Audio Recording

This guide will help you to start in building your home recording studio. Bear in mind that as technology might change in the near future; the concepts illustrated in this guide would hardly change. So the implementation concepts would be applicable in the many years to come. There are 4 stages in building a home studio:

a.) Getting a PC or Mac with the multi-track recording software. This is your digital audio workstation or DAW software. Example of this includes Protools, Reaper, Cubase, etc.

b.) Getting the necessary recording gears
c.) Interfacing your recording gears with DAW.
d.) Treating your room acoustics for balance mix.

Understanding how a Digital Recording System Works

Unlike analog which is a common recording technology in the 70’s and 80’s; home recording studio today is commonly using a digital recording system to cut cost and simplify the process. The heart of the system is your personal computer.

Since you’re a beginner; you are clueless as to how these things works and how your computer interacts with the recording gears. Begin with examining the diagram below as well as the direction of the arrows:

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Building a DAW computer can sometimes be daunting. It’s not enough to directly go to a computer store without a plan and have your DAW computer build immediately. You need to do some research on components to make sure they are optimal for audio recording.

PC technicians do not know this and this where a lot of mistakes in building a DAW computer could happen. I received an inquiry from a friend that wanted to create a home recording studio at home. Basically he showed to me some specs of the computer that he is planning to assemble. The overall cost is around 28,600 pesos. Let see how the specs below can be further improved; or whether it is using proper specs appropriate for home recording.

Hard disk drive: 2.0TB Western Digital 2,000GB- 5,200 pesos
Audio Interface/Soundcard: Creative SB X-F1 Xtreme audio PCIE; Price: 4,100
Video Card: Asus EN210 Silent 1GB, Price: 1,500
DVD drive: Asus -24x 24b3st SATA- DVD Rom; Price: 920
Motherboard: Asus M4a78LT-M; Price: 2,600
Processor: AMD FX4100 (3.6G) – Processor, Price: 5,650
RAM: Rip Jaws 8 GB 1333 – RAM 8GB with heat sink; Price: 2,250
Power Supply: Price: 880
Monitor: 20 INCHES LG, SAMSUNG; Price: 5,500
Total= 28,600
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First, if you do not have any idea of what 64-bit float means, then you need some introduction. When you are recording/tracking digitally, you are converting analog audio to digital audio data which are processed and stored in your computer.

Then if you are using a 24-bit audio interface (which is a standard in professional music productions), it will convert these analog data into 24-bit data (binary data in the series of 1 and 0) streams which are communicated via your Firewire or USB cable (depending on whether you are using a Firewire or USB audio interface).

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