The home studio can be incredibly sophisticated these days, very much capable of recording, mixing and even self finalizing your tracks to a high standard in the comfort of your own tailored musical space. If you are willing to invest some money and time into learning some basic engineering skills, great results can be achieved.

The beauty of a home studio is that it can serve your core skill set remarkably well and also potentially open up new revenue streams which you may not previously have considered. You will be able to potentially save money on studio bills and benefit from the great convenience of a studio in your house. This would especially have benefits at the composing, arranging, recording and idea building stage for an acoustic musician and potentially the entire production process for an electronic musician.

There is a large demand for spoken word recording. If you have a nice quiet space which is reasonably well acoustically treated, you might develop a side line for voice over recording, which can be quite lucrative. Voice work is necessary for radio advertising, video narration, corporate presentations and of course translation from one language to another.

Other potential revenue streams are karaoke style ’studio experiences’ for people interested in recording their vocals against a backing track; enhancing stereo 2 track or multitrack location recordings; forensic and restoration work; and composing music to video.

The scope for a revenue stream is there if you are willing to put in the hours to learn your new equipment and invest in the initial cost of setting up. Typically, an entry level home studio incorporates the following:

* PC or Mac computer $1,000 – $2,000
* Sequencing software $200 – $500
* Audio Interface (sound card) $100 – $900
* Controller keyboard, $200 – $500
* Microphone selection $1,000
* Possibly a selection of software synthesizers $200 – $500
* Studio monitors $250 – $1,000

Of course, the sophistication and exact selection of the above equipment will have a bearing on the final pricing. Remember to budget for some microphone and line level leads too.

To ensure your home studio is optimized, here are some tried and tested tips on making it as productive and good sounding as possible.

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