So the Recording on PC thread is slightly outdated, and pretty general in content, but a great start nonetheless. As a recording engineer in the field, I think its good to present information on starting and maintaining a studio/home studio setup. For the purpose of this forum's demographics, I'm going to focus on the professional level home studio environment as opposed to the dedicated studio environment.

Where to start? Equipment? Room size/shape/sound? Software? Hardware?

To begin with, in a home studio environment, strictly from my experience, the room size/shape/sound will have little to do with your recordings. Even if you are recording drums, unless you have a dedicated studio space/multiple live rooms/control room setup, you will be close-miking and make it big in the mix (as opposed to making it big in the room, the better, yet harder way to do things).

So that leaves the most important thing, well, besides your recording know-how. The most important thing will be your setup. As of now, you can easily have a "professional" sounding studio operating out of one decent room in your home, for well under $2,000.

Now you are thinking...What equipment and software will I need?

To start, firewire setups have become the standard in the industry whether it be 128 track consoles or simple 8 input presonus firepods. Firewire offers the highest sound quality possible and leaves the most options later in the mix (I know USB can matchup, but you should know its not the case unless you have a dedicated USB sect just for recording)

Basically, firewire allows you to route each input on your console/interface to its own track in the DAW (digital audio workstation). This is more of a blessing than you will ever know, as it allows you to save many otherwise "terrible" mixes.

Now that I've mentioned firewire interfaces, which gather the sound and have multiple preamps, its on to software. A good DAW that is easily navigable will save you a lot of time in the long run, not to mention saving you many headaches. I prefer to use a combination of Cubase & Acid Pro, but many of the others will do, including free ones such as Garage Band. "To each his own" seems to sum up how to choose a DAW. Find one you are comfortable with and can easily navigate.

Basically, my home studio setup goes as follows

Microphones/Instruments > Dual Presonus FP10 Rack Units > Cubase

Now, I also route the FP10's to a headphone amp that allows me to provide the mix to six other headphone channels, each with auxiliary-ins which allows for each musician to toggle how much of "the mix" and how much of their own instrument plays in their headphones. An inexpensive, yet effective unit is the Alto HPA6, which should run you under $100 on the used market.

My rack is small, and basically consists of the FP10's, , a headphone amp, a sonic maximizer, and a power amp, but honestly, I think you can do just as much with that setup as you can owning all the latest preamps, and VST plugins have made most hardware effects/signal processing obsolete.

In the near future, the only thing my home setup will be adding are perhaps a Rackmount POD to use as an alternative to NI Guitar Rig III, and possibly a dedicated vocal processor that will allow for automatic pitch correction. Other than that, I like to keep the signal chain as short as possible.

I'll try to post more daily, I'm working on getting a site started which I'll link to at a later date. Furthermore, I'll try to snag some pictures of my home setup so you all can visualize how little equipment you really need to get some great recordings.

Cheers!!

Wow man! I just started to get serious w my recording and you have just cleared up ALOT of the misunderstandings I had. Looking foreword to learning as this thread grows.

If you have any specific questions on anything recording oriented, feel free to drop me a line at cjg001@mymail.tc3.edu.