The Home Music Recording Studio Guide

Welcome to HomeStudioZone.com!

In creating this guide I hope I can pass on the experience and knowledge I have gained over the past decade or more in creating and using my Home Recording Studio. There is a lot of good information out there on some great web sites, books, tutorials etc, and they have all helped me enormously over the past few years - and they still do. I'm an avid surfer of all things concerning home recording, and I encourage you to do so too. I hope that you will find that my web site adds to the quantity and quality of such information and that you find it useful and informative. I also hope and that you will avoid all of the frustration and wasted time and money that I have encountered in my quest to produce decent recordings, and I know you'll have a lot of great fun in the process.

Space

This web site will deal with a lot of the fundamentals of building and using a home recording studio. The first thing I'm going to recommend you do, only because I didn't and I'm constantly re-arranging, adding equipment, rewiring etc, is to plan your physical work space. You will probably need a layout consisting of three distinct parts; one for your music recording equipment (PC, effects rack and so on), one for your musicians and all their gear, microphone stands, guitars, keyboards, amplifiers, drums etc., and somewhere convenient to store all those precious items such as audio and midi cables, audio signal processors, connectors, microphones, CD’s, manuals etc. Lastly, bear in mind that you will constantly be buying new stuff, so leave room for expansion. Here's what mine looks like today; it'll probably look quite different in a couple of months!

Recording Hardware, DAW and Audio Interface

Your home recording studio should, If at all possible, have a computer dedicated to the recording process. The way that your home recording studio will get audio into the PC (and the audio recording software) is through an audio interface that converts the analog audio signal into a digital one. The one that is already built into your computer will probably be a single input/single output device working at 16bit/44.1KHz, which is the format used for CDs (16bit at 48kHz is used for DVD's!). However, this approach will almost certainly prove to be a severe limitation in many ways, so you will want to consider an internal PCI audio card or an external audio interface box connected to your PC via USB or Firewire. You can now record multi channel audio, mix and monitor; and do it with a much higher quality.

MIcrophones

You'll Need a Decent Selection of Microphones!

The topic of microphones used in a home recording studio is a science all to itself, but for basic voice or guitar recording, you don’t need anything too elaborate or expensive. You really can’t go wrong with a dynamic microphone such as the Shure SM57 to mike up your amp. For vocal recordings, or acoustic guitar, I would start with a condenser microphone such as the Rode NT1-A or Audio Technica AT4040. Recording Drums requires a mixture of the two.

Monitoring and Acoustics

I'm also covering the topic of monitoring. This is where you listen to what you are recording, or what you have already recorded. There are two elements to this subject; the monitoring device; speakers or studio headphones. Good speakers in a reasonably passive acoustic space will give you by far the best rendition of your mix, but it will certainly be the most expensive solution. You might need to carry out some acoustic treatment of your home recording studio to eliminate delays and reflections, and set yourself up with some decent studio monitors. Closed cap headphones are fine to use for tracking or audio editing, but can give a very false translation of your mix.

Recording Software, Effects and MIDI

Steinberg's
Cubase

The audio recording software is a central element of your home recording studio. This is where you will carry out your audio tracking, audio editing, audio mixing, audio mastering and Midi control. It will contain your software based audio equalization (EQ), effects processors, audio compressors, signal processors. If required, it will be able to use VST Instruments and VST Plugins and will be your central Midi Sequencer. So it’s pretty important that you get this bit right.

Tracking, Mixing and Mastering

I'll also give some ideas on how to Track, Mix and Master your audio recordings. These parts of the process are mixtures of art and science and can turn good recordings into great ones - and vice versa!

So, this is just the start. There’s much, much more to consider when creating your own home recording studio; read on!

Top of Page

A Great Source of Computing Equipment and Accessories.................⇒
	⇒...........All The Connectors, Cables and Parts You'll Ever Need