Beginner Home Studio Setup

It’s never been easier to have professional audio equipment in your home, with studio quality software available to everyone. There are many other components you might need, such as a great pair of studio speakers and headphones. Studio speakers differ from Hi-Fi systems in several ways, and it’s best to get a system that is designed specifically for your purpose.

In this video, Paul Davids walks us through 10 things to fill your home studio with! Essential for recording guitar, making and producing music.

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if you’re passionate about guitar about music but your desk looks a bit like this then probably the best investment is to buy more guitars is to set up a nice little home studio and the best thing it doesn’t have to be too expensive if you do it right and this is only for those that want to make their own music also for practicing and jamming it’s awesome recording 10 layers of guitars adding drums bass keys record your guitar for others where do you start what do you need so let’s decorate our little studio let’s start with the heart of the operation these days almost everyone makes music and records music on a computer it gives you so much flexibility and it’s definitely the easiest most versatile approach and it’s very well possible that the mac or pc you’re already using will be perfectly suited for making music these computer cjs are so powerful that if you’re starting out you really don’t have to worry about performance too much a mid-range cpu around

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8 gigs of ram and 128 gigabytes of storage and you can easily get started and this is always a sensitive meter but i’m a pc guy windows guy and i happen to be trying out new macbook m1 that everyone is raving about but somehow it conflicted with the next thing on this list so i just stuck with my good old laptop instead so let’s move on what if you want to record something it’s either going to be a quarter inch jack or an xlr cable and there’s no chance i can plug this into my laptop right now our computer may have a little input or an onboard microphone but these aren’t really the quality we’re looking for so this is where this comes in at number two there’s the audio interface or sound card it connects via usb or firewire which is most common although i guess firewire is becoming a little bit

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obsolete and slowly moves towards thunderbolt which has even a larger bandwidth than usb 3.0 but that’s only available on select windows devices by the way so make sure to check if your computer accepts it there’s always one or more inputs that can be line level for instruments like keys or your guitar amp modeler it’s not on the list so no worry let me put that here and let’s just plug the camper into the sound card we should see it coming into the computer input number three and we see it coming in so apart from the line inputs for these instruments we also have preamps on board this makes sure you can run a microphone into it and it will amplify the signal to a level where the computer actually can work with it without it the mic is way way too quiet as far as the output goes you definitely need two left and right

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and a headphone output more outputs is nice if you want to hook some external effects to it run the sound through it and back to the computer maybe experiment with different routings and stuff that’s fun furthermore i love to have midi in and midi out so you can sync all gear you want to your computer or have the computer control different instruments and pedals so now we got a computer we got the interface now what if you make and play all that beautiful music you do want to hear it right so at number three a decent pair of headphones this is definitely the easiest way you don’t have to sit in a fancy room you don’t have to mind the neighbors the kids the parents the dogs the cats nope just put these on and go from there i used the sennheiser hd25 for a long time until they fell apart sort of and now i got these fancy new ones and there’s few different types like there’s over here or on air these are over here

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and there’s open back like this one or closed back and they all have different benefits and downsides i like open back for listening and for mixing and close back for recording and i think over here for me is a little more comfortable but in the end it’s all personal so check and make sure which type will suit your needs let’s just put it in the studio continue because we’ve got the computer the interface we’ve got the headphones your first hit is right around the corner but not quite yet here is number four and let’s talk mics without a mic you would not be able to hear me because over here right out of shot i’ve got a boom mic hanging it’s connected with an xlr cable into the audio interface a different one it is and a mic can serve so many different purposes it can record your acoustic guitar your guitar amp your voice or any audio

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source or instrument you can think of really and i think it’s really a must-have and it doesn’t have to be too expensive it can range from 50 to anything up 2k even and if you’re starting out actually just trying out a few budget options at first so in general there’s three different types so a dynamic microphone is really classic for live use but also for loud audio sources like a guitar cap this is really a classic the shira sm57 we’ve got the dynamic microphone so this one is a little more sensitive and runs with 48 volts phantom power we called it it runs through the cable into the microphone and this works well for anything quiet loud they do it all acoustic guitars vocals and even guitar caps or drums lovely and then there’s a ribbon mic so they are a little less bright and have a more mellow sound due to the a little bit rounded off transients so they are more smooth and i like to pair this one up with a condenser or a dynamic mic so it gets you the best of both worlds

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and i made a video on a cool recording technique i like to use on the acoustic guitar so you can check it out over here so there’s a whole study you can do about mics like different pickup patterns small diaphragm or large diaphragm for now i guess if you just want to use one microphone i suggest getting a large diaphragm condenser mic and your gold that can do it all so let’s keep that one in the studio so everything sounds great so far but i’m forgetting a massive thing right now where do we record into you sure can use the voice memo app on your computer right so we said the heart of the operation is a computer now we need something to organize everything on it at number five we find a digital audio workstation now let me open up the computer before you know loading takes too long it’s a program that runs on the computer and it lets us record guitars layer vocals on top add

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reverb delay eq compression at eight tracks of drums if you wish run your favorite guitar simulation plugin all at the same time really the sky is the limit so here you see ableton live that’s coming right up my personal favorite and let’s see what happens if we just record some guitars all right here we see the guitar track so now i can also layer a vocal on top with that xlr cable i just showed you oh by the way there’s one thing you should never ever forget and that is to hit that like button like button gently gently awkward so we can produce mix master everything you need to make and create music and there’s loads of different programs available ableton live logic fl studio cubase reason

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presonus studio one sunshine in different fields where others may like a little bit but ultimately they all sort of do the same thing so find the program you’re comfortable with so very often a sound card like this will ship with a free copy of a light version of your daw so that might be a good choice to get started so doing everything on headphones is doable but if you’re working for a longer period of time it can get somewhat intense or uncomfortable therefore at number six i think a decent set of studio monitors is essential they are active speakers that just try to make the sound as balanced and transparent as possible so your music will sound great not only on your system but on each system for everyone great for when you play with something like a camper or a helix or a fractal 2 by the way if you want to hear yourself nicely so you plug the cables into the output of the sound card directly into the speaker and there we are the size of the monitor should be related to the space where you’re using them in so if your space

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is small don’t go too big it just makes no sense we move on so i know we’re probably all guitarists but music is more than just guitar so we’re never making it and here’s number seven i think a little usb or midi keyboard can be so helpful so this is the one i used for the longest time it’s very plasticky 49 keys but works great so this allows you to play all the sounds you want in your daw it simply connects with the usb cable so now the things i can do is play piano oh by the way there’s one thing you should never ever forget or drums hit that like button like button gently gently gently or strings oh by the way there’s one thing you should never ever forget or a cool synthesizer [Music] so as you heard whatever you need to

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finish that banger and it’s so much easier than drawing in midi notes which is just a painstaking exercise so just learn like a bit of the piano basics it’s not that hard and it’s great for everyone to learn and from there on out it’s just smooth sailing alright so we’ve got most of the essentials down i guess but so handy are the things that just make everything a little bit easier like at number eight mic stands they will save your life really i use a short one for guitar amps a medium one for recording acoustics for example and maybe a bigger one for vocals like standing up or if you just want one to do it all just go for the bigger one and change it so it fits whatever you’re tracking i found that the cheapest ones even if they do the job they sort of either break or they don’t stay in one place so they slowly drift away and that messes up your recording of war so maybe go for one class higher and save yourself some troubles so we’ve been using them already but i

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just want to share it again because they are so easily forgotten at number nine it’s cables so make sure you’ve got a mix of everything like usb jacks xlr cables also jacks to xlrs for maybe for your speakers balanced unbalanced it’s the best to connect your mics your gear your instruments your amp modeler it’s it’s difficult to have too many cables and i found that i simply couldn’t use something just because it didn’t have the right cable or not enough cables and my goal is always to make just making music as hassle-free as possible that also means having the things by hand you need to hook everything up correctly so now you’re looking at your wallet and you think you said it doesn’t have to be too expensive and indeed it doesn’t all the gear i’ve got in the studio i mean maybe you’ve seen the tour you can check it out over here the full studio tour it was collected during a period of almost 20 years so i started out with my hi-fi speakers connected to my old pc using software free software called audacity and seven years ago i bought

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this audio interface four years ago i bought this laptop it’s like gradually investing in new gear a studio isn’t built in one day so upgrade where necessary and add where you’re missing things and the order is different for everyone where a singer might use a mic from the get-go if you’re a guitarist that records with an app model or direct inputs or outputs you probably can do without it in the beginning and yes i said 10 things and i only listed nine safari because number 10 is the sum of all the things you might want to look at if things get serious like a dedicated studio desk or getting acoustic treatment in your room or a pop filter for your microphone different preamps unlock recording gear maybe even a dedicated computer that you can just leave at the desk plugging things in and out every time you want to make music can get annoying after time so as i said we try to make everything as hassle-free as possible as quickly as possible anyway of course i can test everything or every piece of gear around so i would love for you to give some recommendations

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what is good and affordable gear to start out with maybe some things i might have missed or tips about gear that you think others can’t live without in the studio or if you’ve got a question maybe we can all help each other out and you know answer some questions in the comments below it will be really awesome to see anyway thank you so much for watching everyone and i really do hope this video inspires you some bit to like to really start to work on your own music you’re never too old for that it’s never too late you’re never too you know just start doing it it’s amazing it’s a lot of fun anyway that’s what guitar is meant for make music cheers.

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