Sam GreenwoodStarting up a new studio can be a stressful experience, especially for someone who is starting from scratch. Buying new equipment can be expensive, but we’ll try to help you get the best for your studio based around a cheap budget.
Although it might all seem obvious, here are a few pointers to help you plan your new home studio. Making music doesn’t have to be daunting, expensive or stressful… That last part is a lie, it’s very stressful, but can also be the best stress you can imagine.
- Studio Monitors (speakers)
There are different types of monitors you can get for your studio, e.g. active passive and monitors. You want to make sure your monitors are going to give you a true sound and not increase any elements of your tracks. For studio work we recommend getting Air Suspension style monitors with a closed back, these are better for mix-downs.
The difference between active and passive monitors are that active monitors come with an amp built in, whereas passive don’t. The positive side of having active monitors is being able to plug line level signals straight from your mixing desk to your monitors.
A nice set of monitors for a beginning studio would be M-Audio BX5 D2’s which you can check out on Thomann here. They are relatively cheap coming in at €220 for a pair.
- Headphones
Headphones are also important to your mixdowns. It is important to be able to switch between a good set of headphones and monitors for your mixes. Certain things might be missed when mixing down through monitors, but if you’re only using headphones it can be bad for your habits and your ears can become tired.
You can get much cheaper, but the the Sony MDR-7506 are an excellent headphone costing roughly €99.
- Audio Interface
Having an audio interface is important for any studio. An audio interface is a small piece of hardware that improves the sound quality of computers. Audio interface’s give you the ability to connect mics and other instruments into your computer.
A decent audio interface to start with is the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 2nd Gen which is available here on Thomann for €149.
- Acoustic Treatments
Absorbers and Bass traps are important for your home studio if there are a lot of frequencies building up in your room that you need to balance out. Bass traps are used to catch any low end frequencies that accumulate in the corners of your room, they are quite cheap and are available on Thomann here. Absorbers help to catch any frequencies bouncing off the walls in your studio, they are available quite cheap here on Thomann.
- A Good Computer
We can’t emphasise how important it is that you have a good, fast computer as the hub of your studio. Although it might be cheaper to just use your own laptop or family computer in the long term, it is important to use a proper computer. The last thing you need is your laptop crashing and loosing all of your work you just done in the last hour.