Build your own studio

These days sound cards and studio gear are so advanced and inexpensive that you can get pro results from basic equipment. A more advanced, hardware-based setup will give you more control and better audio quality, however.

Try to buy second-hand if you can, but bear in mind that buying the latest synth gives you the latest sounds. Studio gear used to hold its value much better than it does these days because the technolgy is moving so fast and the competition is fierce.

It's always best to learn about studio equipment from pro audio magazines like The Mix or Sound on Sound. If you're serious about production, get a subscription to one of these mags.

Software-based studios are beginning to take over, which could one day make hardware-based studios a thing of the past.

If you're just starting out, it's best to start with a basic, software-based setup (see example 1 on the right) using your computer's sound card for sampling and a MOD tracker program to do the sequencing. Check our links for sites where you can learn more about trackers and download shareware trackers.

As you get more serious about production, you can move up to a more advanced setup (see example 2 on the right) using a sequencing program like Cubase or Cakewalk and a hardware-based sampler and effects unit.

This setup can be gradually expanded with more equipment. The more equipment you have in the studio, the quicker it is to do things and the more flexible you can become.

Adding a second sampler means more output channels and polyphony. More output channels means you can put different effects on each channel and route different instruments/samples to those channels. With more channels you will obviously need a bigger mixer. A bigger mixer with more channels would also mean you could add more synths and sound modules, and the more send and returns you have, the more fx units you can add, meaning that you can apply lots of different effects to a single channel at once.

Example 1: Basic setup

Here is a basic setup to learn the basics of producing:

• Computer
• Soundcard for your PC that can play back samples i.e (Sound Blaster AWE 32/64 or A Turtle Beach Maui). The Mac has a sound card and MIDI support built in.
• MOD tracker program for sequencing
• Basic MIDI controller keyboard (Roland PC 200)

Example 2: Advanced setup

• Computer
• Sound card with a MIDI port
• MIDI sequencing software (Cubase or Cakewalk)
• Basic MIDI controller keyboard
• Sound Module or synth
• Budget Sampler  (EMU ESI-32, Yamaha A3000, Akai)
• Mixer 8:2  (8:2 means 8 mono channels 2 send and returns)   (Mackie, Studiomaster)
• Multi FX unit (Alesis Quadraverb)

To improve the setup you could also add the following

• A compressor with noise gates (generally not needed in MIDI studios)
• Sound enhancer ( Aphex)
• A EQ phonic peq3400