control room and tracking room (sometimes the two are the same).  Your tracking environment will dictate a certain level of EQ into your mic. This is due to standing, coupled and canceled waves (Google it!). This can affect your bass response, reverb depth and overall, punch and clarity in the mix. But this is by far the lesser of the evils of bad room acoustics. In your control room if your not hearing it right, your not mixing it right! Imagine trying to paint a masterpiece, and you have a pair of old school 3D glasses on. You know the ones i mean with the blue and red? You dab away at paints on your pallet. You put in all the colors that you deem worthy of this grand painting. At the end you take the glasses off to admire your work..... Only to find what you thought was green, was blue. And red ended up being black. What a mess! The painting looks kinda like what you were trying to paint, but its all wrong. This is exactly the problem when trying to mix outside of a well treated mixing environment. You may have a great ear, but in the end, all the hard work you did carving out your tones was in vein due to compensating for a bad listening spot. 

2) Drums: Drums are the foundation of a great record. You cant build a house on sand! (I know, enough with the analogies!). Most home cut recordings can be imediatly identified by the drum tones. Despite your best efforts the drums sound thin and flat. They dont jump out of the speakers, or punch you in your tender mouth. Most bands that come through my studio end up spending a large chunk of the recording process dealing with drums. Now this may take some extra time in the short term, but will save you countless hours later trying to "fix" issues later. Depending on the genre and band policy it can be a great idea to quantize the drums. Quantizing is a process that will edit the drums to make every hit perfectly in time. Quantizing is a HIGHLY specialized skill, that when done right, can sound transparent and solid!  When done wrong can sound like you've taken a butcher knife to your drummers best takes. Also, its not a bad idea (once again depending on genre) to sample enhance or replace some drum tones. This again takes experience to work them so that they don't scream of computer manipulation. To take the human out of an intensely human art form would be, and currently IS, sad. Although i find nothing wrong with shining up a take to convey the material, as it is intended, in all its glory!

3) Guitars: Pop quiz aspiring engineers! What do you do when you've come to the end of the recording process and you've found that your guitar tones ain't making the grade... What do you do???? Well that would be re-amping. As you might have guessed its a process of sending your guitar through an amp AFTER you have recorded. How do we do this? First when you record your guitar tracks, why not record a DI (Direct Input) of the guitar as well as your prized amp. You have the available track count right?  Don't forget to mute the DI track when recording. If you accidentally solo this, please don't hang yourself! DI tracks sound comically bad. No worries though. When that DI gets sent back out of the computer through your favorite amp it will be right as rain. Re-amping is a great way to have the most flexibility later to record better guitar tracks.

4) Vocals: This is a touchy one for most vocalists out there. The dreaded tuning. Here is my take on tuning vocals for records: It has to be done on 90% of vocals. Why? Vocals are the element that most listeners will respond to. Both on a technical and emotional level. On most recordings an out-of-tune vocal can really take away from the experience of the listener. Id say most listeners couldn't tell you why the recording was unpleasant, only that it sounded "off".  That's not to say that tuning is an on-or-off choice. I would use tuning as a method to restore a great performance to its intended pitch. There are also times when tuning a vocal is entirely unnecessary. An impassioned vocal hitting sharp in all the right ways can really relay a certain mood and would be unfortunate to tune out of the performance. This is all a mater of experience with the right and wrong ways to enhance your recordings with modern technology. 

In my opinion i would say these are the biggest of the difference makers. Now to why I'm taking about any of this in the first place. Because we can help! We can partner with any musician in any corner of the world trying to make the most of his/her recordings. Send us your raw drum tracks and let us get them in shape. Send us DI guitar tracks and let us re-amp them. Send us your best vocal take and let us polish it for years of listening without those "cringe" moments. And maybe most important, have us mix and/or master your next project.