How to make a great recording
Quite simple, get me to do it! Seriously though, many people's first instinct these days is to follow the crowd, read Sound On Sound, an advertiser funded publication, then proceed to buy a couple of grands worth of well reviewed Chinese made products with Western names.  This treasure trove is then installed on a table in an acoustic nightmare and a record is made. There are plenty of highly experienced underemployed engineers around with stashes of genuine original equipment with decent rooms, who can do a much better job. Hire them or they will be gone.

A recent and very welcome trend is that home recorded albums are coming to SoundSound for Mastering and for Mixing. If this is planned it would be well worth consulting about the recording process. We find many are making exactly the same mistakes or are simply missing knowledge of simple well known recording techniques. Any engineer who is destined to Mix an album would freely give advice in order to enhance the final product. Even better, one could hire the engineer for the first day to set up the sounds. 

Reference Headphones

A reference set of headphones is the cheapest way to hear exactly what is being recorded. For a couple of hundred Euros you can treat your ears to a sound as good as the best speakers in a perfect room. There are no room acoustics to ruin the experience. Open headphones are the best for this. Sennheiser have been my favourites for years. Beware of any 'enhanced' designs. We want flat. 

Studio Headphones

We need closed cans for recording in order to minimise leakage of click tracks  and such. They are also vital for finding the sweet spot when positioning microphones. Go into the room with the musician. Put on the cans, turn them up, move the mic around while the instrument plays. The sweet spots are obvious. Without cans the sweet spots can be identified by blocking one ear and moving about. This simulates how a single mic 'hears'.

Stringed Instruments

Fix the intonation. It's easy enough to do Electric Guitars and Basses with an Allen Key and a tuner. At least get the octaves perfect. Check acoustic instrument octaves and even mid fretted notes. Get them fixed or borrow a better instrument for the recording. All of coated strings sound apalling and will cause considerable grief and time waste in mixing. Most manufacturers make a version of them. They have names with SP, XP, and such. The premier brand Elixir is actually the worst. None of these  will ever sound as good as uncoated strings in good condition. No amount of Eq, Tape Simulation or desperate measures will rescue this. Normal Phosphor Bronze seems best in terms of life span and great sound. Bronze may sound even better but will die very quickly if you sweat. If there are several tuners in use, check that they agree.

To be continued....