By: Danielle
Building a home studio? Aspire to this! Photo: Wikipedia
With the construction out of the way and your home studio space soundproofed and ready to handle some music, you’re now ready for step two: The tools you’ll need for recording.
While professional studios have more bells and whistles, there are only a few basics you need for having a quality studio right in your home.
You don’t need a huge mixing board and console to record and produce music. If you already have a reliable, up-to-date laptop that runs well, all you’ll need is software to simulate a Digital Audio Workstation and maybe an external hard drive (at least 500 GB or larger) to start making music.
Recording software like Pro Tools, Cubase or Sonar require a good quality laptop, but produce excellent results. With this software you can record raw audio in your laptop and fix it up from there. The software converts the raw audio into mixable material for digital recording.
You’ll need to hear the music as you’re making it and after, and your computer speakers aren’t going to cut it. To adequately hear and mix your music, you’ll need high quality recording headphones or high quality speakers.
Investing in a good monitor, i.e. playback speakers, to make sure you’re hearing your recording at its full capacity. Good quality speakers last for years and often come with a warranty as well. You will mostly likely never have to replace good speakers, whereas cheap models usually only last a year or two. If you’re going to try trim the cost, speakers aren’t a good corner to cut.
The microphone serves as your tool for collecting audio with maximum efficiency and quality. Your best bets for affordable, but good quality microphones are condenser and dynamic models.
Dynamic microphones use electromagnetism to record audio whenever sound waves move either the magnet or its coil. It creates a current, which becomes your raw audio. Condenser microphones operate through a capacitor that moves in response to sound waves and create signals.
You can alter the signal with your digital recording software with precision and even use a microphone to pick up sounds produced by amplifiers.
If you’re not happy with the results of plugging your microphone directly into your laptop, you might consider purchasing an audio interface. This addition would serve as a buffer zone between your laptop and the raw audio. You can record in real time, which makes delivering high quality results much easier. You’ll have the value of original sound, which is the way professional recording studios tend to operate. You can get a more professional sound with just this minor adjustment.
Add your preferred instruments to the list and your home studio will be up and running in no time. Start writing!
