If you’re just a casual/hobby musician who doesn’t want to become a fulltime engineer? Perhaps setting up a small home studio is for you!
Equipment for your home studio
Running your own studio for you and your friends to work material on is perhaps one of the greatest satisfactions a musician can ever have. Apart from not having to pay the rent and electricity for a commercial facility, you can record from the comfort of your own home with a minimum of gear whose cost now runs a fraction of what it used to even a few years ago.
You can turn your bedroom or living room into a home studio, provided that you don’t mind spending countless hours making music in it. Aside from the computer that you’ll be using, you’ll need a hardware interface to get sound into your computer, as well as a microphone, some speaker monitors, and your recording software.
These are choices that you can research on your own over on the internet, as the home studio has become rather ubiquitous in recent years thanks in no small part to the proliferation of very powerful recording suites and software synthesizers. Even computer hardware related to recording has dropped in prices as more and more companies are gearing a portion of their product line to the bustling home studio market.
Sound insulation for your home studio
Of course, you can’t get the top dollar room sound commercial studios offer, but you can get a decent sounding room (i.e. not as horrible as you think) by investing a good amount in buying sound insulation and acoustic treatment products. These products generally fall into three categories, namely absorbers, diffusers and reflectors. These treatment materials all help in creating an acoustically neutral environment for you to work your music in.
These products can be found all over the internet, with a minimum package of absorbers and bass traps costing a little under a thousand dollars. It is arguable that spending a sizeable amount to treat your room for sonic neutrality will be even more beneficial than buying a single piece of expensive recording equipment because no matter what happens, your environment will always influence what you are hearing, and as such if you listen to your recordings in a poorly treated environment (in a bathroom, for example), you’re less likely to get an accurate and good sounding mix. You can prove it.