Classic Home Studio Setup – 17” DELL PRECISION 7730 FHD 1TB SSD 16GB Core i7 2.20GHz Scarlett 2i2 Interface AKG Mic

Putting together a home recording studio can be an overwhelming task. The most common questions I get from people are about microphones and software but there is so much more to consider. In this guide, discover seven steps that can be tailored to fit your particular needs, space, and budget.

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Step-by-step guide to a home studio setup

In this guide, I’m going to avoid saying that you should get specific models of pieces of gear or microphones because everyone has a different budget and types of projects they are working on. Instead, we’ll be focusing more on the different technical specs so you can get equipment that makes the most sense for your situation. We’ll start by identifying needs and budget, then work through different types of gear found in studios and how to get the most out of your home environment.

1. Decide on your creative needs and budget

Determining what you want to create in your studio and how much money you’re willing to spend are the two biggest factors in all the decisions that follow from buying gear to software to room treatment. Is your plan to be able to record vocals or is the goal to record a drumset? Are you more interested in creating beats or scoring for film? Do you even want to record anything or will you just be working “in the box?” These are some of the questions you should ask yourself to guide you when it comes time to buy gear.

Budgeting to build a home studio

For a relatively simple home studio, I’d expect to allocate about 70% of your initial budget on hardware, 20% on software, and 10% on room treatment. Your budget should include a computer, audio interface, a MIDI controller, an external hard drive, appropriate number of microphones (more on this later) with XLR cables, microphone stands, pop filter or windscreen if applicable, headphones possibly with an extension cable, and speakers.

2. Choose a computer

Your computer is the heart of your home studio so you’ll need to pick something that can keep up with all that you’ll be demanding of it: recording audio, playing back virtual instruments, effects processing, etc. The biggest specs to consider are the processor, amount of RAM, and internal storage space. A quad-core processor will help keep the computer from becoming laggy as you begin to create bigger and bigger projects. Most music production software recommends at least 8 GB of RAM to run smoothly, but if you can afford to bump that up to 16 GB or 32 GB, you’ll be able to get the most out of your processor and have a happier time making music.

Nothing kills creativity faster than the spinning beach ball of death. Internal hard drive space is important as well because this drive is where your music production software, virtual instruments, and additional plugins will be installed.

Don’t forget to get an external hard drive!

While computers have internal hard drives, you should save project files and audio files to an external hard drive.This prevents your computer from becoming full of files that aren’t necessary for the computer to function and bogging down the processor. SSDs (solid state drives) are more reliable and faster than HHDs (hard disk drives) but tend to be more expensive.

It’s a good idea to have a backup drive as well. Saving important files to only one location is tempting fate. The safest way to preserve files long-term is to save to three locations: two separate external drives (ideally one is kept off-site) and a cloud backup. If you can’t have the biggest computer crash of all time and be able to be up and running again in a couple of hours with no data loss, you need to improve your backup process.