Audio Recording

I started building my home studio, 6 years ago. Now, it has successfully produced 24 broadcast ready and mastered tracks. I only use one studio for recording, mixing and mastering and I set it up in my home.

My intention 6 years ago of building up my own studio is to save some money in music production. It’s because renting gears and studios can be very expensive. If you are still new to home recording and planning to create home studio; then this post can help you. You will know how much you can save in the long run. My primary interest is to maximize my return on investment with my music. This can only be achieved by maximizing the music income (royalties, etc) and minimizing the music production cost (studio rental, etc).

Let’s start breaking down the cost. Assuming you do not include the cost of the musical instruments since most musicians will provide it on their own. The cost will only include on the DAW, microphones, etc. I started just with the following gear studios below and their cost in dollars:

Windows PC + Studio monitors- $1000 –I purchase them way back in 2005 and start modifying the hardware to a personal recording studio. I know you can purchase same amount of hardware processing power today at relatively much lower cost. My computer specs is only 2.4GHz and 2GB RAM with 1TB hard drive all-in-all. I am still using the same computer today, it still powered by Windows XP with a Linux dual boot.

Microphones- $60, for home vocal recording I use the Shure dynamic mics. I find it hard to buy a condenser microphone in Cebu Philippines for recording vocals during that time.

Behringer Xenyx502- $65, I use this little mixer to route all my recordings in a DAW multitrack session.

Guitar/Studio accessories and effects/tuners – $50

DAW (Adobe Audition 1.5) – $300

Soundcard – $74, I am still using the same soundcard that I purchase way back 2006. I know there are a lot of quality audio interfaces today that will make the soundcard a bit obsolete. These are the Fire wire and USB interfaces.

That’s all. Those are my simplest gears that I rely for my 24 songs. All in all the total cost is only around- $1549

OK let’s compute how much it would cost if I rent a studio to produce these amount of tracks:

Cost Per Song basis:

Number of hours needed in the tracking per song – 17hours (this is just a conservative estimate that includes retakes, overdubs, etc.). Breakdown below:

Drum tracking – 4 hours
Guitar tracking – 3 hours
Vocal tracking – 2 hours
Bass tracking – 1 hour
Mixing session – 4 hours
Mastering session – 3 hours
Total hours – 17 hours

Fee per hour in tracking, mixing and mastering – 500 pesos in Philippines or $12 per hour (again very conservative estimate, in foreign countries the cost can go up higher)
Total cost per song in the studio – 500 x 17= 8500 pesos.

Total cost to produce 24 songs – 8500 x 24 = 204,000 pesos
Converting these to US Dollars = $4744

Summary:

After 6 years, I only spent $1549 in my home studio and I am able to produce 24 songs out of it. If I will be renting a studio, the cost would be $4744. The cost of renting a studio is around 3 times the overall cost of starting a home studio.

Lifetime benefits:

The good thing is that once I have invested $1549 in my home studio, I can use it to produce countless of songs. I can upgrade anytime I want but those are just very basic.

I already made a decent return regarding my music; some of it was already being licensed. And all those songs are just produced in my home studio.

Recommendations:

DIY is not for everyone. Some of you might not have a technical background to setup a studio or have entirely zero background in music production. In this case, I strongly recommend thinking twice before you choose the DIY route.

I get my audio engineering background from my Bachelors degree so it’s not a problem for me to mess up with electronics, audio, etc.