I've spent 6 times that and still don't have a recording studio. I don't know what to recommened at that budget......

If you are looking at building a "Nice" studio I would guess $10,000 would be a good starting point. This is how it breaks down:

You already have the PC, so this is the bear minimum you'll need:

Interface, to get your signals into the PC
Monitors to hear what you recorded
Mics
Preamps
Mixer
compressor
some plugins or hardware effects
Headphones
Good Quality Cabling
Good sounding room to record in

You'll also need a clear goal for what exactly you need, ie:

How many people will be recording at the same time?
Will you need enough inputs to record a full drum set?
What is the goal for the final product? Demo? "scratch pad"? Sell-able product?

let us know what your NEED's are so we can help you get started......

I am still fairly new to this, so do some searches on this site and you should be able to find a ton of info....

Budget studio ideas

Hey Fatboynfla,

Getting equipped to Record vocals well is difficult enough. Building an audio studio for $1000? impossible, I'd say. If you were very lucky, you might be able to "build" a faux wall & ceiling in order to modify an existing room. This would involve a room that was already immune from external noise and had a ceiling of at least 10 feet high. Acoustic foam, drywall, a carpet, glue, screws and other materials would be needed. If you had adequate electrical outlets in the original room to begin with and you put a small patchbay in to connect with an adjoining room you could do something rough. Keep in mind that we are only talking vocals here.

The Master Handbook of Acoustics lists 3 recommended ratios for rooms. You would be highly advised to apply the best ratio to your vocal booth AND your adjoining room if you could manage it. The length & width of you room are determined by the ratio you choose and in relation to the height of the finished ceiling. Check out the acoustics section of this forum.

Good luck! :)

it depends on what you mean by "nice", and what type of vocals you are going to be recording.

For $1000 you can get

MBox - $450
Studio Projects c3 - $350
FMR Audio RNC - $200

TOTAL - $1000

That will get you the ability to record vocals with a decent mic and a decent compressor. You will still need to buy a mic cable, so add another 20 bucks or so.

Now if you need to do more than that, get ready for an endless outflow of cash.

The next things I would buy if you wanted a solid vocal track, is a lucid 9624 digital converter (spdif into the mbox, $850) and a nice single channel preamp like a grace design 101 ($565) or a single channel great river me-1nv ($1075) . That will bring your grand total to more like $2500+

steve

Hey Fatboynfla,

Most of the folks around here are into this stuff pretty deep and $1000 is often not enough to buy one piece of gear, much less a "studio".

HOWEVER, if you let us know exactly what it is you want to do, we might be able to get you started. If you're not trying to make commercial CDs, but simple make some simple, decent sounding recordings for the kids, I think you can probably get there for $1000.

What sort of stuff are you going to record?
What's your goal for the end product?
What kind of space do you have to work in?

Just give us a good description of what you have / where you're at now - and where you want to end up - exactly what you want to be able to do.

For $1000 there's going to be some serious compromising going on - but where the corners are cut the most will depend on your goals.

jejejeje...oh dude! :lol: good luck...

These guys aren't much help.

Starting from nothing...

-Dell Power Edge SC420, 2.8G P4, 512M ram, 40 and 80G SATA drives, CDRW/DVD, 17in monitor, keyboard, mouse...apprx $650

-Win2k...apprx $125

-Audiophile 24/96 4ch audio interface...$99

-Tracktion recording software...$80?

-2 SM58's...$70-80 each on ebay, or $99 each new.

-Behringer UB802, 2 mic in mixer...$60

That actually comes out to around $1200, maybe more. It could be brought down if you were to skimp a little more on the computer, get a used monitor, or used everything for that matter. This list is about what you're looking at for your budget.

Don't worry, though, regardless of what anyone says, this set up can get you excellent results.

Good luck.

Thanks Guy For all The info.

I have a small room.
trying to turn it into a small studio for my son and some more kids on my block.
My budget is $1200.00 now.
I plan to start making Purchases in the next week.
This Small studio.
Will Be for r&b and Hip Hop.
8-)
Thanks Guys for the info.
Please and Post more!
Any Great Studio Magazine I should Start reading. :D

ok i will attempt to do this to include everything..even mic stands and cables!..i need to research now hehe.

Microphones- 1 Shure sm57 $80 , 1 Studio Projects C1 $199

Mic Stands- (2) Quiklok MI Microphone Stands
Mic Stand w/ Tele Boom $38.97

Microphone/Monitor Cable and Connectors-
DAYTON PRO MICROPHONE/SIGNAL CABLE 100' $29.50
4 NEUTRIK NC3MX XLR MALE NICKEL $2.25 each
4 NEUTRIK NC3FX XLR FEMALE NICKEL $2.25 each
4 NEUTRIK NP3C 1/4" STEREO PLUG NICKEL $3.25 each

You should be able to make 4 microphone cables @ 20ft long per cable and then make two 10ft cables with the stereo plugs. You will use the stereo plugs to from your audio interface outputs to your monitors. Its a lot cheaper to buy the cable and connectors seperate and then solder them yourself. It's easy to do.

Audio Interface-
Mbox- if your doing hip-hop, i think you'll benefit greatly from the reason adapted/rewire software. $449.97

Midi Controller-M-Audio Radium49 $149.97

Monitors- TAPCO S-5 or Alesis M1 Active MkII, $349.97/pr

TOTAL: $1369.35

dammit! I went $169.35 over budget, but I think it includes everything you would need to get started. All items can be found @ sweetwater.com with the exception of the cable and connectors. Those can be bought @ partsexpress.com.

I like the fact that there's so many different levels of expertise and experience here! Very broad!

That last post and one of the ones b4 were good as they weren't 'assuming' anything and asked 'what do you want to do'..and 'what level do you want to operate at'. Cool.

here are some ideas to add to your interface and monitors:

Presonus Firebox will give you more I/O options (ins and outs) than an Mbox, and it will also allow to you to diverge from Protools software, which is simple to use but IMO not the best option in the world (very subjective opinion I know, but I DID teach protools for four years at a recording college!). I prefer cubase SX especially for MIDI and Reason useage and you get Cubase LE with the Firebox. The deciding factor may be what each of the cutdown versions of Protools and Cubase actually offer you in terms of tracks available, inserts available etc (insert being a send retrun point for compressors, gates etc etc).

http://www.presonus.com/

I agree with monitor choice above: Alesis M1 active mk11. dare I add the newer batch of Behringer Truth monitors.

Yorkville YSMP monitors are good low priced options, as are Wharfedale Diamond 8.1's / 2's etc

Best of luck

8)

yeah i thought about listing the presonus firebox. In fact, I say go with the firebox, too.

if you already have the computer, and your doing hip hop purchase fruity loops for the sequencer/sampling that way they can make theyre own beats $100.00 . Acid to add the vocals and be able to loop the beats $100.00 . A shure ksm 27 kills it when your talking bang for the buck. $200.00 . since most hip hop is done with sequencing i like the m box idea for your interface, you get the d/a converter and the mic pre to run the ksm 27. $300.00. that still leaves you 500 bucks for monitoring. you could purchase krk rokit moinitors and a hafler ta 1600 for under that and probably still have 100 bucks left over for pop filter and cables. all this stuff is mid grade level equipment.....good to launch the rocket off the pad. the only thing id be concerned with is if the m box has an out for monitoring, and does it work with anything other than pro tools? im not sure i dont use pro tools nor have i ever worked with an m box. presouns has a single pre that is firewire i believe but there again be aware of how you are going to route to your monitoring. you could use the out from the stock soundcard to the hafler. be careful if you purchase the hafler ....it has a headphone out , and can be dangerous if you forget to check the levels of it before using this output with headphones.

Re: Thanks Guy For all The info.

Fatboynfla wrote:
My budget is $1200.00 now.
I plan to start making Purchases in the next week.
This Small studio.

To keep costs as low as possible, you should check out the software Kristal or PT free at http://www.thegaragedoor.com/home/free.html
There are some other applications for free there too.