Turning My computer Into a Home Recording Studio - Component Recommendations

I’ve been interested in making my computer into a recording studio, but nothing too fancy. I’m not a rockstar yet. To put things into perspective, I’m doing this as a summer project and really for my friends and myself (although I wouldn’t exactly be disappointed if it became bigger). I’ve got the Cakewalks Guitar Tracks program which is pretty good, more than enough for my purposes at least, but I’d like to upgrade:

  1. Soundcard. I still have the OEM soundcard and it’s pretty much worthless as far as recording goes. I don’t want to spend too much here, probably <$50. A related concern would be recording two separate tracks at the same time (e.g. vocals on one mic and guitar on another).

  2. Mics. From what I’ve read the Shure SM-57 (58?) seems to be pretty industry standard as far as vocals and guitars go. Again, I’m not living the rockstar lifestyle yet, so I don’t need super high quality here. I don’t even need high quality. I just need quality.

One last part of this… do you guys recommend plugging my electric guitar directly into my soundcard or just recording off my amp? I like my amp a lot, but it’s tricky mic’ing it effectively.

-Audiobottle

Well unfortunately there really isn’t any cheap way to do it, but here goes. If you are going to derive some modicum of quality you will need a mixer, probably the most important aspect of the home studio. As far as a good inexpensive (relative term of course) one goes, I suggest a mackie 1204 ($399 US), it’s a very powerful little mixer that you can expand a studio around. You can find other mixers for about $199 and up, but if you can afford it, or have the patience to save, it’s the way to go.

The benefits of a mixer, as opposed to plugging straight into the computer are numerous. First off, its good at leveling out the signal, and gives you volume control at many different points between your instrument and the input on the computer. Second, you can EQ the signal before it gets to the computer, allowing you to tailor the sound a bit, or alter it how you see fit. I find I usually use the EQ to make a shitty signal sound normal, as opposed to making a good signal sound better. Third, once your work on the computer is done, you can run the signal out through the mixing board again giving you additional chances to clean anything up. Lastly, and this goes with point one, different devices have all sorts of output levels, so running everything through the mixer, will give you more consistency, because you get set everything to the same level.

Moving on, the next thing will be a mic, for which the Shure 58 will do the job nicely. I’ve used mine for years, and it has been durable and worked flawlessly. The 57 is the industry standard for miking (sp?) snare drums, and I believe its frequency range is tailored to that a little more then the 58.

Now on to the last, and potentially most expensive thing, the sound card. The most inexpensive way, would be to get a 1/4 inch (the size you plug into your guitar) to 1/8 inch (the size you plug into your walkman) adapter, and connect the out on the mixer to the input on the soundcard. Almost every sound card has a 1/8 mic input, so you probably already have it. The second method will require you to get a card with RCA inputs on it, and then connecting the mixer RCA out to these inputs on the card. Last I checked these cards started about $199. The final solution would be to get a card with 1/4 inputs, and use the main outs (usually balanced which means good sound quality) to connect to the 1/4 inputs on the soundcard. The ultimate affordable (again relative) is to purchase the Digidesign Digi 001, which is a little more fancy version of the final solution I mentioned above. It features a soundcard with a custom processor, and an interface box with 18 inputs and outputs. Bundled with it, is the world famous Pro-Tools program, (a slightly stripped down version from the 4,000 actually). The amount of functionality and flexibility you will have is mind boggling, and you will be set for many years with a system like that, all for $799.

One other thing, cake walk is good, but try to get your hands on CuBase VST, its much more powerful. You may be able to find a ‘trial’ version if you look for it on the Internet. Finally get a compressor ($149 or so), it’s the single most important signal processor you can own. Btw the Digi 001 is the only system I’ve mentioned here that will let you record multiple tracks at once and keep them separate.

Good luck!

Thanks a lot for the suggestions **World Eater[\b], but unfortunately, that’s a bit out of this poor college student’s budget at the moment. At the moment, I’m just looking to record at most, three guitar parts (all me, so it’s not a problem if I can’t record all at the same time since I obviously can’t play them all at the same time anyway) and vocals. I figure once I actually get a full band together we can all pitch in and purchase something along those lines, but at the moment, all I can afford is a temporary setup, preferably less than $500, and by less, I mean a lot less :slight_smile:

Thanks again!

-Audiobottle

In that case, grab the cheapest mixer you can find, (should be about $149 - $199). Go to Digidesign’s website and download Pro Tools Free, which you can guess the cost from the name. I haven’t used it personally but I’ve heard very good things, so check it out. That should do it, get the mixer, and the software is free. Hope this helped.

      • This thread is bound to get into opinions rather quickly, but here goes, multitrack recording cheap:
  1. Soundcard: I don’t know of any inexpensive cards that have dual-input. One very inexpensive card is the SoundBlaster Live 5.1, available online for $32 + shipping (OEM/whitebox). It supports duplex use, MIDI and soundfonts, and comes with a control program that allows recording “what you hear” as a source, and you need to be able to do all of these things. It’s only a 16-bit card, but that’s all you really need to record one track at a time.
    If you want to do multiple tracks at once, there’s no avoiding expensive ($300+) soundcards; there are no cheap ones with multiple active inputs.
    I have asked if it’s possible to run multiple SBL5.1’s as multi-active-inputs but haven’t gotten any answers yet.
    Early Adopters Please Note: Creative soundcards don’t have official WinXP drivers yet. There is a beta available from Compaq (377 megs!), that works for most other PC’s also.
  2. Mics: I dunno much about. I myself am planning on buying some tiny “stealth”-style full-range (20-20,000 Htz) condenser mics I can use safely with my minidisc recorder. I always run two mics on a cable splitter to record in true, separated stereo: mono recordings sound “flat” and can’t be saved after the fact. I am experimenting with noise shielding, because where I live, even unidirectional mics pick up way too much outside noise. -Ambient noise is by far the biggest problem I have with recording, not any of my meager+cheapo equipment.
    • For a regular guitar, you need to run it through a direct-input box first, which then connects to the line-in of the soundcard. A straight guitar feed isn’t high enough to pick up well on a mic input, but I have no guitar to try it myself. A single-channel direct-input box can be had new for ~$40 and you need it to hook up dynamic mics to your soundcard also. (the Behringer DI100 is a single-channel unit for ~$40. The MDX1400 is a four-channel unit for ~$80) The reason you want more than one input channel is the “mono==flat” problem I mentioned before: you often get a better sound than direct if you just put two stereo mics in front of the guitar amp’s speaker. Always record in stereo if you can; you can always flatten it to mono later if you want.
      ~
  • Any reasonably modern PC should be able to mix 8-10 audio tracks well enough. I use Cakewalk Home Studio 2002 (very similar to Guitar Tracks). There’s trial-period signal-processing software that you can download free on the web to do what your software doesn’t in terms of pop and noise filters. You won’t get pro-level results, but it will sound far better than anything you can do with a cheap cassette recorder. - DougC