There is no one “best” piece of analog gear for any studio, no matter what you read on the Internet. A better question to ask is: what kind of studio am I trying to build? Different types of studios have different areas of focus, and different gear requirements.
Let’s answer this question from the perspective of several different studios:
a home music writing studio
a professional recording studio
an audio mixing studio
a film mixing or advanced surround sound studio
a mastering studio
Analog gear for a home music writing studio
In a writing studio, analog gear should be in service to making your writing process as easy, simple, and fun as possible. That means:
Keep your gear simple, easy to use, and quick to set up. Dynamic mics over condensers, fewer recording channels, simpler software.
Focus on gear that allows you to quickly record and combine different musical ideas together. You’re looking for notepad style software that lets you layer up 4-12 tracks quickly. You might not need to pay for this type of basic software: Apple’s GarageBand and Audacity are two free tools that can get you recording quickly in a writing studio situation. Portable recorders also can work well.
A channel strip product is a single piece of analog gear that contains multiple analog tools like EQ, Compression, etc. You run your microphone into the channel strip, process it with analog effects, and then record the results with your computer. These are effective and affordable tools, and they allow you to learn an analog-style recording workflow in a home setting.
Running a microphone through your existing guitar pedals is another affordable way to use analog gear in a writing situation: quick, easy, and effective.
Analog gear for a professional recording studio
In a professional recording studio, analog gear should let you do things that help elevate your recordings beyond what a home studio can produce. Focus on:
More channels: 12-16 channels is a good minimum number for recording rock bands and larger ensembles.
More microphones, and more variety of them: expand from primarily dynamic microphones into condensers, ribbons, and specialty mics.
Analog microphone preamps to help your microphones sound their best.
Analog tape machines, if you like recording to tape. Keep in mind, “analog” is not a synonym for “better” in the modern recording environment. Tape machines and analog recording mediums are mostly about workflow and recording style nowadays.
Acoustic room treatment in your recording space becomes much more important.
Consider building a separate control room and/or multiple rooms with different acoustics to record in.
Analog mixing consoles.
Analog gear for an audio mixing studio
In a mixing studio, your gear focus shifts to emphasize acoustics and signal processing:
Acoustic treatment, properly designed and set up, is a must.
Accurate, higher-end studio speakers, and likely multiple pairs of them.
Higher-end monitoring and routing systems to switch between multiple sets of speakers.
Higher-end headphones with increased accuracy, transparency, and detail.
Analog signal processing: analog equalizers, compressors, summing mixers, and the like to run your recorded tracks through.
Analog mixing consoles.
Analog gear for a film mixing or advanced surround sound studio
Film mixing and advanced multi-channel surround sound in audio post production is a speciality, and in my opinion the gold standard in the industry when it comes to quality. For an advanced film or surround sound studio, your gear focus should be on:
Setting up a multiple speaker and subwoofer array, so you can mix in the same setting as the audience in a movie theater. Professional re-recording mixers in the film industry sometimes have studios that are built exactly like an empty theater, with all of the same speakers and subs you’d see in that setting as an audience member.
Even more advanced monitor routing to control all of the above.
Advanced software that lets you mix in surround.
The gear and workflow you use in this setting will likely be primarily digital beyond setting up your monitoring array: the film industry moved to a primarily in-the-box digital production workflow some time ago.
Analog gear for a mastering studio
Audio mastering is a specialty within music production, and puts the finishing touches on your music while preparing it for a consistent sound across all playback mediums. In a mastering studio, our gear focus shifts towards acoustics and maximum transparency in our signal processing. There’s a lot of speciality analog gear involved in setting up a mastering studio correctly:
A mastering transfer console: the mastering equivalent of a recording studio’s mixing console.
High end, Class A two-channel analog equalizers and compressors.
A highly accurate acoustic environment with advanced acoustics design.
Highly accurate and transparent speakers.
Highly accurate headphones.
Before you buy any analog gear, make sure you clarify the type of studio you are trying to build, and adjust your gear focus accordingly.
