The Infinite Studio Rack Concept

As much as I love recording music in my home studio, there is one clear advantage to tracking in professional studios that lingers in my mind.

They have dedicated control rooms.

Why is a control room such a big advantage? Simple – it allows the engineer to hear the recording coming off the microphone in complete isolation.

How does this help? It allows the engineer to use his or her outboard gear (or mixer) to tweak, polish, and enhance the signal right there on recording day, leaving the raw tracks in a much more “mix ready” condition.

The result is profound – the raw tracks sound more amazing from Day 1 and this makes mixing a breeze.

Contrast that with a typical home studio scenario where the tracking and monitoring all happen in the same room. You have less control over the sound and no really good way to tweak it on the way in – even if you have fancy outboard gear.

Fortunately there’s a simple, but powerful solution to all this.

Over the past 3 years I’ve developed a method of recording that I call the Infinite Studio Rack Concept and it couldn’t be more helpful to the home studio music maker.

Harness The Power Of Your Plugins

First off, your recording software (DAW) already ships with some amazing tools to help you sculpt and enhance your recordings. They’re called plugins!

Typically we think of these as “mixing” tools (and they certainly are), but why not use them for recording also??

Think about it – what do you find in the racks of gear in big commercial studios? EQs, compressors, and all kinds of tube or transformer based gear. And what comes packed in with your DAW? EQs, compressors, and all kinds of plugins based on analog gear!

But even better than the real thing, plugins can be used more than once!

Instead of having one or two nice 1176 compressors, you can have as many as you want with your stock 1176 compressor plugin in Pro Tools for example!

Recently I recorded an entire song on a $99 USB interface from Focusrite and it came bundled with a free plugin version of the legendary RED 2 vintage EQ and RED 3 buss compressor (which happens to be Chris Lorg-Alge’s go to mix buss compressor). It sounds great as a plugin and now I can use it on ANY track I like!

And the best part of using plugins? You can audition them quickly and instantly cycle through different ones to get the absolute perfect sound on recording day – all without a control room or a giant rack!

Which leads me to HOW you implement plugins when recording.

Introducing The Infinite Studio Rack Concept

Let me walk you through this method of leveraging your plugins while recording. You’ll see it’s quite simple, but don’t let that fool you. Once you start recording this way, you’ll never NOT want to do it.

Step 1 –  Setup the proper mic placement.

Once your instrument is in tune and sounding good, the most important element of recording a live instrument or vocal is choosing the right mic and putting in the best place possible.

Nothing will impact your recording more than this step, so skip it at your own peril.

Step 2 – Do a test recording.

Once you’ve landed on what you feel is the best mic placement for the given track, go ahead and do a little test recording. Thirty seconds to a minute is all you would need here.

Step 3 – Insert any plugin you like on the track (EQ, compressor, etc) and tweak the settings while playing back the test recording.

The goal here is to listen back to your test recording, as if you were hearing the musician in the other room playing a bit, and start using your virtual rack gear to enhance it.

This might go on for a few minutes as you try different plugins and different settings.

Step 4 – Leave the plugin(s) setup and record the track for real.

Once you have the ideal plugin settings it’s time to delete the test recording and begin tracking for real. What you will be capturing is the same raw audio but you’ll be hearing it through the plugins.

Step 5 – Render the plugin settings to the final take(s).

Once you’ve completed your recording of that track (even multiple takes) you simply render the plugin(s) settings to the actual audio files and remove the real time plugins.

You now have a raw recording that is enhanced by your favorite plugins – just like a real pro studio would do with their outboard gear. The biggest difference? The pro studio rack is limited, where yours (because of plugins) is for all intents and purposes infinite.

Why This Works So Well In The Home Studio

The Infinite Studio Rack concept works so well in the home studio for a lot of reasons. Here are just the big four that come to mind:

• It allows you to add as much EQ, compression, or saturation to your recordings as you want – with no additional gear needed
• It forces you to focus on getting good mic placement first
• You can tweak your “virtual rack” and hear what your plugins are doing to the signal even without having a dedicated control room.
• This method works with ANY audio interface, on ANY DAW, and with ANY plugins you like!

It truly is the most natural way of recording in the home studio I’ve found.

Typical Uses For The Infinite Studio Rack

Obviously you can use your plugins to do anything you like to your audio on recording day, but to give you some ideas of what might be useful here are the ways I typically implement the Infinite Studio Rack concept in my own recordings:

• Compression on drums (kick and snare) for impact and fatness
• EQ on drum overheads to clear up weird and unwanted frequencies in my room
• Compression and EQ on vocals for a more upfront and consistent sound
• Tape saturation on guitars to tame any harsh top end

The more you work with plugins while tracking, the more you’ll find your favorite uses – and the faster you’ll get great results!

Now I know what you might be thinking – so let me address the number one question I get.

This Is Not The Same As Mixing

When I teach this concept people ask me, “Graham, isn’t this simply mixing? How is this anything special or different?”

And the answer is quite simple – no, it’s not the same as mixing. And here’s why.

Our goal with the infinite studio rack concept is to simply enhance your recordings subtly like you would with outboard gear on recording day. It becomes part of the sound of your raw recordings.

At the end of the day the point of all this is to actually PRINT these effects to the audio so they are committed – just like in the analog days (and even current modern recording in big studios).

When you’re done with recording you should be able to remove all the plugins be left with some killer sounding raw tracks that are more professional sounding and more mix ready.

Mixing on the other hand is all about balancing each track against each other. 

With the Infinite Studio Rack concept, we’re trying to create the best source material possible. Two related but different tasks.

Another Beautiful Example Of Leveraging Your Strengths

What I think makes the Infinite Studio Rack concept so powerful is that it takes advantage of one of your home studio’s biggest strengths: plugins.

They sound great these days and you have lots of them. Plus you can use the same “one” as often as you like on as many tracks as you like!

Also, this concept minimizes one of your biggest weaknesses of working in a home studio: the lack of a control room.

Doing the tweaking on a test recording playback allows you to simulate that control room environment and land on the best possible plugin settings to enhance your track.

This is a method that is designed to optimize your small studio space and leverage what you HAVE instead of focusing on what you don’t have. I love it.

So my question for you is simple – have you tried the Infinite Studio Rack concept?

If so, what plugins do you end up reaching for and why? Leave a comment below.

And if you haven’t ever tried this method, let me know when you do on your next recording. I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the workflow and the results!