Fraud Blocker

How To Make An Extremely Effective Home Studio Recording Setup (Under $800)

*This article may contain links to affiliate products & services. We have reviewed these services to try and ensure the highest quality recommendations*

This article originally appeared on Sonicbids

With consumer-grade recording gear becoming more and more affordable, almost every musician out there either has, or knows someone who has, a home studio of some sort. These setups are a great place to do some pre-production work for a studio session, work out songwriting ideas, edit audio for YouTube or other social media posts, and are overall an excellent asset to the modern musician. The Voice Memos app on your smartphone can only go so far as a recording device, and having access to something with a little more horsepower can be a welcome advantage.

As with anything in the music and tech world, the sky is truly the limit for how much you can spend on a home studio, and for those just starting out, knowing where to begin can set your head spinning. Having a setup that allows you to get the most for your money while maintaining an acceptable quality standard that leaves room for modular upgrades can be a bit of tightrope act.The following is where I would suggest you start your search to get the most flexible and effective turn-key setup on an in-debt-up-to-my-eyeballs-for-going-to-college budget.

Note: For the sake of this list, I'm assuming you have access to a stable, moderate-to-high-power laptop/desktop computer (doesn't necessarily need to be a Mac). Otherwise, you'll want to begin by getting yourself a decent computer before venturing any further into your home-recording endeavors.

INTERFACE

This is going to be your method for getting things in and out of the computer in the audio realm. Most interfaces you get are effectively a mic preamp, line mixer, monitor controller, headphone amp, and AD/DA converter all rolled up into one box. And since you really do tend to get what you pay for, it can be hard to find all of that effectively rolled into one quality unit at any price point, but especially on the low end of things. For our budget, my suggestion is:

Kyle is a verified user with other 100,000 followers on TikTok. The gig can also cover duets if you’d like to appear in the video he posts. He’s based in the UK and all his content is child-friendly as he features his daughter in many of his videos. This doesn’t mean that it has to be children’s music, but no explicit content songs are requested.  

It's hard to beat the quality and features of this unit in this price range. This interface boasts:

  • two mic preamps
  • two line inputs
  • MIDI in, MIDI out
  • DI input
  • headphone out
  • zero-latency input monitoring
  • USB power
  • Cubase LE
  • Lexicon reverb plugin

All of your input and output needs with a DAW and a third-party plugin from arguably the name in reverbs included.

MICROPHONE

The best bang for your buck is to get a mic that can cover a wide range of sound sources and to find something that does it well for its price point. For our budget, my suggestion is:

Blue mics are hard to go wrong with for mojo and quality, and now I can finally say that at a true entry-level price point. The Spark is a great sounding jack-of-all-trades type mic with a unique "focus" button that gives your sound a bit of a presence edge in a very musical and usable way. On top of that, it comes in an attractive case, with a shock mount and metal pop filter included. You'd be hard pressed to find a better first mic for your project studio at this price for both the sound and the features.

[9 Mics Under $500 That Sound Incredibly High-End]

STUDIO MONITORS

You need to be able to accurately hear what's going on within your recordings and do so outside of headphones. Not all speakers are created equal, and you need something that's reliable and that you can learn to work on to get the results you're looking for. All the plugins and all the gear in the world don't matter if you can't hear what they're doing. For our budget, my suggestion is:

These monitors may seem small, but their economical desktop footprint still packs enough punch for most any project in a near-field situation. While you may not be able to feel rumbling sub-bass on these boxes, they have a shockingly detailed bass response both for the price and the driver size. These monitors also give a relatively accurate picture that, with some learning, will yield very functional mixes.

HEADPHONES

Fairly self-explanatory: a pair of headphones will give you something to monitor on while tracking, and also will provide you with another playback option for checking your mixes. For our budget, my suggestion is:

Heralded by some as the "NS-10s of headphones," whether or not you buy into that line of reasoning, there's a reason you'll find at least one pair of these headphones in every major studio and among many live engineers' accessories: they just work. With good isolation and an accurate reproduction and response, I encourage you to try and find a better pair of $100 headphones. Sure, there are a slew of higher end headphones on the market, but as far as getting a pair that will accurately show you what's happening in your recordings at a budget-friendly price, they're nearly peerless. Take advantage of being able to get yourself an "industry standard" at such an entry-level price.

[7 Must-Haves for Session Musicians Recording at Home]

ACCESSORIES

You'll also need some cabling to put everything together and some place to put that mic of yours. This can be accomplished with:

HOME STUDIO GRAND TOTAL: $786

There you have it: getting your home studio started for under $800. Now, there are a number of other considerations and options not addressed here that would be worth your while to look into as your budget increases. Things such as:

  • Room treatment
  • External hard drives for session data, samples, etc.
  • Control surfaces
  • How many inputs you'll need to record at any one time
  • Dedicated monitor controllers
  • Are you eventually looking to build an "in-the-box" setup or a hybrid setup involving outboard gear?
  • MIDI keyboards, pads, input devices
  • Plugins and soft-synths/samples
  • More application-specific microphones
  • What DAW do you ultimately want to work with?

The list goes on and on, because as I said earlier, the sky is the limit. The above setup, however, will get you going and on your way to creating music and capturing ideas the day you take it all out of the box without having to switch to a Top Ramen-only diet.


When your song is ready to go, it's time to start promoting it to potential fans! Omari has the best organic promotion services money can buy. With packages for Spotify, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, we will get your music the traffic and attention it deserves! Click below for more information.  


SPEAK YOUR MIND

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

How This INDIE Artist Got Over 67,598,275 Streams On ONE Song

Join the No-Nonsense Music Marketing Newsletter to get the most valuable weekly case studies and strategies to grow your music business!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

TOPICS

RECENT ARTICLES

SPOTIFY CAMPAIGN EXAMPLES

*Here are some small samples of the playlists in our network. Obviously, we aren't able to share every single list for confidentiality reasons, but these are a handful of examples out of the hundreds of playlists we have in our network.*


Playlists This Song Was Featured In

Contemporary Christian Music (33K Followers)

Louvores - Gospel (62K Followers)


Playlists This Song Was Featured In

Clean Rap & RNB (25K Followers)

Top Hits From New Artists (20K Followers)

Chill Music (38K Followers)


Playlists This Song Was Featured In

Today's Pop Hits (38K Followers)

Gaming Playlist & Workout Radio (23K Followers)


Playlists This Song Was Featured In

Forest Gump Soundtrack (50K Followers)

Stagecoach (15K Followers)

Best of Country Hits (2K Followers)


Playlists This Song Was Featured In

Acoustics For Relaxing (48K Followers)

Chill Music (9K Followers)


Playlists This Song Was Featured In

Hard Rock Workout (70K Followers)

Rock Hits (5K Followers)


Playlists This Song Was Featured In

Funky Songs Playlist (190K Followers)

Clean Rap & RNB (10K Followers)


[EDM/Future Bass] Melvin - Luv Again

Playlists This Song Was Featured In

Top Hits From New Artists (20K Followers)

Electro-mania (6K Followers)

Best Workout Playlist (14K Followers)


Close

SMALL CAMPAIGN EXAMPLES

MEDIUM CAMPAIGN EXAMPLES

[Hip Hop] K-Rich - We Workin  

LARGE CAMPAIGN EXAMPLES

[Hip Hop] Surve - Found My Way  


*Note: Songs may have ordered promotion from other sources as well. Small, medium, and large only denote the amount of promotion that was ordered from our service.  

Close

KID TRAVIS (R&B, POP)

With an already buzzing YouTube audience of over 400K+ subscribers, Kid Travis wanted his Instagram profile to start gaining some of that same traction.

While you can get some spill over audience from YouTube, Kid Travis knew that Instagram ad campaigns could boost his presence on IG even further!

He discovered that trying to run Instagram ads yourself vs. having us add our years of experience and expertise to them made a huge difference!

His main goal was to achieve new followers who are seriously interested in his journey as an artist.

Kid Travis already had amazing talent but needed to combine his music genius with some marketing expertise to get the best of both worlds.

We were able to bring out the heart of his music through paid ads by editing & optimizing his existing videos and properly researching and structuring his ad campaigns.

The end results: We were able to consistently and predictably gain followers averaging between $0.25-$0.35 per follower (including a bulk of the promotion being done in high cost English speaking countries such as United States, United Kingdom, Australia, & Canada) resulting in around 4,000 new, engaged followers/month on Instagram.

Kid Travis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kidtravis/

Kid Travis YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/kidtravisofficial


*Note: Previous campaigns are not a guarantee for results in future campaigns. However, we do our best to ensure each client gets the best results possible.  

Close