What a Recording Studio Can perform For Performers
It doesn't have a great musical ear to know why home recordings... well... just don't work. The technology and enhancements available in a studio are only half the contribution it makes toward the recording. Greatest of, may be the sound isolation and also the prevention of leakage from one component of the track to a different.
A recording studio is typically split into three rooms -
1. The studio room or "live room", where the performers are present
2. The "control room", where the sound producer and engineers work with equipment that records and manipulates the live sound
3. The "machine room", where any noisy machines the studio could use (ac, backup power source, etc) are placed.
Aside from this basic setup, there are often separate isolation booths, also known as "vocals booths" as they are accustomed to record vocals and acoustic instruments. Some studios will also have another room for drums, so that the sound of the drum does not leak into the sound of the remaining instruments.
The process of recording is fairly simple from the performer's end. There's two choices the performers have - either each area of the performance could be played and recorded separately, or the entire composition can be played together and recorded at one go. Frequently, the vocals and drums are recorded separately in the remaining track.
The performers enter the live room, that is usually situated in such a way that performers can see the control room and also the people within it. The control room typically houses the background music producer and sound engineers, who monitor the sound, record it, and insert special effects as desired or required. Sound editing such as pitch correction, insertion of effects, balancing and gain adjustment is usually done after the live recording is over.
Large studios such as Advent Media have facilities for drum recording and orchestra recordings, but small studios with low budgets will usually fill in the drums utilizing a sequencer rather than live drumming. The microphone setup for drums is highly elaborate - the microphones have to be chosen and positioned so that the sound of each drum is captured individually, which allows better equalizing.
The primary advantage a studio recording has over home recording is that the studio should match certain acoustic standards. Ideally, a studio should absorb all sound and reflect none whatsoever. This would have been possible only when the studio had infinite mass and absolute rigidity - but sadly, this is not the case. The good news is that acoustic imperfections could be kept down to levels that are not discernible by the human ear.