How to Buy a Home Recording Setup

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The first thing you'll need, obviously, is something to record the music you make. And you'll need a way to listen to the audio you've recorded to make sure it sounds the way you want. Finally, you'll need a way to share the music you've made.

There are mainly two types of recording setups to consider. You can use a standalone multitrack recorder or use your computer as the hub of a recording setup. There are three primary types of standalone recorders: cassette recorders, portable digital multitrackers, and large digital multitrack recorders. To work with your computer you'll use a digital recording interface to get the audio into your computer, where you'll employ software to record and arrange your music.

To get your music into your recording setup you'll need at least one good microphone, and probably several. You'll use them for vocals, acoustic guitars and basses, drums, miking guitar, bass, and keyboard amps—a lot of the things you use to make music. The main types to consider are condenser, dynamic, and ribbon microphones. Each type has different sound characteristics and is used to record different things, although there is plenty of room for creativity. You can often plug your microphone straight into your multitrack recorder or computer audio interface, but you may choose to use a standalone mic preamp to get the sound you like. For more details on this, see our primer on microphones here.

There are a lot of options for recording electric instruments such as guitar, bass, or keyboards. You can use a direct box, a preamp, a mixer, a guitar modeling processor, the direct out on an instrument amplifier, or the instrument input on your recorder, if it has one.

Once you've successfully recorded your music, you'll want to listen to it to make sure it sounds the way you want. The easiest and least expensive way of doing this is with a good pair of headphones. Studio monitors are the other way to listen to the audio you've recorded. Studio monitors are extremely accurate, specially designed speakers made just for recording and listening to music.

Accurate monitors or headphones will help you to judge your recorded sound as you tweak the individual parts as well as the overall sound. Mixers, all-in-one recording channels, compressors, EQ, effects processors, enhancers, and noise gates all can be used to shape your music.

Finally, it's time to share your music. If you're using a multitrack cassette recorder, it's easy to run the output from the tape you've recorded to a CD recorder or standard tape recorder to make a copy. Your digital multitrack recorder might have a CD drive that will let you burn your music onto a CD. If it doesn't, you can use a standalone CD burner or a computer CD burner. If you're recording on your computer you can use its CD burner to make a copy of your music. You can also easily turn the audio you've recorded on your computer into a portable audio format like MP3 to share over the Internet on a website or to play on an MP3 player.