Creating a home recording studio
Today it is within anyone's reach to build their own home recording studios. With
quality interfaces and pre-amps getting increasingly more affordable,
everyone that likes making music wants to create a home recording
studio in their house or apartment.
Some people make do with only getting a small interface and a microphone to demo their recordings into the computer. Others want to compete with the big boys and make a living out of their spare bedroom.
With a little equipment, some acoustic considerations and a little DIY you can create a nice little home recording studio in whatever spare space you have available.
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The Equipment
Home recording studios can be all sorts and sizes, from small voiceover studios in a corner, a basement studio or a converted garage.
Whatever the size of your studio, there are some essential equipment that you will be needing to record audio and do some studio work.
Head over to the Audio Equipment page for more options on the various audio equipment you need. Depending on what type of music you will be making, your needs might differ.
Acoustic Folk will call for some nice condensers, while electronic musicians might favor investing in some good synths and midi controllers.
One room?
Big commercial studios consist of a few areas, but the need for home recording studios to conserve space often means that the recording area and the control room are one and the same space. When you are both recording and mixing in the same room you need to consider a few things so you can accommodate both aspects of your audio production.
The pictures on this page were taken from a workshop that was converted into a home studio. See how you can build a home recording studio like theirs here, with a picture tour of their home studio.
Dead room?
I've found that by trying
the deaden the room as much as
possible you can achieve much better results than by trying to keep
it too “live”.
It's impossible to take away a roomy sound
from a recording so a deader room might be a better
bet. However, too
much absorption can make for an unnatural listening experience so you
might have to try experimenting with diffusers as well.
With the careful combination of absorption and diffusion you can create a pleasing listening space, that's also effective for recording. If you take the really dead room route, one of the things you have to be careful about is not adding too much reverb to your mixes. Mixing in a very dead control room means that you are less likely to hear the effect your mix has when listened back in a normal room.
Therefore, if you are using a dead room for both recording and mixing purposes, avoid this reverb trap by checking your mixes in your car, your living room or other areas of your home. That way you can gauge the amount of reverb needed, as well as any other irregularities your mix has in different stereo systems.
Room within a room
Most high class recording studios build rooms within rooms, which is a method to de-couple a room from its environment and isolate it completely. It is a very efficient way to soundproof a recording area or control room.
Unfortunately, your home recording studio might consist of a separate bedroom that you can' really treat in such an expensive manner. If you eschew this option, deciding you can't soundproof your room from the outside, I'm hoping you live in an area that you don't have to worry about outside noises too much.
If you're living downtown, with cars zooming past your window all the time, then maybe your room isn't the best place for a home recording studio. However, if you are living in a quiet part of town, or a rural area, then soundproofing isn't so much of an issue. If you are interested in this sort of DIY, check out this page here.
Acoustic treatment
Now, since we are not going to soundproof our room from the outside world, we still need the room to sound good to our ears. We need to treat our room so that it handles a few different things, frequencies, lows and highs, and reflections.
For low frequency absorption we need to buy, or build some heavy duty bass traps. Bass traps are thick acoustic panels that are filled with absorptive material. If we are mixing in a typical square room chances are that there is a fair amount of buildup of low frequency energy. Therefore it's always good practice to have at least some of these bass traps gobbling up the excess low end of your room.
Check out the video below on how to make a very affordable and
easy bass trap.
More info on bass traps can be found here
High frequencies
Take care of the higher frequencies as well. Since higher frequencies get absorbed more easily than the low bass, we can build, or buy materials that absorb them for cheap.
We can use various materials to try to dampen the high frequencies of the room. Even using plain old blankets is going to help substantially with making your room sound better. I created a nice vocal booth out of blankets that worked well for my productions.
Reflections
When creating your home recording studio, you also need to think about treating the reflections. Instead of killing the room completely with absorption, you might also think about trying to scatter the reflections with diffusers. It's better if you can both absorb the most problematic of frequencies as well as controlling the reflections of the rest. You can do this with diffusers.
Here is a great video from Real Traps explaining the use of diffusers.
Cheap acoustic treatment
Buying acoustic treatment from sound companies like Auralex, that specialize in creating products like absorbers and diffusers is a good way to treat your studio if you have the money for it. These products are not cheap, and you can probably get away with getting very similar sounding products by building them yourself.
Some people have a DIY tendency, and I applaud that, since that's something I like to do. But I also understand the ones that like putting their studio in the hands of acoustic professionals. You can get Auralex to treat your room by contacting them on their page. By telling them your room specifications they will offer you acoustic treatment packages designed for your room.
However, most of the materials that we use for acoustic treatment can be found at the hardware store. You only need some plywood to make frames, rock-wool or fiberglass to act as absorption and some material to cover it with. That's the easy way to make an absorber that works equally well as the acoustic products out there. Building diffusers might be a little trickier, but nothing a little DIY perseverance can't handle
Design
Nice Control Room area
If you are working in a single room and it's big enough, it's good to have a nice client area. Putting up a nice sofa or two by the opposite wall can create a comfy listening space for when you want to crank the latest mix you've done for the client. Sofas also double as great absorbers so not only do you create an attractive artist area, but you're helping the room's acoustics as well.
Recording studio furniture
You might need to put some thought into what kind of furniture you are going to furnish your home studio with. Click the link above for more resources on ergonomic studio furniture.
Separate live room
Although you could get away with many studio tasks using only one room, there is always a need for a separate live room when you need to record larger instruments such as drums. Having a second room takes you from the budget home recording studio to something else entirely, since you're needing more than double the space of your original control room.
You might be able to get by with using your living room, bathroom or other home spaces for the odd recording, but when you want to get serious, it's a great idea to have a separate live room specifically designed for your recordings.
Conclusion
It's easy and affordable to create your home recording studio today. Equipment is cheap and treating your room to sound good is easier than it seems. So if you've always had a longing to start your own home studio in your office or spare bedroom, what's stopping you? Whether your trying to make profit from it or just doing it for pure pleasure, it's as easy as it's ever been.
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