And how much will it cost? It varies. I have supplied an equipment list with various suggestions and prices. But you are not going to pay a lot for this studio.
Will your recordings rival those made in professional studios? Probably not. But I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how well your music will sound. With a little effort and a small outlay of cash you too can record songs of sufficient quality to sell your music and amaze your friends.

The Equipment List
I have listed the generic products you will need and also specific items. Does this mean the brands I’ve listed are the best? No, of course not. It is equipment that I have, have used or know someone who has. I’m sure there are better and worse products out there. This is meant as a guide to help you get the equipment that best fits your budget and expertise. I have based the cost of each item from information I’ve gathered off the net.

You should be able to spend less by doing a little comparison-shopping.

Microphone(s)
To record live sounds such as vocals and acoustic guitars you will need at least one microphone - two are better. And since microphones come in two basic varieties, dynamic and condenser it makes sense to purchase two microphones. With both a condenser and dynamic microphone your options and flexibility are both increased. For an explanation of the two types see Chapter 10 in Jim Goodman’s excellent series on home recording basics.

The Shure SM57 a good professional quality microphone and one I recommend. With a street price of $100 this microphone becomes even more attractive. You could start your home recording studio with two SM57’s but for more flexibility in your recording I suggest adding a condenser as your second microphone. The CAD M177 is an excellent choice.

One of a very few budget microphones that sound like the manufacturers’ press release says it does. Very smooth, natural, with little of no hum. I usually record flat and add very little EQ to acoustic guitars and vocals.

The best price I’ve found for the Cad M177 is at B&H photo who have the CAT M177 priced at $125 as of 5/14/08.
Total estimated cost of Microphones: $225.00

The Early Years - Post from the old threaded wwwboard
Archives 1 thru 12 contain home studio and audio recording tips from 2000
Archives 13 and 14 contain home studio and audio recording tips from the first two months of 2001

The Yabb Boards Posts from the first of the modern forums (Yabb).
This archive covers home and audio recording posts form February, March, April, May and June of 2001.
It is also when the Freedom Exchange first became part of the Recording Website so quite a few songwriting posts are in this archive as well.

Pre RID YabbSE Posts
Recording Website Archives late Feb. 2001 ro early March 2003. This was the second big move after changing from wwwboard to yabb. Yabb was based on cgi/pearl and the new forum software, yabbse was php based. Also, these posts were before RID (the Recording Institute of Detroit) took over the site.

There are two archives:
Recording Website Archives from late Feb. 2001 to Late October 2002
with 27955 Posts in 4792 Topics
Recording Website Archives from October 2002 to early March 2003
with 13294 Posts in 1760 topics

The Music Board
The precursor to the ‘Can We Talk’ and ‘It’s All About The Music’ boards.
Some very interesting discussions about music, performing and musical artists.

The name mp3 is an abbreviation for MPEG Audio Layer 3. MPEG stands for the Motion Picture Experts Group. These people have developed video compression systems which includes such formats as DSS, HDTV and DVD. MPEG Audio Layer 3 or mp3 is an offshoot of the video compression technology.

The compression used in an mp3 file is based on 3 things;

• Sometimes, one sound will mask another.
• We hear some sounds better than others.
• There are some sounds we can’t hear.

By eliminating these sounds from the original song file the mp3 format is able to shrink the file size down to about a tenth of the original.

So does the sound quality of the music suffer? Of course, but I believe the size savings is well worth it. And of course, the quality of the original recording will help determine the quality of the mp3 song file. But remember, we’re talking about putting songs on the net for others to download.

If you are streaming your audio you will have to consider bandwith, which can add up pretty quickly. And if you have your song available for download which song file do you think folks would rather download, a 3 minute wave file which is about 30 meg or a 3 minute mp3 which is about 3 meg.