Cheap and simple home studio

[timid rabbit]

:wink:Yes, as the title says, i'm looking for a cheap and easy-to-use home studio for recording guitar, bass, drums and vocals. What do i need?

No huge expensive solutions, just the simplest and cheapest...:wink:

[timid rabbit]

just to add this is for a friend who has had a really bad time , so were getting something together for him

[General Lighting]

my sister bought some sort of portastudio thing from Boss (roland) which was less than £200 and had a built in mixer and mics, multiple tracks of digital recording (used an SD-card as storage media), DSP/effects unit..

[Raj]

As a pro [I got paid to sound engineer for many years :groucho:] I would say what you need is:

a small mixer [old studio master or soundcraft analogue mixer would be my choice and they are cheap on ebay :groucho::groucho: ]
some good mics [3 for the drums minimum - we would use drum mics but some sm-58s could do the job]
a decent vocal mike [sm-58]
a tape player or leads for a link up to the computer to record with [there is free software which will do the job]
mic stands might be useful unless you can bodge a decent shock mount replacement [can be done ;)]

there are other options - a sec 8 track springs to mind - whats the budget?
Its worth spending money on mics - sm-58 are a good versatile one IMO - we have some for emergencies.

Leads for the links can be bought or made [if you have a friend who can]

[Ruff Beat Provider]

Get a Mac and logic.
Sweetness. Cubase is also good.

[General Lighting]

the one my sister bought was a smaller version with only a "virtual" mixer (i.e no outboard faders) but it did do multitracking

http://www.roland.com/products/en/MICRO_BR/index.html

another relative of mine has one of these

http://www.nevadamusic.co.uk/acatalog/Boss_BR-600_.html

they are cheaper than the old tape-based portastudios and have more features...

[Playground Politics]

the on ive got is a korg tone works PXR4, i love it record anything only one input at a time, you could get away with sterio recording, on board mic, loadsa effects, 4 tracks, 32 virtual tracks, DI worthy, line input, guitar jack input, stereo cardiod mic, runs off batterys!!!!!, all for about 70- 80 quid, look on ebay, well worth it and stores on SD card transferable to computer

Korg should pay me to do this!


PEace