Building a professional film music studio - need advice

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unShackled
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2005/10/12 02:46:18 (permalink)

Building a professional film music studio - need advice

The local film company that just took me on as music composer is getting BIG. We've just secured some office space and I will actually have my own space to work. The Executive Producer has tasked me with pricing the equipment/software I would need to work in this setting. He gave me a rough budget of $7000 - and that's only for the music - not the sound studio, itself.

I've toyed with the idea of renting a real orchestra (http://orchestra.net), but I'd still need some equipment even if I did go with a live recording. I'd still like a good DAW and I know there are some prebuilt workstations geared toward music creation. I'm just looking for options. A big question I have is should I make the switch to Mac. I'll be using a lot of VSTs and doing a fair amount of audio recording. Here is a rough list of what I think I might need:

DAW (PC/Mac)
Sound card (any advice here?)
Monitors (near-field?)
Adequate display (dual-LCDs?)
Sequencer (Would Sonar 5 PE be sufficient for "professional" synth scores? What for Mac OS X?)
Misc VST libraries
what else?

Here is a list of my current software:
Sonar 3 PE
Vsampler 3.5
EWQL Orchestra Gold
Distorted Reality 2
various smaller libraries

Any advice from you who know would be awsome!

Daggerfall Music Project
rhmusic.net
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    fif4lifefif
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    RE: Building a professional film music studio - need advice 2005/10/13 15:15:06 (permalink)
    DAW (PC/Mac)
    I recommend PC, with lots of RAM (at least 2 GB) if you're using lots of VSTs. Check out the AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors. It's better to build it yourself and have a clean Windows install than to buy a commercial PC with all that useless junk on it.

    Sound card (any advice here?)
    You'll get a lot of different opinions here, but I use the M-Audio Delta 1010, which gives me great results, and is quite affordable. I here the PreSonus Firepod is great as well.

    Monitors (near-field?)
    Another controversial issue, about which I know little. I just use Samson Resolv monitors because they're affordable and give pretty decent results

    Adequate display (dual-LCDs?)
    While dual-LCDs aren't necessary, they're a great convenience. 17" or more should be enough.

    Sequencer (Would Sonar 5 PE be sufficient for "professional" synth scores? What for Mac OS X?)
    Sonar 5 should do the job.

    Hope I could help out. Just keep in mind that none of this is written in stone, and that there are plenty of people here who know plenty more than I!
    -Vince
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    ohhey
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    RE: Building a professional film music studio - need advice 2005/10/13 15:45:43 (permalink)
    If you are going to be doing any video editing you will want Sony Vegas. Also, pay attention to the speed when shopping LCDs you will want 8ms or less. Better yet make one monitor a real tube to put the video window on. In Vegas and Sonar 5 you can also send the video out a firewire port to a video D to A converter so you can preview on a real TV set, that would be even better. That way you can use all your LCD desktop space for tools. A firewire to analog video converter is about $300 or you can use a digital camcorder if it has a pass through mode.

    In fact if they are going to sending you stuff on DV tape you might just want to get one of these.

    http://www.promax.com/Products/Detail/14031
    post edited by ohhey - 2005/10/13 15:55:25

    Frank Coffey - Songwriter
    http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=790131
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    jcschild
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    RE: Building a professional film music studio - need advice 2005/10/13 19:23:57 (permalink)

    ORIGINAL: unShackled

    The local film company that just took me on as music composer is getting BIG. We've just secured some office space and I will actually have my own space to work. The Executive Producer has tasked me with pricing the equipment/software I would need to work in this setting. He gave me a rough budget of $7000 - and that's only for the music - not the sound studio, itself.

    I've toyed with the idea of renting a real orchestra (http://orchestra.net), but I'd still need some equipment even if I did go with a live recording.


    you could never get the quality of sound from a real orchestra vs the sounds in Giga Vienna or EW Platinum.
    the samples are far better.
    the mics alone your budget couldnt touch never mind AD/DA and Mic pres. so that leaves you with Giga or EW.
    for film scoring "ideally" you would have a computer for each genre of instrument EG: Winds, Strings, Percussion etc.
    mind you an ideal world


    I'd still like a good DAW and I know there are some prebuilt workstations geared toward music creation. I'm just looking for options. A big question I have is should I make the switch to Mac. I'll be using a lot of VSTs and doing a fair amount of audio recording. Here is a rough list of what I think I might need:

    DAW (PC/Mac)
    Sound card (any advice here?)
    Monitors (near-field?)
    Adequate display (dual-LCDs?)
    Sequencer (Would Sonar 5 PE be sufficient for "professional" synth scores? What for Mac OS X?)
    Misc VST libraries
    what else?

    Here is a list of my current software:
    Sonar 3 PE
    Vsampler 3.5
    EWQL Orchestra Gold
    Distorted Reality 2
    various smaller libraries

    Any advice from you who know would be awsome!


    most guys doing film scoring have Dual opterons or Dual Core Dual opterons. (or MAC which is slower)
    however LoDuca Music (Hercules,Zena and much more) makes do just fine with AMD X2' as the main
    and 2 Giga/ VST boxes per workstation.

    2 LCDs are a minimum.

    the more important questions are what format are they giving you the movie EG AVI? compressed/uncompressed
    Quick time, SDI deck? ETC
    and what do you sync to? Smpte? black burst from a deck?
    How do you have to give the Audio back? format etc. OMF required? Broadcast wave ? Surround?

    your hard pressed to design a system until you know these things.

    Scott
    ADK

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    fif4lifefif
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    RE: Building a professional film music studio - need advice 2005/10/13 23:28:23 (permalink)

    ORIGINAL: ohhey

    If you are going to be doing any video editing you will want Sony Vegas.


    While Vegas is a great program, there are other great ones as well. For example, Adobe Premiere is another competent video editing program. Both are top-shelf; just be sure to check out your options.
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    unShackled
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    RE: Building a professional film music studio - need advice 2005/10/14 10:12:10 (permalink)
    Wow, thanks for all the input. To answer some questions, I will be getting the video in uncompressed avi format and he wants stereo wav from me. That raises another question, though. How should I get the video to a manageable size that Sonar can handle (yes, I'll probably be using Sonar 5). And should I break it up into chunks? The uncompressed file is around 100GB.

    As far as an orchestra, check out the link to orchestra.net and see what it actually takes to get a live orchestra recording. It's around $1500 per hour recording session (give or take, depending on the size of the ensemble), and you get a live feed with the conductor so you can watch over and give instructions during the session (the orchestra is in Prague). They do all the recording and you actually get to control the mix while it's recorded via special software only for Mac. It's a freakin sweet deal. But alas, my orchestra arrangements would probably be laughed off the stage, so I think I'll wait a while before I attempt that.

    Daggerfall Music Project
    rhmusic.net
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    ohhey
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    RE: Building a professional film music studio - need advice 2005/10/14 10:31:36 (permalink)
    ORIGINAL: unShackled

    Wow, thanks for all the input. To answer some questions, I will be getting the video in uncompressed avi format and he wants stereo wav from me. That raises another question, though. How should I get the video to a manageable size that Sonar can handle (yes, I'll probably be using Sonar 5). And should I break it up into chunks? The uncompressed file is around 100GB.
    ...


    That's a good question. I've often wondered if the audio and video will still be in sync if I compress the video before working on the score. I also don't know how much load video playback puts on Sonar. I would try it first to see if it works with the full size file. The uncompressed AVI will result in more disk activity but the good news is the CPU doesn't have to uncompress it. So it may be a trade off as to what you are running low on. I would think that the Sonar 5 feature where you have the video go out the firewire to a converter and monitor would take even more load off the CPU over having to display it in a window.

    Also, how will the final product be made ? Will they import your sound track into a video editing software along with the avi and then compress it to mpeg ?

    For sure you will want the fastest hard drive you can get for for project drive.
    post edited by ohhey - 2005/10/14 10:41:16

    Frank Coffey - Songwriter
    http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=790131
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