Equipment to Buy for a Beginner Home Studio Setup
If you are interested in recording at home, whether as a budding songwriter, a movie maker, a podcaster, or an experienced musician, figuring out how to get started and what kind of tools you need can be overwhelming. Let’s talk about some of the basics and suggest some good tools to get your started.
First, you will probably need a microphone. If you are a beginner, or someone who wants to save money, getting a cheap microphone is a great starting place. Nady makes a great dynamic microphone in their Starpower series called the SP-4C. It is highly reviewed, and very cheap at under $20. If you are already an experienced musician, you may want to get a condenser mic, which will run at a higher price but will capture sounds very nicely. Condenser microphones also need phantom power, which brings us to our next point.
You will need some kind of audio interface. If you are using a computer, you can buy a decent USB interface for a little over $100. If you are not using a computer, you can buy a cheap 4-track cassette recorder or a reel to reel that will have an audio interface built in. This older method is less used these days, but (especially in music) it can produce some wonderful sounding analog stuff.
If you do end up using a computer and not a 4-track or reel to reel, you will need some kind of digital audio workstation (DAW) if you want to have any editing power over the audio you have recorded. If you are using a Mac, a great cheap and standard software solution is Garageband. If you don’t own a Mac, there are some great alternatives to Garageband for Windows. If you don’t want to spend any money at all, you can try Audacity, which works for Macs, PCs, and Linux and is a free download online.
Using the above basic tools, you can soon be writing and producing your own music in your very own home studio setup.