How to create the perfect travel rig for on-location recording

Laptop and audio interface

The most fundamental element of your portable studio is also the easiest to get on top of: literally any modern Mac or Windows PC laptop will be more than up to the task of recording on the go, so – if you don’t already run your home studio from one – get whatever you can afford at whatever size you’re comfortable lugging around, prioritising battery life over all else, and load it up with your DAW of choice.
 
With that essential centrepiece sorted, you can turn your technical and budgetary attention to the audio interface. While there’s obviously a lot to be said for the convenience of USB microphones, when you need more mic inputs than you have USB ports, and/or you also want to bring line and instrument level signals into play, or your preferred model simply isn’t available in USB format, a high-quality interface should be seen as nothing less than a mission-critical component of your setup.
 
Alongside sound quality, portability is a primary consideration when selecting an audio interface for on-the-go deployment. With their compact footprints and sturdy construction, the USB bus-powered members of the Audient and EVO ranges are designed with mobility in mind, and offer an array of input and output specifications to suit any location recording scenario you might run into. At the most minimal end of the scale, the iD4 and EVO 4 provide one and two mic preamps, respectively, and a JFET Instrument input; while stepping up to the iD14 or EVO 8 doubles the number of mic pres on each, and, in the case of the iD14, adds an ADAT port, for another eight mic/line inputs via an ASP800, ASP880 or EVO SP8 expander (albeit with the added requirement of a power supply). All those ins could be very useful for recording a live band, enabling a multichannel feed to be taken from the front of house mixer straight into your DAW. You also get two headphone outputs with all but the EVO 4 (which has one), the relevance of which we’ll come back to shortly.
 
Crucially, no matter which Audient or EVO interface you throw into your backpack, you can rest assured that it will get your location recordings sounding the best they possibly can, thanks to its pristine preamps, and low-noise, distortion-free circuitry.

Microphone(s)

Microphones are an expansive subject unto themselves, so for a general overview of the many options available, check out our in-depth guide here. For the purposes of mobile recording, however, while the general principles of mic design remain every bit as applicable as they are in the studio – dynamic mics for drums and rock vocals, and condensers for pretty much everything else, very loosely speaking – there are a couple of other, more unusual types to be aware of when recording spoken-word dialogue on location.
 
If you’re working in a noisy environment and thus need to separate your speaker or speakers from the background sounds going on around them, a shotgun mic should be your go-to. With its highly directional capsule design, this rejects off-axis input and ‘hears’ nothing other than the human mouth at which it’s directly pointed. On the downside, it’s also very susceptible to wind and handling noise (and when you’re on location, you probably will be handling it, rather than mounting it on a stand), so put it on a boom and in a ‘blimp’ windshield if you possibly can.
 
If your environment is rather more controlled, clipping a lavalier mic to the shirt of your speaker can make them feel more at ease than talking directly into a mic held up in front of their face, and ensures a very consistent sound, as the mic moves with the person to whom it’s attached. The only real negative is the lavalier’s tendency to pick up rustling noises from the host garment if not carefully attached and monitored.

Headphones

Unless you’re operating in a particularly amenable space, monitoring your recording session through a pair of loudspeakers in a separate room to that occupied by your sound sources won’t be an option. Headphones, then, and while it is, as ever, good to get the best model your budget allows, given that you’ll likely be editing and mixing your projects back in your home studio, you shouldn’t feel compelled to splurge on the most expensive cans in the shop if they’re only intended for location work. What is important, though, is that they’re of the closed back variety, as the total lack of isolation that you get with open backs will clearly be problematic in any noisy environment. So, even if you already own a top-notch open back model for ‘zoomed-in’ monitoring in the studio, you’ll still want to get a closed back pair for the road, but they can be of considerably lower spec, as accuracy and detail aren’t such high priorities.
 
Bear in mind, too, that the artist you’re recording may well need to be able to hear the output of your DAW for multitracking or monitoring with effects, so multiple headphones may in fact be called for on the day. As mentioned earlier, many Audient and EVO interfaces feature dual headphone outputs for precisely this purpose, but if you need more cue monitoring feeds than that, look into getting hold of a headphone splitter box/mixer.

Cables and peripherals

That’s all the main components of your mobile rig covered, but finally, you’ll also need all the necessary cables for your mics and line inputs, a USB cable long enough to position your audio interface as far away from your laptop as demanded by the recording environment, the aforementioned wind shielding for mics when working outside, and a backpack in which to sling it all. Brands worth investigating for the last include UDG and Magma.