How to Create Your Own Home Studio

Home studios are great. They allow us to play producer, singer and recording artist. They enable us to record (hopefully) pretty good quality music that we can share with others, and maybe make some money from. They can be addictively fun, incredibly frustrating, and consume all of our spare time and money. And they’re all different. Home studios vary as much as our interests, budget and available time vary.

Some studios are totally digital. The music is put together from loops and samples, or recorded from electronic keyboards. The focus is on the gear – especially the computers, software and peripherals. Acoustics and noise from the outside world aren’t an issue.

Other studios do have to worry about these issues. Besides the gear, there needs to be a huge focus on the room. Are the acoustics right? Do we want a dead room or a live room? How can we minimize sound from the outside world? Do we care if our neighbors can hear their televisions? We may need to record vocals, acoustic guitars and drums. Choice of microphones becomes an important consideration.

Building a studio can be expensive, and ultimately satisfying. Ryan the guitar guru told me of a well-known local musician who built his own home studio, sound room and all. He got talking to a sound engineer at the pub who wanted to see the studio. On arriving, the sound engineer was impressed. “You haven’t built a home studio. You’ve built a studio at home.”

I’d love to interview this guy, but haven’t managed to contact him yet. In fact, I’d love to interview lots of people with home studios, and include their stories on a monthly basis. Let me know if you have any ideas.

In the meantime, here is some great advice from musos who have taken on the challenge of building their own studio, and succeeded.

“Before Setting Up Your Studio”

About.com offer three great advice about three things to do before setting up your studio:

Choose your space. Use a neutral room that’s accurate when you’re mixing and listening. You don’t want to be mixing to compensate for the room.
Keep your neighbors happy – especially if you live in an apartment. Be especially aware of volume levels and the time of day (or night!). You don’t want a visit from your landlord.
Test your isolation. Play some music through your mixing speakers, go outside of the room and close the door. How loud is the sound as you walk around the building? If it’s too loud, consider to use high-quality headphones to mix with. You may be able to make arrangements with your neighbors to do your recording at a mutually convenient time.

“How to Set Up a Digital Studio”

This week on the AudioJungle.net forums, Draqo gave us a helpful tutorial on how to set up a digital studio. Draqo is a freelance programmer and composer currently living in Alaska. He’s into composing classical, ambient and electronic music. Here is a summary of his advice:

Start by choosing the computer. In particular, start by choosing the operating system: Microsoft Windows or Mac OSX. (I’d also add Linux as an option, but more of that in a few weeks.) This decision really comes down to the music software you intend to use. For example, if you want to use Logic Pro, make sure you buy a Mac. The age-old law of software buying is: Always check the system requirements before you buy the software. And usually, it’s even better to check this before you buy the computer!
Decide in advance on how poor this studio is going to make you! There are some cheaper options when setting up your studio. Draqo lists options like using soundfonts and samples (for example, using East West – Quantum Leap Collosus) as worthwhile. He strongly warns against using the music software that comes with your computer, including Garage Band on the Mac, and the toy-like General MIDI sounds that come with Windows. Draqo also warns that real quality costs. For example, the Vienna Symphonic Library has huge packages of sounds costing in excess of $10,000 (with free shipping!). External hardware and Digital Audio Workstation software is also not cheap.
Choose whether to use just one computer, or several. Recording music is very taxing on your computer, and additional computers can be used for file storage. Spend time choosing a good sound card / audio interface, enough RAM, a good graphics card. Also consider the noise of the computer. Consider going fanless (either move to Alaska with Draqo or buy a 10 pound heat sink), or store the computer in a different room.
Draqo includes some great tips about all of the cables you are going to have to buy and plug in, including MIDI to USB conversion, the use of preamps, and the danger of running out of USB ports on your computer. Oh, and remember to plug them in properly!
He also recommends some “note painting” options, including arpeggiators (for the tone deaf) and randomizers.

I recommend you read the entire original article. And don’t forget to leave Draqo a nice comment!

“Home Studio – The Best You Can Get?”

This article at The Art of Live Performing covers some tips on how to build a room with a better sound – cheaply! The goal here is to create a room with a good “dead” sound that you can add effects to later.

Brown sound board is cheap, and absorbs sound evenly. Line your studio walls with it.
A suspended floor gives you the best sound insulation. The article recommends buying 100 superballs, cutting them in half, and using them to hold up a ply flooring. Cover the ply with carpet pads and carpet.
Break up the reverb from flat parallel walls by installing bookshelves, and filling them with books.
High ceilings can also be a problem. The cheapest solution is to stretch hession of simple sheeting across the room at a convenient height. A better (but more expensive) solution is to hang acoustic compensators from the ceiling by chains.
Keep the studio equipment running at its quietest. Keep power amps in another room. Loud computer fans can also be a problem.

“How to Build a Home Recording Studio for Less than $1,000″

Dave Fancella wrote an article for Linux.com about building an “adequate” studio for less than $1,000. Besides the suggestion of using Linux to save on software costs, the article has some great tips about hardware.

Dan “dictates” the software to be used for recording tracks as Ecasound, and gives us three choices for mastering: Ecasound, Ardour or Audacity. Dan admits that Audacity isn’t his preference, but acknowledges that there are hundreds of thousands of users whose experience contradicts his.
For hardware, he recommends lots of RAM, a duel-processor computer and lots of hard drive space. For a budget studio, he recommends using your existing sound card if you only need to record one or two tracks at a time.

“How to Build a Home Recording Studio”

Expert Village have put an excellent 15-part video series together on building a home studio. Chapters include:

You’ll find lots of other stories and information about creating your own home studio around the net. I few of these that I haven’t mentioned above are:

Your Home Studio.com
Ultimate Songwriting’s Guide to Building a Home Studio
43Things’ How to Build a Home Recording Studio
Wikihow’s How to Build a Home Studio for Computer Based Music Recording

And what about your story? Do you have any tips or gotchas to add from your own experience of creating a home studio?

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Comments

Adrian

Adrian is writer and editor for Audiotuts+ and the AudioJungle blog. He has been playing keys and acoustic guitar for three decades, and has six kids. Follow him on Twitter at @audiotuts.

Maor Hazan says:

February 14, 2009 at 10:32 am

Wow! Thank you. I hope i would find it very useful! You’re great, guys!
ricky.cheers says:

February 16, 2009 at 5:03 pm

this is very good!
Adrian says:

February 17, 2009 at 7:41 am

Hi Maor and Ricky. Thanks for your comments. How are your home studios going?