Set Up Your Home Recording Studio & Software

Be sure to check out the other home recording studio tips and share your ideas, too.

I’ve seen about a dozen or so home recording studios, and well over 50 professional studios over the years. There are a lot of small things that both professional and project studios have in common.

Sometimes the basic set up of the recording hardware and software causes the biggest problems to getting a smooth-running and good sounding home recording. So, here are a couple things I’ve seen that are mistakes that you can avoid, and good practices you should try from the beginning. This post focusses on actually setting up your home recording studio from the ground up. There are other posts on POLITUSIC about more specific studio audio gear ideas you can check out.

(btw: I have no idea who owns the studio in the below picture, just found the photo, so if it’s you, thanks for letting me use it and props for using tape! Also see more home recording studio photos and control room ideas.)

Setting up your home recording studio tips:

Plan ahead (yeah…, I know, but seriously, so many people get all excited when new gear arrives that they just throw it in). This is particularly pointed at your outboard gear and inserts. Know what you’re gonna have, plan for 20% MORE gear to be installed later, and do your initial equipment installation accordingly.

Get a good patch bay and KNOW HOW IT WORKS (normalled vs. half-normalled). Set this thing up right: put your console insert sends and returns into a patch bay so you can easily insert your dynamic processors and EQ’s. If you’re 100% computer based, do it anyway. You might want to use hardware inserts when you mix with your computer (you WILL want to). Having a decent patch bay is the best way of integrating outboard gear into a computer-based home studio, and by adding some analog outboard processing to thicken up your sound.

Get tubes and at least one good mic. Depending on your budget get some tube mic pre-amps and one good microphone. You need to start w/ a good sound source. Everyone understands that if you have a terrible sounding guitar that it will not record well – it’s the same thing with a cheap mic and bad mic pre-amp. You also don’t need a huge gear list to get started. You can get a lot done with one or two good mics and pre-amps. Don’t waste money on a lot of bad gear just so it looks like you have a lot of it. Having a lot of garbage won’t do you any good.

Run your monitor system through the CONTROL ROOM output of your console, not the master outputs. (A more common mistake than you might think). Keep your master fader always at unity (to keep your signal as clean as possible) and use the control room outs to adjust level to your monitors.

Bass traps. Most home studios try to throw up absorption materials, but these mostly only grab high end, so the rooms are wicket boomy. Read a little about bass traps and build a couple. It’s worth the time and effort. Throwing cheap foam on a wall doesn’t cut it. You need to do it right or the entire effort is pointless. There’s some more info about DIY acoustic treatment in the recording studio section.

Let your console handle some of your signal summing. Most home studios have a small analog console. Even if it’s not the greatest (BTW: look into the Neve 8816 for handling audio summing for you  – killer summing rack that replaces a little console and sounds a thousand times better)… So even if you don’t have a super sounding console, it still will result in a slightly warmer sound than if you mix entirely in your digital recording software (especially if you’re using free recording software and don’t have a really nice A/D converter). Studio set up for an 8816, or for integrating any analog mixer into your home studio requires your mixer and a multi-channel A/D/A interface. . Most home studios will have an 8 channel i/o set up from the computer (more about digital audio interfaces).

Use stereo audio STEMS when you’re mixing inside the computer, put those stems into your analog console / mixer, then let the console do the final summing (patching the master outputs back into your computer as the “real time bounce” of your mix. Don’t forget to mute the track that is recording your mix, otherwise you’ll get nasty feedback. Once it’s recorded, take it out of record-ready and solo it to listen back to the final mix that used your outboard analog summing.

Dedicate your recording software computer for just recording. Don’t be surfing the Internet and downloading files, or chatting with your girlfriend. This computer should be dedicated and stripped down to its bones when it comes to software and system extensions. Turn off all display effects, simplify the desktop and make sure that hard drive has a high RPM and low seek time. Cram it with RAM and keep your hard disk(s) as optimized as possible, swipe it often, back-up at least daily (and work on a Apple Mac).

Listen to all of your favorite records. Once it’s set up don’t record: Listen to tracks you know the best. Listen to how they sound in that space so that you get familiar w/ the monitor set up before you start tracking. You cannot get a good mixin a room until you know how that room really sounds; so you know what to expect, and can recreate certain sounds the best you can based.

Spin around a lot. Home studios are prone to lots of interference. Especially if you have low voltage lights or dimmers. Listen for ground hum, buy a lot of ground lifts and DI boxes with ground lift switches, and try spinning in circles or moving around in the room (with any instrument with pickups) to see if the buzz is better or worse in certain areas. Buy some cheap ground lifts for all your MIDI and try lifting their power as well with those to reduce any hum.

As mentioned above: Also check your lighting: low voltage lights (especially those on dimmers) can cause a lot of noise in your audio system.