The Plan

I've decided I want to build an inexpensive home studio. I've listed a few requirements for both the short and long term:

• Professional quality from the start
• MIDI and Analaogue sources - the MIDI will be useful early on when I can't record live drums, or for working alone.
• When I buy a house I want to have a live room capable of recording a full band, including various isolation booths.
• Pro-Tools compatible so I can receive files from other studios (live drums for example), or send files to other studios.
• Expandable, I don't want to be locked into a system that limits me. I've learned from experience that you need to have a lot of inputs recording simultaneously, and usually this means lots of Microphones.

Having worked with linear editing processes (2" tape, ADAT) in the past, I'm interested in working with the non-linear aspects of Hard Disk recording. Hard Disk recording gives you non-destructive editing, the ability to do micro editing on files, or move bits of song around easily.

Since professional audio equipment for recording is meant to reproduce live instruments, while paying attention to the infinite variations in listening environment and audiophile equiment is meant to reproduce the live instruments as much as possible, I've decided to mix my home theather and monitoring environment.

One day I'll buy a seperate monitoring environment for pro audio (using the lessons I've learned building a home theater), in a seperate room treated in a way no girlfriend would ever let her boyfriend decorate the living room. (No really, gray foam looks great on the wall next to the Monet print...)

I'd also like to have a live room, real board, tons of outboard equipment and a great selection of mic's, but that'll come in time.

The Home Theater System

Since this is a home theater system, it includes the TV and DVD player. The system I spec'd out should run me around $1300. The actual recording section (reviewed below) would just plug into the pre-amp like any other piece of audio equipment: CD Player, Record Player, Mixing console...

I may want to get a quality CD player as well if the Playstation 2 turns out to be a bad CD player. I may also want a good headphone amp for my headphones. An audiophile headphone amp, not a mixing headphone amp, but yeah I'll want a few of those too...

The Recording Section

I'm split between MOTU and Pro-Tools right now, and haven't even looked into other systems. On the one hand, Pro-Tools is the 'industry standard' but on the other hand, the consumer version seems limited (only 24 tracks? Sure 24 tracks is nice, but why should I be limited in a software environment?), and lots of people have bad things to say about it (both professional and consumer editions). In the long run I may do both - The intro Pro-Tools setup is $500, and with the MOTU hardware I'd have a pretty good system, with both sets of software for about a half grand more than either one alone.

Here's the system I have spec'd out with all of the options.

I'm also probably going to have to purchase a number of tube compressors to warm things up and protect the digital equipment from spikes.

Conclusion

While by no means a cheap hobby, a home studio seems to be in the reach of most working musicians. You can build a decent system for considerably less than what I've outlined here, the Pro-Tools MBox is just $500, and if it works with your current computer you could be in business really cheap.

I'll be spreading out the purchases to ease bank-account strain. This works out well because I want to research the individual components before I buy them.

I believe that I can start with this modest setup and build a truly world-class studio in around a decade (no, really). Until then, my studio will be functional and I'll be making really great sounding music in it.

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