Budget Home Studios

I'd love to hear from folks on the subject if getting maximum quality from minimal setups. I and others like me often use very humble rigs when recording/mixing, and we just as often smack right up against our gear's limitations. We're talking cheap mics, computers, monitors, etc. We've all heard some beautiful work done in these enviromnents. Throw down on your favorite shadetree studio tricks.

Tags: home, studio

Promote

0 members promoted this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dana B Martin on March 1, 2012 at 12:43pm

By the way, Brett...one of these you've heard. I have incorporated your suggestions, so I'd particularly covet your input.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Dana B Martin on December 9, 2012 at 8:43pm

Just upgraded recently to Sonar X2 Producer.....very nice!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Dana B Martin on December 28, 2012 at 4:15am

Any cheap mics being used out there to good effect?

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Kirk Thompson Producer/engineer on January 7, 2013 at 8:51pm

Dana, I'm somewhat in the same boat as you. I had a professional studio complete with good pre's and converters. Finances got to where I couldn't keep it so I sold it off and moved back to my home studio with a 003 rig and low to medium priced mics. I found that when the client had a larger budget they opted to go to the guys with the grammies so I got passed over. I've been content doing budget projects now and making them as good as I can on the budget that I'm given. To answer your question about the mic. My favorite/Swiss Army knife kind of mic is the Audio Technica AT4033a.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Dana B Martin on January 10, 2013 at 5:12pm

Hey Kent, thanks for the reply. Most of us up here in the cheap seats aren't blessed to be able to do music for a living. We have to do it because we love it, and are willing to make sacrifices instead of a living. For me, and I suspect for you, it's enough. I do guitar and bass tracking, as well as mixing and producing projects for Christian and messianic artists who are just getting started and have a similar budget to my own, aka 0$. I don't charge for this work, as I believe the Lord has asked. Perhaps we could collaborate someday. I'd love to learn what you know. I'm pretty much a rank beginner on this side of the board and I look for any opportunity to observe and glean from those who've been there.

As to mics, I'm actually getting some decent results with Audio Technica 2020's and 2021's.

Anyhow, thanks for weighing in. I hope to meet you someday.

Cheers.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Dana B Martin on January 25, 2013 at 6:31pm

Kirk, Just realized I referred to you as "Kent".....Lordy, my brain damage gets worse every day. Sorry about that.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Dana B Martin on January 25, 2013 at 6:43pm

Hey, guys. Having looked over some older posts about the usefulness and desirability of home studios I would like to reemphasize that my interest is not at all in competing with commercial studios. My whole deal is to try to help those faith based artists to get their music heard so that, hopefully, one day they will wind up in one of the nice commercial studios.