Best Home Studio Setup Under $550

welcome to power coat music in this video we're going to talk about the best home studio setup solutions for under five hundred and fifty dollars now on youtube today there are a ton of different videos that talk about how to do this now what's interesting is you need to understand and know and have an idea of how you want to record you might look at these to try and figure this out but there's a couple basic questions you want to ask number one is do you want to record your music on your personal computer or do you not want to record on a personal computer do you want to standalone hardware solution well my perspective is a standalone outside your personal computer hardware solution and that's what we're going to talk about today so if you are the type of person who is looking for a digital audio workstation software based solution for your computer this is not the video for you you would want to I don't want waste your time you would want to go and check out one of those videos but if you are a person who wants a simple elegant reliable internet safe source solution then you've come to the right place so what's cool is setting up a new studio beginner studio for recording at your home is easier than ever and I thought to myself if I was starting from scratch what would be my initial setup strategy going forward so with this the great thing about the solution that I'm gonna offer you is that you know if your PC crashes or you get a virus you can still record your music so I'm setting a realistic budget here for of approximately $550 for my solutions that I'm going to give you and this is not an unrealistic starting budget for most people who are serious about setting up a recording studio for a hobby or more at their home so the assumption is that you already have all of your instruments and accessories for instance your guitars your keyboards your amplifiers and drums and cables and things like that but even with my solution you don't need an amplifier but you'll see that as we move on what is important to understand is that when you set up your solution at your home there are three basis Sencha you need to have number one is an audio recorder mixer some way shape or form number two a microphone and stand number three headphones and or or I would say or reference monitors for being able to listen to your final mix downs so let's take a look at first out of the gate the audio recorder mixer now my initial recommendation for this area is to purchase a used tascam DP 24 now if this platform is awesome I've used them for years and they are one of the best selling hardware platforms that you can buy tascam can't go wrong they are the king of this realm so the platform is simple easy to use and it's internet safe doesn't have to connect to the internet and it is really liable that's what we're talking about here now you use task MVP 24 prices range anywhere from two hundred and seventy five dollars to three hundred and eighty dollars and this is of course without shipping or tax or anything like that so you might ask well why is it so great well here is why I recommend it not only do I use it I've used it for years but this platform gives you simultaneous 24-track playback for full-scale production it has 12 mono tracks and six stereo tracks for recording an entire band now the stereo tracks can also be used as mono tracks for you know more flexible inputs 24 tracks with the foetus we for track 24 tracks with 8 inputs for monitoring and mixing you have simultaneous 8 recording for session multi-tracking for live you know performances recording live performances or just recording in your studio now you have professional standard bit depth and sample rate settings so we're talking like 16 to 24 bit and 44 point 1 K 2 48 K recording settings for that sample rate settings for that it is a combo Jack's for mic and line inputs it has high quality mic preamps with phantom power for condenser microphones if you have condenser mics it can handle that now here's the cool part right it has one input that's impedance selectable now this means that you can plug in directly your guitar or bass ok to the unit you don't need an amplifier it has amplifier simulation settings to handle that so that is one thing that's really cool is you don't need an amplifier to record with this particular device it also has unbalanced and balanced stereo monitor inputs for additional flexibility there's two effects sentence so if you have additional outboard gear you can plug it into this device and use it effects outboard gear with that as of course the headphone headphone jack for your head for your phones the studio quality effects built in for a guitar mix down and mastering it has a complete and full mastering section you don't have to buy any effects processors they are easy to use the settings are programmed by professional engineers all in there's a library in the unit that you can select for the different type of music that you do whether it's country whether it's pop rap hip hop jazz anything it will blow your mind you have to check it out it also has bounce functionality to mix input signals and playback tracks to record be your final mix signal it has virtual Trax capability that you can create many virtual tracks and then select one for a particular mix the functionality also includes a mark function a chromatic tuner and a metronome all built into the unit what's really cool is you don't have to connect to a PC with the tascam DP 24 if you want to for file transfer what's cool is it has file transfer capability the same as a USB Mass Storage device so this means that if you wanted to connect your tasks MDP 24 to your computer you would just do that via USB and the tascam DP 24 on your PC would look just like it was a USB device so you can swap files back and forth between the two totally awesome so with that let's move on to our microphone and stand my recommendation on microphones is to purchase a used shure sm57 microphone now this is an excellent microphone for capturing sound from virtually any source that's either live or in the studio I have had this microphone for decades recording engineers around the world will swear to its accuracy and the fact that it's rugged and built to last you just you can't go wrong sure is one of the top microphone manufacturers in the world so with that used fn57 prices are approximately $80 I suggest you go that route a new microphone stand you can find for instance on ebay even with some boom attachments it's pretty good for around $20 now let's talk about the s a little bit more about these Shore sm57 this is a dynamic microphone that's the type the pattern is a cardioid pattern and the frequency response for the s and 57 is 40 Hertz to 15 kilohertz it's output impedance is a hundred and fifty ohms and it has an XLR connector so let's talk about now moving on to the reference or the monitoring part which is number three of our three essentials we talked about the number one which is the audio mixer recorder we talked about number two which is our microphone now we're going to talk about the monitoring so with headphones or reference monitors we're gonna look at two different parts of the solutions for flexibility here and the first is headphones so if I recommend headphones to begin to start with for your monitoring because most home studio environments do not really have good set up engineered rooms for monitoring and so with headphones you will get an enclosed monitoring environment so that you can you know get a better have a better sound environment for your final mix down I strongly recommend this to start out so Myra in regards to headphones my recommendation is to purchase the AKG K 240 M Studio semi-open Pro headphones these headphones are comfortable they are reliable and accurate I have used these headphones for over 30 years and I can guarantee right out of the gate that you cannot go wrong I have mixed down countless songs using these cans or the excuse me headphones and they will not let you down you will get an accurate sound representation every time they have a pretty wide dynamic range and great detail they also are very sensitive so the price for a new pair is approximately $70 and used again unlike ebay and reverb you can get them for around anywhere from forty to sixty dollars now these are semi-open headphones they you know they fit around the ear they're not buds or anything the driver size on the inside of their 30 millimeter the frequency response is excellent is there 15 Hertz to 25 kilohertz it's close to flat is is you can get there the impedance is 55 ohms the cable strengths not cable type is straight it's not a coil cable the cable length is 9 point 8 inches so you can also extend that if you need to it's a replaceable cable and the plug size is 1/8 inch plug but you can also use a quarter inch adapter if you need that so that would be if you are going to use just headphones in the solution however let's move on to say you you have a pretty well treated room or you prefer to use reference monitors as instead of headphones to start so let's look at the reference monitor part of the solution instead of using headphones so my rent recommendation when it comes to the reference monitors is to use the Mackie cr3 creative reference monitors Mackie is one of the leaders in high quality studio equipment and these particular monitors excellent for multimedia or should I say many different types of environments to monitor on they're very very accurate so they output 50 watts of stereo sound from two three inch woofers and two ferrofluid cooled 0.75 inch tweeters now they have a pretty broad frequency response around 80 Hertz to 20 kilohertz which is pretty good the price for a new pair is approximately $90 which is killer I mean this is insane now use prices range anywhere from fifty to eighty dollars for these particular monitors now the Maggie sia threes are powered monitors and they are a single amp configuration they have three inch woofers like we talked about they have the driver type is a polypropylene coded driver the tweeter size we talked again is 0.75 inches the frequency range in frequency response is important here's the frequency range for these particular monitors 80 Hertz to 20 kilohertz the frequency response I think we talked about was 60 Hertz to 20 kilohertz the input types are really one of the most flexible parts of these monitors and why it's so cool that has one eighth inch auxilary input for the front you like you could in plug a you could plug a cell phone in there and play your music from cell phone to monitor it back which is pretty cool it has two quarter-inch inputs on the back and one dual stereo RCA input for the back the output types it has one eighth inch output for your headphones it also has four outputs it has a bare wire terminal connector pair in the back as well now the enclosure type for this particular monitor configure this particular monitor pair is a rear port it has like a hole in the back for to get extra bass response out of it which for smaller monitors the bass is excellent you'll be shocked is the solid the enclosure material it's a solid wood cabinet with like a black vinyl wrap for the Mac EC or 3s so to sum this up let's take a look at the setup with headphones how much that's going to cost and a set up with the reference monitors and see and see the price will be the total price of e for that so let's start with the headphones so when we look at the headphone based configuration we're looking at a used tascam DP 24 without a max price which I don't suggest you pay any more than that of 380 dollars we look at a new shure sm57 microphone or I'm sorry I used shure sm57 microphone at 70 dollars we look at a new microphone stand at 20 dollars and we also add a new AKG 240 set Studio Headphones for around $70 you get a total of five hundred and forty dollars which is $10 under our five hundred and fifty dollar set-up budget so that's with the headphones now let's look at this solution when we remove the headphones and we add the reference monitors so the total setup with the speakers or reference monitors we're looking at a use tascam DP 24 at 380 dollars max we're looking at a used shure sm57 which would pay $70 for we're looking at a new microphone stand for twenty dollars we're using we're looking at a used set of Mackie CR three creative reference monitors at 80 dollars now that total matches us out at our budget of five hundred and fifty dollars so either solution is quality it's reliable can't go wrong so their design either or either solution is designed to be simple to set up easy to configure and you can start recording almost right away once you get these items and the learning curve for either solution of course is low with this the solution should outlast any personal computer software based digital audio workstation platform today you could use this solution to record for the next decade or more if you be fine it is safer than any the digital audio workstation software PC based solution because it's internet free it's not connected to the Internet you don't have to worry about any of the downsides of constant software updates drivers for external hardware you'd have to for your PC you don't have to worry about any of that it has it's safe with no software installations continuous updates and potential conflicts or steep learning curves that are then associated with digital audio workstations that's why I would use and I do use this particular approach because a lot of us want simple safe reliable easy to use it's easy to support solutions that's gonna last for a long time money's tight and our lives are complicated enough why make it even more complicated when you just don't have to so those are my solutions and why I suggest them well that's about it if you like this video please give it the thumbs up um click the subscribe button on your screen right now to join our group we have new videos coming out each week and we'd love to have you be a part of our team leave a comment in the comment section below and while you're at our channel take a look at some of the other videos listen to the music and let me know what you think I want to thank you so much for stopping by I really appreciate it and we look forward to seeing you soon

Channel: Powercoat Music

Views: 7,274

Rating: 4.8769231 out of 5

Keywords: Best home studio setup, How To Build A Home Studio For Under, home studio on a budget, Things You Need To Set Up a Home Studio, home recording studio setup for beginners, how to build a home studio for under, what music gear do you actually need, Home Music Studio Equipment - Essentials for Beginners, Powercoat music, powercoat, music production setup, How to Set Up a Bedroom Studio, building a home recording studio, DIY Home studio, how to setup a home studio

Id: WK8BjfI9zf0

Length: 18min 51sec (1131 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 29 2020