HOME STUDIO ESSENTIALS Part 2

In my last post we discussed some of the gear that's at the heart of a basic home studio setup. In this post I'll show some studio set-ups and signal-flow diagrams that are the most common.

The first setup I'll go over is a typically for a solo artist that wants to do it all themselves aka a la Trent Reznor or Beck. In this situation you already have some gear and can expand from the basic DAW(digital audio workstation). You could be using a drum machine or sampler or both, a bass guitar or bass samples, keyboard, guitar and doing vocals with a mic. The most cost efficient solution is to buy a PC with a decent sound card with the best A/D(analog to digital) converters you can afford. Desktops are better than laptops because you get more bang for your buck with more storage space, usually get more RAM and is cheaper. Sound cards you must be very careful which one to get. I remember my first sound card that I got for my cakewalk 7 home studio software back in the day. I remember installing it correctly and it worked for 2 days before it literally started smoking. As it turned out my computer had no damage. The next card i bought was an excellent MOTU 2408. I have used Motu products for the last 12 years and have seen countless pro studios use them especially in post-production for syncing the tape to video. Its hard to go wrong with them. These are 8 in 8 out cards though and might be a little beyond your budget. There are still great entry products with 2 to 4 I/O's. for under 100$ even below 50$. Just make sure they are compatible with your processor speed in your CPU, are compatible with your software and have A/D converters that are at least 24bit 96kHz. You also need to consider in type of inputs. Are they 1/4" or 1/8" which are usually the most common.

The second setup it really bare bones and what id recommend you should start with since you can start making music immediately and you get the most bang for your buck. Later you can add on to it and expand it however it suits you. Just so you know in advance there are some serious limitations with this. If you really get to know the software and understand the fundamentals of recording and then take the recording to a pro mastering studio you can still end up with a pretty decent demo.

You could also substitute a computer based DAW for a standalone one like Rolands vs840. That way you could have a more stable platform for recoding and do away with all the hassles of computer based recording. It has inputs for instruments, audio effects, you can mix all the tracks to stereo. Of course it has a few shortcomings compared to a PC DAW. A PC is easier to use for editing, the # of tracks is greater, it can have more effects and instrumentation like a drum machine.

Ultimately you will have to decide based on your budget what works best for you. In the next post I'm going to do some case studies on home studios. Hopefully that will give you a little inspiration and show the heights to which some successful musicians have taken small home studios