Customer Reviews

Complete Idiot's Guide to Home Recording Illustrated (The Complete Idiot's Guide)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I don't usually write reviews but this book was so disappointing I felt obligated to save people some money on its purchase. I really do not expect much from a how-to book but this has to be one of the worst written and edited books I've ever seen.

The author attempts to be funny at least once per paragraph and fails miserably. Humor is a good thing in technical writing to keep people awake buy if he would've cut out his lame jokes the book would be 1/3 smaller and easier to read.

To give you an example of the terrible layout and editing: He spends a couple of pages explaining how hard it is to create a good mic setup for live drums. Then he spends a couple more pages telling you how to use an alternative drum machine output to multiple stereo tracks. So far, so good. Then the next paragraph he starts saying how hard it is to mic live drums and how to use a drum machine...?? What the heck, did they even read this thing before printing it?

So, the writing is terrible and the layout makes it even worse, but there is some limited value in this book. It does explain the basic steps and equipment used in setting up a multi-track home studio with emphasis on using a digital audio workstation (personal computer/laptop) setup as opposed to a stand-alone multi-track recorder. It does explain basic microphone types and their usage along with some of the challenges you'll face when recording different types of instruments. You will only read this book once though as the info is very basic and nothing worth referencing later.

Overall, if you can survive the lame humor it's ok to skim through as a primer on home recording. I personally wouldn't recommend it as a book worth purchasing as there are plenty of others out there and the technical information you'll find you could easily get by spending an hour or two on the Internet or even reading product descriptions in a music store catalog.

I have been interested in home recording for a few months now. I wanted to find a book that had good, relevant, up-to-date information on the subjects I wanted to know about. This book matches that criteria perfectly. Written less than two months ago at the time I am writing this review (Jan 2, 2004), there is no outdated information at all.

The best thing about this book, in my opinion, is the fact that as long as you have a relatively powerful computer, you don't need to purchase anything besides the book to get started working with mixing, editing, and mastering recordings. You are given a CD that contains sample sound files and sessions for Pro Tools Free. You will also be told exactly how to download and install this software.

As you progress through the book, you will work on a song called Pro Tools Blues; you will gradually add elements to it as you learn how certain things work with Pro Tools Free. The CD also contains all the files needed to do this, so microphones are not a necessity.

This is a great book. If you ever wanted to learn how to record and mix audio, this is a great beginning resource. I highly recommend it. 5/5.

This book is great for someone just starting out in home recording, and people more advanced. Clayton Walnum (the author) goes throug everything that is important in a home studio, from setting up your studio, to mixing a great song. Not only is this book easy to read, but it gives you pictures and also examples on the CD-rom that is included with the book. I've bought more expensive books trying to get answers about home recording and none of them were more detailed than this book is. The common idiot would be able to record good quality music on a home studio after reading this book.

This book includes a CD with samples to walk you through, but the program is not supported in Windows 2000 or XP. So unless you are using win98 or ME, you can't use this program, which makes the book mediocre at best.

I've been playing guitar for quite a while, but I wanted to start seting up an inexpensive home recording system. This book was really helpful in getting started.

There are a number of things I really like about the book. First, it's more current than others I looked at. That was important to me because I also needed to buy a little more equipment. The illustrations were really helpful so I could see the gear that the author was talking about.

The other thing I liked was the author focused on the basics. He does a good job of explaining important concepts without resorting to techno-speak. He also shares many best practices based on his experience in the recording industry.

Although the book uses the included Pro Tools software in all the tutorials, I was able to easily translate the concepts to the software I use - Guitar Tracks Pro.

Overall, very happy with the book.

This really is a great book - it filled numerous gaps in my (rather poor) understanding of microphones, different types of sounds and how to cook up a suprisingly inpressive sounding final "product". The humorous nature of the book is a bit deceptive - it takes you all the way up to some pretty complex stuff concerning mixing, buses and how to really use effects. This stuff is not obvious to the uninitiated (well not to me!). It is also pretty much up to date as far as I can tell.

This book covers little ground. The author extends comic relief constantly, which gets extremely annoying. Many books on this subject are much better.

I admit that my ignorance caused my disappointment in this book. I feel that the title is misleading. To me, "home" recording has reference to merely transferring one recording to a different medium. This book is a bit too technical for me, and deals with aspects of recording that I consider more "professional" and not so amateurish as I understand "home" recording. My rating is based on the feeling that the book is inappropriate for me, although others may find it to cover exactly what they are looking for.