Hi everyone! This is a small guide to set up a home recording studio, to record your own demos and samples. I'll try to focus on the cheapest gear and software required in order to achieve good results, to suggest the most effective techniques and to point out the most common mistakes that can be committed. The most important thing: once learned these few first rules, it will all be a matter of experience, so if the first tries doesn't satisfy you, just write down what to adjust, and fix the problems on the next recording!
Here's what you need to start a small home recording studio:
1) A PC, or a MAC (here I'm gonna focus on the PC software, but there are many out there for Mac and Linux too). Just keep in mind that the Cpu takes care of the real time Processing on tracks, while the Ram takes care of the virtual instruments, (like drum samplers), so think about what you need, when it comes to choose the hardware.
2) Software: in order to do multitrack recording and mixing, you're gonna need a DAW (digital audio workstation). There are many out there, some free (like AUDACITY, PRESONUS STUDIO ONE FREE and KRISTAL AUDIO ENGINE), some cheap but very effective (like REAPER, MAGIX or CAKEWALK), and some more expensive, but very stable, compatible and reliable (like CUBASE and PRO TOOLS). The most important thing when choosing a DAW is to make sure that it supports VST plugins.
3) Instruments: guitar/bass/keyboard/microphone... everything you want to record.
4) An Audio Interface (Click Here to check out an in-depth article on which audio interface to choose), to connect the computer with the instrument, or with the microphone. There's a plenty of audio interfaces, usb, firewire and thunderbolt, in a wide price range, and they're very important for two reasons: to reduce the latency to the minimum (latency is the delay between the input and the output signals), and to provide a decent preamplification to the signal (no, the integrated headphones preamp is not decent).
5) Headphones or reference monitors: you need a decent quality output device too, like headphones (look at the frequency range, the wider, the better), or reference monitors (active speakers made to work in the studio): there are many producers, from the cheapest (BEHRINGER, very unsuggested), to a mid-price standard (M-AUDIO, for example, but there are many more), to the pro choices, which are obviously more expensive (AKG, among the others). Our suggestion under the quality-price point of view are SAMSON monitors.
6) A sequencer: you need it to create the midi tracks with the instruments you cannot play (or record), for instance drums and synths, like orchestrations. A very good drum sampler, with freeware license is DRUMCORE FREE, or GTG Drum Sampler.
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