Most of my friends who have Home Studio's have their garage converted into something very nice and costly that looks like a Star Wars space ship with lights off their racks glowing in the room with a computer that could probably run a space ship. I don't have that pleasure or that kinda cash . But each year I record at least 4 CD's and I have yet to hear 1 finished song from them. I'm gonna give you a few tips on small room recording. But first a little about my setup . Most people laugh at me when they come out to my Home studio which is a 10 'x 8' building in my backyard. At first I recorded demo's for local polka bands. Very boring but from there my clients base did build. I got into recording local country bands who were on a very tight budget and then young girls that wanted to be Britney Spears who's parents knew nothing about real studio's. My setup use to be all analog mixer into ADAT and I barley could get a 3 piece drum kit and a guitar player in the room with me at the same time so it was rough. On calm days I would record drums outside with a makeshift wall built out of cardboard. I do get work but my setup is as home Studio as it gets. Sometimes it would sound worse than a home Studio. Like a monkey with a 4 track Tascam. I went totaly digital with my setup last year and incountered various little problems and some problems that had haunted me for years like enough space. So A Good compact Desk is the first thing I recommend for your small studio. Just enough room to hold all your gear in a small environment . Not a monster desk that will have all that empty space taking up space. Even If you think your gonna fill it up later with a light show of rack gear. When it's time for a big desk you will be able to afford a new desk. Seems like everything got smaller anyway since I went digital and thats givin me more space but any recording room "can not" be square ... back when I had all that analog gear it took up so much room It killed out bouncing Waves but latley I had to add some wooden angles to break the soundwave patterns, especially for mixdown with monitors . Don't hang carpet all over the walls. It takes away treble and gives you an EQ illusion in your Mix. So many people hang carpet up. It's like the go to thing for us poor guys. My next big issue was my computer. Not the speed and all that nerd stuff just yet or the fact if it was apple or PC . I'm talking noise here first . That magnetic buzzing current off my computer monitor was killing my sound while trying to record a riff so I got a Flat Panel LCD Monitor and got rid of that power hungry big bertha CRT mionitor. My computer modem sounds like an army tank and it gets recorded into my vocal tracks so I have to unplug the cooling fans for 30 minutes sessions and plug them back in for at least 15 minutes before next 30 minute session. Note! If you do this please! Don't forget and leave them unplugged for longer than 30 minutes or you will f*&% your sytem up and don't build a closed in box because your computer has to breath. Speaking of breathing - I'm a smoker and I learned fast that if your a smoker than try dipping while in your studio Room. Smoking will kill the sound of a condenser mic in the matter of weeks with second hand tar build up especially in a small room. Plus clients can't breath. Back to Computers. A laptop is the way to go and they are very powerful now and less noisy. As for Apple or PC. I have had both and I don't care either way as long as it's got at least 1gb of memory and a processor with 1GHz + for Mac and 1.8GHz + for PC and a big enough hard drive to store all your projects for months and years. I'll get into Part 2 later and give a few details on my gear that I use but these were the first few little things I ran into in my Small Studio. You can check out my Album at copy and paste into Browser http://www.lonestar…'