Building a Home Recording Studio
I cut my recording teeth on analog equipment through the 90s. I loved the big mixing boards, the patch bays, the effects racks, and trying to get your songs perfectly placed on 15 minutes-to-a-side cassette tape. I started collecting music from the tail end of the vinyl era, through to the cassette and CD era, and got sidetracked by life well before the streaming era. All the home, church, and university recording I did went straight to tape. And that was really the only recording medium I gained any real skills in. Fast forward to late 2023 when I decided to start exploring digital recording more seriously. As I began to look deeper into building a digital home studio, the first thing that surprised me was how little space was required. Where was the massive 40-track mixing boards? Where were the numerous patch bays and the rat’s nest of patch cords? And where did the effects units go? After spending several weeks researching and trying to catch up on a couple decades-worth of missed technological advancement, I quickly learned that digital recording had distilled everything down into a laptop-sized workstation that housed almost everything required to produce pretty decent recordings. In fact, I was shocked to read how many award-winning artists were recording and producing in home recording studios. Armed with my research, I set out to building a decent home studio in an under-utilized part of the house. I was open to anything, but had a few guidelines; I wanted to stay within a budget under $5,000, do minimal renovations, put it together relatively quickly, and have decent enough equipment to produce broadcast-quality recordings. Okay, so with all of that criteria, here was the ten-step checklist I put together to build out my home studio as well as links to where I found everything: Studio Space Computer/ External Hard Drive Audio Interface Studio Monitors DAW Microphones & Pop Filter Headphones MIDI Keyboard Cables and Mic Stands Room Treatment __________________________________________________________________________ 1. Studio Space Cost: $0 We had a catch-all room in the house which had shelving containing everything from Christmas decorations to winter clothing, acted as a home office/work station, and had a family’s worth of unwanted and outgrown shoes. I tore out the shelves, moved out the boxes and décor, and gave the shoes to charity. The room was perfect as the ceiling was over 8 feet high, and the room was rectangular at 8 feet x 14 feet. Square rooms that have symmetrical walls cancel out certain frequencies and mess with sound waves. I patched up the holes and re-painted the room a soft, relaxing off-white. I put up a large bookcase at the far end of the room, where I put my vinyl collection and the books that inspire me. I hung my favorite art pieces and basically made a space that I would want to spend a lot of time in. 2. Computer/Laptop Cost: $2,500 Even though I had only ever used PCs and had limited experience with Apple products, I decided to go with a MacBook. I knew it would be a steeper learning curve since I’m not even a big fan of laptops, but I wanted the portability of a laptop so I could be a little more mobile, plus I had learned that Mac was quite a bit more compatible with recording software. Considering everything your laptop needs to do, it wasn’t surprising that this became the single most expensive piece of the studio. I ended up getting a MacBook Pro with 16GB of memory and 1TB of storage. It is super light, and easy to operate. Super happy with this buy so far! I ended up also purchasing a mouse as I had trouble getting used to the pad on the laptop. I wanted the feel and movement of a mouse. Once my laptop arrived and I started experimenting, I added a couple other little goodies as well; an external hard drive to store my finished recordings, and a multi-port USB hub, since the laptop didn’t have quite enough ports for everything I wanted to plug in. Laptop: https://amzn.to/42GiSuO Hard Drive: https://amzn.to/4hLUGLN USB Hub: https://amzn.to/3WPfSIV External Mouse: https://amzn.to/4hfgXC1 3. Audio Interface Cost: $150 When it came to getting an audio interface, I was still a little uncertain after my research, and so I sought out the advice of a more-qualified friend. He recommended the Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface. While I’m not exactly qualified to say if I purchased the best one for my purposes, I can report that I am really happy with how user-friendly and versatile it is. Plus it puts out some high-quality signal. It prevents clipping, and intuitively sets the perfect level for mic or line-in. Also it’s totally plug and play so I was pretty happy to not have to learn another new piece of equipment on top of everything else I had to learn. Interface: https://amzn.to/4hnzsEt 4. Studio Monitors Cost: $800 This is the one piece that I knew something about. Studio monitors were a core piece of equipment for me back in the day, and while the technology has changed some, I felt a little qualified to find a good set. After a little shopping around, I ended up buying these amazing powered speakers. Not only do they look cool they sound great. These are powered speakers and have 25 settings to help EQ the acoustic environment of our studio. They look super sharp and are super clear and crisp. I also bought a couple stands so that I could place the speakers right at ear level as I sit at my desk in front of my DAW. Speakers: https://amzn.to/42JvzFk Stands: https://amzn.to/3WMcL4u 5. DAW/Digital Audio Workstation Cost: $200 DAW, I quickly learned, stands for Digital Audio Workstation. This is the software that is used for digital recording. Consider it your virtual mixing board. You use it to record, edit and mix. There are a variety of DAWs out there, but the two main players are Pro Tools and Logic. After doing a ton