jpfeifer
January 11th, 2006, 12:46 AM
I wanted to start a thread about some tips for setting up a basic home studio. Feel free to add your own tips to this thread.
These days there are a lot of options for setting up a basic home studio for making recordings of your own songs. With the available technology you can get excellent results without breaking the bank.
Assuming that you want to record guitar (electric and acoustic) and maybe vocal tracks, and that you aren't planning to record an entire band at once, then you can do the following:
1) Buy a recording package for your PC and use it as the main part of your studio. I use a package called "Sonar" made by Cakewalk but there are several other software packages on the market with similar features. These software packages allow you to buy optional plug-in modules for things such as drums, effects, software synths, etc. Most of them also allow you to do "loop" based recording where digital audio segments can be looped and moved around in your song. This is a great way to add drum tracks to your recordings where you simply buy a Drum Loop CD and grab drum patterns off of the CD and paste them into your drum track.
I would reccomend buying a separate hard disk for your computer to use as the storage place for your audio data. These days with the falling price and rising capacity of hard disks it's not too expensive to add an extra disk to your PC for this purpose.
2) Next, you will need to get an audio interface for your PC so that you can bring your audio signals (guitar, synths, mic's, etc) into the PC where the signals can be recorded digitally with your software. In my setup, I'm only recording 1 track at a time so I bought a decent quality 2 input audio card from a company called "Echo Audio" . I bought the card called Mia and it works very well.
3) You will also need to have a way to listen to your tracks. The cheapest way to go is simply to use a set of quality headphones, however if you're serious about doing some good mixing or mastering then you might want to use some decent near-field monitors or even your home stereo speakers. Mixing with headphones can be tricky since bass frequencies and reverb effects tend to sound a little different when you mix with headphones as compared to real speakers. There are a few companies making good near-field bookshelf monitors for around $150 to $300 range
In addition, it can be useful to have a small audio mixer (4-6 channels) so that you route all of your audio sources into your audio card on the PC. I use an audio mixer so that my mic, synth, and guitar are always ready to go. I just turn up the appropriate fader (guitar, synth, mic, etc) on the mixer depending on which instrument I'm recording, and tell the software to start recording my track. I also use the mixer to route the PC's audio output card to my studio monitors.
4) Finally you will need a few mic's if you're planning to record acoustic guitar, or mic your amp, or do vocals. Microphones vary in price by a huge amount depending on what you're looking for and the quality. For micing guitar amps you can use a dynamic mic such as the old standard Sure SM57. However, for acoustic guitars or vocals it really makes a huge difference to have at least 1 condenser mic. In recent years condenser mics have become much more affordable than they ever were in the past. Large diaphram condensers are the best choice for vocal mics, and they are also great for acoustic guitars. I use the AKG C3000 both for vocals and acoustic guitars. I've been very happy with it. If you're only going to record acoustic guitar then you might get by with a small diaphram condenser or, if money is no object get a pair of small diaphram condensers and record your acoustic in stereo.
6) Lastly, I would also reccomend getting a decent compressor if you are planning to do very much vocal recording. The dbx166A works great for this and is not too expensive.
The only other thing that I left out was the choice of guitar amps, and guitars. Currently I use a Line6 POD instead of an amp since I usually record at night when the kids are asleep. The POD works great for this. I've also recorded from the direct out of my Vox amp and disengaged the speaker by plugging some headphones into the headphone out. This sounds great too.
I hope these tips are helpful.
-- Jim
These days there are a lot of options for setting up a basic home studio for making recordings of your own songs. With the available technology you can get excellent results without breaking the bank.
Assuming that you want to record guitar (electric and acoustic) and maybe vocal tracks, and that you aren't planning to record an entire band at once, then you can do the following:
1) Buy a recording package for your PC and use it as the main part of your studio. I use a package called "Sonar" made by Cakewalk but there are several other software packages on the market with similar features. These software packages allow you to buy optional plug-in modules for things such as drums, effects, software synths, etc. Most of them also allow you to do "loop" based recording where digital audio segments can be looped and moved around in your song. This is a great way to add drum tracks to your recordings where you simply buy a Drum Loop CD and grab drum patterns off of the CD and paste them into your drum track.
I would reccomend buying a separate hard disk for your computer to use as the storage place for your audio data. These days with the falling price and rising capacity of hard disks it's not too expensive to add an extra disk to your PC for this purpose.
2) Next, you will need to get an audio interface for your PC so that you can bring your audio signals (guitar, synths, mic's, etc) into the PC where the signals can be recorded digitally with your software. In my setup, I'm only recording 1 track at a time so I bought a decent quality 2 input audio card from a company called "Echo Audio" . I bought the card called Mia and it works very well.
3) You will also need to have a way to listen to your tracks. The cheapest way to go is simply to use a set of quality headphones, however if you're serious about doing some good mixing or mastering then you might want to use some decent near-field monitors or even your home stereo speakers. Mixing with headphones can be tricky since bass frequencies and reverb effects tend to sound a little different when you mix with headphones as compared to real speakers. There are a few companies making good near-field bookshelf monitors for around $150 to $300 range
In addition, it can be useful to have a small audio mixer (4-6 channels) so that you route all of your audio sources into your audio card on the PC. I use an audio mixer so that my mic, synth, and guitar are always ready to go. I just turn up the appropriate fader (guitar, synth, mic, etc) on the mixer depending on which instrument I'm recording, and tell the software to start recording my track. I also use the mixer to route the PC's audio output card to my studio monitors.
4) Finally you will need a few mic's if you're planning to record acoustic guitar, or mic your amp, or do vocals. Microphones vary in price by a huge amount depending on what you're looking for and the quality. For micing guitar amps you can use a dynamic mic such as the old standard Sure SM57. However, for acoustic guitars or vocals it really makes a huge difference to have at least 1 condenser mic. In recent years condenser mics have become much more affordable than they ever were in the past. Large diaphram condensers are the best choice for vocal mics, and they are also great for acoustic guitars. I use the AKG C3000 both for vocals and acoustic guitars. I've been very happy with it. If you're only going to record acoustic guitar then you might get by with a small diaphram condenser or, if money is no object get a pair of small diaphram condensers and record your acoustic in stereo.
6) Lastly, I would also reccomend getting a decent compressor if you are planning to do very much vocal recording. The dbx166A works great for this and is not too expensive.
The only other thing that I left out was the choice of guitar amps, and guitars. Currently I use a Line6 POD instead of an amp since I usually record at night when the kids are asleep. The POD works great for this. I've also recorded from the direct out of my Vox amp and disengaged the speaker by plugging some headphones into the headphone out. This sounds great too.
I hope these tips are helpful.
-- Jim