Quality Budget Gear Ep. 06: Analog Outboard
Analog outboard gear in the recording studio means something like a hardware compressor, EQ, preamp, etc. The analog gear with real knobs that you see in the big fancy professional recording studios.
Is this gear great, and does it make a difference when you’re creating and producing music? Yes!
Is this gear practical or necessary for your home studio? Maybe! But almost certainly not as your very first purchase, or if you don’t have experience in using analog recording gear. For a better gear fit for your home studio, I’ve got a whole series about affordable home studio gear available right here.
Is analog recording gear necessary in your home studio?
When you’re just starting out, I generally don’t recommend spending lots of money on a bunch of analog recording gear, assuming it will make your music sound amazing. It might, but that’s more dependent on your skill level as a recording engineer, then on the gear itself.
Remember: with any gear purchase for our studio, especially any analog gear purchases, we’re always being strategic, and asking questions before we hit that buy button.
Learning fundamental audio engineering skills by using digital plugins first, before investing in expensive analog gear, will let you get the most out of that gear when you’re ready for it. It’s a much more cost-effective way to get started with recording.
Costs vs. Skills: questions to ask before investing in analog gear for your recording studio
Here’s some key questions to consider before you hit buy on an analog gear purchase:
What is the specific purpose of this gear in my studio?
What does this analog gear allow me to do that I couldn’t do, in any other way, before buying it?
Learning to Use Audio Gear Efficiently
Remember, achieving quality audio is not only about the gear you have, but the gear in combination with your ability to use it.
I recommend learning how to use compressors or EQs through using digital plugins first. Will this sound exactly the same as the high-end analog stuff? Nope.
Does that matter while you’re still learning? Nope!
It’s much more cost-effective to learn audio skills on the cheaper stock plugins in something like Logic Pro, than it is by buying a bunch of expensive gear before you really know how to get the most out of it.
Skills always trump tools. Finding a great mentor that can help you figure out how to use your tools properly, is often a better use of your time and money than attempting to piece it together yourself with Internet source material of dubious quality.
If you’re super into the analog thing and want to start there, great! But, I suggest starting small with something affordable by DBX; this is a great budget brand for the home studio. You can find a lot of their gear in professional studios right next to the fancy stuff. DBX’s VCA compressors can sound really cool on a lot of rock music, hip hop, synths, samples, and beats.
I’ve done the research for you on some great audio gear that does well in a home studio context: grab the Home Studio Gear Guide to learn more.
There are some exceptions when it comes to working with analog gear, as well. Investing in analog gear might be a good idea, if any of the following situations apply.
The aspiring professional audio engineer
If you’re trying to get people to pay you money for your audio work, investing in the highest quality really does matter.
You will have a hard time competing in the quite saturated marketplace of freelance audio engineers without a certain level of professional-quality equipment. Exactly what level you need depends on the specific kind of work you want to do, but generally speaking the higher quality the better.
In most cases, those Rokit speakers and that cheap red Focusrite interface placed in a room without acoustic treatment will not allow you to be as competitive as you need to be to successfully compete as a professional audio engineer.
The channel strip home studio
Here’s a very cost-effective way you might consider getting into analog recording studio gear in a music writing and demoing studio: the channel strip.
A channel strip is a single channel off of a large-format audio recording console that would often have 24 or more channels placed together. This is a relatively new product developed by many of the large pro audio manufacturers over the last 20 years or so.
A channel strip contains a combination of different tools: you can get a microphone preamp, compressor, EQ, limiter, and other audio tools, all placed within a single piece of analog hardware.
This can be a great investment for certain types of home music writing studios, because you often only need to work with one or two channels at a time in a home setting. Purchasing a channel strip can unlock an analog-style creative workflow, but without the $30,000+ price tag of a large format analog recording console.
