Basic home studio design: You’ve made the decision to produce your own music, but where do you start? One option is to go to the nearest professional recording studio, however with fees starting at $100 ...
These days, there are a wide range of excellent home recording software packages available, so how do you choose the best without breaking the bank?
Pic by Rudolf_Schuba
First, let’s have a quick word about hardware. Any computer made in the last couple of years should be suitable, but the iMac and MacBook series from Apple are considered by many to be the best. For successful recording on a PC you’ll need at least 1GB of RAM, a large hard drive and firewire and USB ports to connect your interfaces.
Pro Tools is the industry standard recording software and is used in virtually all the major professional studios.
The good news is you don’t have to break the bank to get good home recording software. Among the packages listed in PCMags ‘The Best Free Software 2009 - Hall of Fame’ is Audacity. PCMag rates it “on a par with any commercial audio editor, and the latest beta (1.3.6) version even supports MPEG-4, Dolby Digital, and Windows Media.”
Acoustica’s Mixcraft Recording Studio software costs just $39.95 and is a fast and easy way to record and mix your music. It comes with a wide range of features including built in effects like EQ and compression and you can export your mix to MP3.
Apple’s Logic is also an excellent choice. Although it’s a lot more expensive than Mixcraft, $499, it is a comprehensive package delivering everything that you need to produce powerful music.
Software Synthesizers
A software synthesizer is used to produce sounds that you can not obtain from ordinary musical instruments. Electronic Musician Magazine selected Omnisphere, from Spectrasonics, as the Editor’s Choice Software Synthesizer of the Year in 2008. It has a simple interface design and in addition to a library of thousands of sounds, the latest version features ‘Psychoacoustic’ sound sources for organic synthesis.
Home Recording Software for Audio Editing
Audio editing software helps you to create, record, convert, restore and edit your creations. Sony’s Sound Forge is an award winning digital audio editing software package that allows you to work with almost any type of digital audio including WAV, AIFF and MP3. There are 2 versions to choose from; Sound Forge Audio Studio costing around $55 and the professional’s choice, Sound Forge 9 retailing at about $300.
Instrumental Samples
If you want to add instrumental sounds to your recording then Propeller Abbey Road Keyboards Reason Refill Pack offers a wide range of sounds. These were all recorded in Abbey Road’s Studio Two using the original equipment to give them that unique ‘Abbey Road Sound’.
Voice and Harmony Software
Harmony Engine comes from Antares Technologies, the company that pioneered Auto-Tune pitch correction technology. It’s a powerful and easy to use package, costing around $350, and it enables you to produce unique vocal arrangements. This product is ideal if you want to add back up vocals, or experiment with different vocal harmonies.
These are just some of the many excellent choices available to you. Before committing yourself to any home recording software, decide exactly what you want to achieve, how much you can afford to pay and what you can handle.
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