This article was written by Yuval Fuchs at Sweetwater.  Over the next few months, we’re publishing an entire series of articles in the Lounge from Sweetwater along with contests and prizes. Keep your eyes peeled and check back often!

Haven’t taken the plunge into home recording yet?  Yuval Fuchs helps guide the debate between standalone multitrack recorders and home computers as total recording solutions.

When I first started out recording my own music about 24 years ago (wow, I suddenly feel old!), my first recorder was a Fostex 4-track cassette multitrack. The point was to use it as a musical scratch pad when the inspirational moment struck, but with the ability to produce a more elaborate arrangement than just a one-shot recording of me playing my guitar. Typically, I would start with a drum track using a drum machine, then a keyboard track followed by a guitar track and a vocal track. If I wanted to add some reverb to my vocals or my final mix, I would insert an external processor into an auxiliary bus and dial in how much or little effect I wanted.

While four tracks of audio doesn’t seem like much by today’s standards (and it isn’t), I was able to get some pretty good sounding musical productions, at least good enough to call it a song or “my new tune” while being able to say I performed all of the music myself. In this day and age, the premise hasn’t changed, but the means to achieve the final results have – and changed drastically!

An example is the way the audio can be edited. Today, we can take advantage of non-destructive editing in our digital audio recorders. This means that any edits (such as cut, copy, paste, etc.) that are made do not actually destroy the originally recorded audio and that we can get the original audio back if we mess something up. This enables experimentation and a whole new level of creativity.

In contrast, in the “old days,” if I were to play a guitar solo that was less than perfect, I had two choices: replay it or keep it and live with it. On some higher-end analog tape machines of that day, one could actually physically cut the tape (a process called “splicing”) and glue it to another section of the tape. Needless to say, this was a painstaking, time-consuming, and often inaccurate process. Today, just about any digital recording system enables countless takes to be recorded and seamlessly incorporated into any part of the arrangement with a few button presses. If you change your mind and don’t like the last take, just choose another one and you are free to record your next part.

Those of you who haven’t taken the plunge into home recording may be debating whether to get a standalone multitrack recorder or to use your computer as a total recording solution.

For me, the transition from analog tape to the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) realm was not smooth. When faced with the choice of going with a standalone HDR (Hard Disc Recorder) or with a computer-based solution, I initially went with an HDR because of cost/performance factor. At that time (back in the mid-‘90s), PCs were in their infancy in terms of processing power and although recording audio was a feature they offered, you had to have a really powerful and expensive computer to handle multiple audio tracks and to apply audio effects. I felt that the computers of that day were simply not powerful enough to enable me to do what I wanted to do quickly and reliably.

So I went with a standalone machine that had it’s own microcomputer inside dedicated to multitracking audio. Basically, it was not dissimilar to my original analog cassette 4-track in that it enabled me to lay down my musical performances track by track, but it also gave me the freedom to cut, copy, paste, realign, and crossfade my audio in ways I could only wish I had available to me before.

The downside of the standalone HDR was the small screen only showed a minimal amount of information. I had to depend on my ears when manipulating the data. But that was okay since the natural, tape-based feel of the recording experience outweighed the lack of visual feedback for the most part and was more congruous to the way I was used to working anyway.

Fast-forward 10 years and now we still have dedicated HDRs. But computers have evolved into total self-contained recording studios (driven by the right choice of software and hardware of course). It does seem apparent to me that HDRs are a dwindling breed these days. I have seen numerous HDR systems recently go away (Roland VS2480, Korg D series) with the advent of PC recording solutions becoming more powerful and more affordable. This, along with having a huge selection of audio interfaces, easy-to-learn software, and control surfaces, and all the audio pieces being relatively simple to integrate with even a consumer-grade PC, makes it compelling for singers, songwriters, and bands to get into the game.

The main benefit of going the computer-based DAW route is the big screen and familiar interface. With the Internet becoming an inseparable part of our lives, we are used to the visual feedback we get from our computers. We subliminally expect the computer to visually feedback what we think as we think it – for it to be a logical extension of our brain. Hearing audio is not quite the same experience as also being able to see the waveform and immediately identifying peaks, transients, quiet passes, noise, clicks, and pops.

Today, HDRs are almost gone, short of models that are still serving an important need: portability. But even for portable applications, laptops are becoming smaller, sleeker, more powerful, and much more affordable. It’s just a matter of time before high-quality audio can be recorded into a palm-sized computer without having to get any external gear! Hold on to your socks…we’re almost there.

Yuval Fuchs is well into his 24th year of guitar playing and is a Sales Engineer at Sweetwater Sound. He owns just enough recording gear and guitars to be dangerous and spends his free time testing and comparing new pro audio products in his studio. He can be reached at yuval_fuchs@sweetwater.com or at (800) 222-4700 ext. 1367.

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