"Using Your Portable Studio" published in 1996, is a 300 page manual about home recording by award winning producer Peter McIan. The book is a technical, hands-on book to using professional studio multi track recording techniques on a consumer 4 Track recorder in a home studio environment. Only the content dealing with the limitations and physics of recording with physical tape and tape recorders are obsolete.

This is a book about sound and how to capture it cleanly. One has read 225 pages into the book before there's ever an instruction to hit the 'record' button. There are chapters on set ups for recording drums, bass, guitar and vocals. A chapter on microphones.

After 216 pages of theory presented in lay terms, Mr. McIan begins a chapter that gives step by step instructions how to record and mixdown sixteen instruments using a four track portable home studio machine. Each with it's own EQ, panning and special effects. The book is still in print because it's still relevant today to the home recordist even if they use a DAW with unlimited tracks.

Why? First, because there are still tens of thousands stand alone analog and digital recorders being used by home recording enthusiasts today. There are still tens of thousands of studios using mixing consoles recording into dedicated hard disk recorders whether they are stand alone devices or computer based DAW's. This manual is useful to home recording enthusiasts that use current devices such as the Zoom H4n or similar. The Similar Tascam digital recorders like the DR-05 and more so, actual dedicated home studio recording devices like the DP004,006,008,02,03,Dp24/32 and their newest release, the Model 24. This manual is relevant to owners of units such as the Zoom L12, L20 and the Zoom series of hybrid recorders R8, R16 and R24. It's also applicable to brands by Roland, Korg and older units by Tascam and Zoom.

It's a book about channels, tracks, hard wired busses, Fx busses, subgroups, inserts, sends and returns. It's about sub mixes, premixes and bouncing while capturing the absolute quietest audio signal or combinations of signals as possible. It's about getting the most out of routing and mixing.

The best part. It's available on sites like Amazon and Barnes and nobles for as little as $2.90 USD. Regardless of your recording medium of choice, there's a lot of useful information in this book for everybody.

For those who are completely 'in the box' users of BIAB, this manual is for you too. BIAB works quite well and easily as an 8 channel one input (mono or stereo) digital multi track recorder. The principles of submixing, premixing and bouncing work marvelously with BIAB. In fact, because it's digital, the signal and quality exceed anything possible with original tape based portable studios. It is surprisingly easy to quickly mix and export a song of 70 instruments on dozens of tracks to a high quality radio ready stereo mix.

Using Your Portable Studio


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BIAB Ultra Pak+ 2024:RB 2024, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.