Tech for setting up your home studio

Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to be going over some bits of advice for setting up your home studio. 

Before we get started, let’s have our moment of silence.

At this time I would like all of us to take a moment of silence and pray to God to help us to become better Christians. Take a minimum of 5 minutes and pray for these things. 

Now back to the show

Computers

So computers today are super powerful. They can do amazing things on the least amount of power. They can run programs that are visually stunning and sonically diverse. 

Therefore, we must learn how to use this technology to our advantage as a musician. 

Let’s talk about what we need in a computer in order to run the softwares and handle tha hardwares that we need. 

DAW: The primary software that we as recording artists use on our computers are called a DAW. Which stands for Digital Audio Workstation. If you look at most DAWs labels and read the fine details, it will give you the recommendations for the specs that are needed to run that software. 

Usually it’s having a minimum of an Intel I5 processor with 8gb of ram and 500 gb of harddrive. I’m not sure what would be the AMD equivalent but AMD processors run similarly to Intels. 

So they say that you need a minimum of an I5 processor to run the software, but we can’t ignore the fact that bigger is better in the computer world. 

When I was looking for my first computer for my DAW, I got a state of the art (at the time) Intel I7 processor with 16 gb of ram and a Terabyte of Harddrive. 

That was actually a lot back in 2014 and the new I9 processors hadn’t come out yet. 

Therefore, we must get the best computer that money can buy. And by that I mean, the best computer that fits your budget. 

Keep in mind that there are heavy plugins that you are going to use in your DAW which in turn is going to require more RAM, harddrive, and ultimately processor power. So always keep that in mind. 

Headphones

I have some Tascams that sound really good for monitor headphones, however, I have heard that Audio Technica has the best. And they are relatively cheap. 

Costing at a mere few hundred USD, that kind of technology can’t be found at that price anywhere else. 

Personally, whenever I go into GuitarCenter and I look for these headphones, they are ALWAYS sold out. 

They really that good. 

You will use these headphones for a few things in a home studio. One is to hear the recordings of your voice and productions while you are recording, the second thing is to mix. 

I know you’re not supposed to mix with headphones, but there are instances where mixing is beneficial to listen with headphones. 

To make it really clean.

I want to upgrade my headphones to some Audio Technicas but I’ll do that when I get my new computer. 

Microphones

I mean I guess you could use the microphone that’s on your laptop, however, I wouldn’t recommend it. The microphone on your laptop doesn’t have all of the things necessary in order to transform crystal clear quality sound. 

And ultimately, it’s actually relatively cheap to buy a microphone, I bought a good one for about 100 dollars. 

You can use the laptop mic though, I have seen people who really know what they’re doing and they make great beginner albums with the laptop microphone. 

You plug in a microphone into the DAW’s interface. 

Microphones usually come in 1 of 2 ways: phantom power or wall outlet power. 

You can power a microphone through the use of the power coming from the interface. You can also power it through the wall outlet. However, be careful here! Because if you power a microphone that is NOT phantom power, through phantom power, then it will ruin the microphone. 

Speakers

I love my speakers. They are some Yamahas HS5s. They sound so good and they are good for any type of genre. 

Maybe in hip-hop it would be better if I had gotten the HS7’s but the ones I have are still pretty good. 

Usually Yamaha’s set the standard for beginner speakers.

However, there is one brand that is known by all mixing engineers, JBL.

However those speakers are quite expensive. I’ve seen the base models of those speakers run at the bottom range of 600 dollars PER SPEAKER. And of course you need a minimum of 2 speakers for your home studio. 

But there are cheaper alternatives that are just as good. KRK rockets are pretty good and they are significantly cheaper. My HS5s were pretty cheap, relatively speaking of course. 

Broadcast

I sure hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please remember if you want to go to heaven, then believe in Jesus and you will go to heaven. (John 3:16)

Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. Remember to pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. Like, comment, share, subscribe, and I will see you all next time. 

German Gonzalez, signing out!