Search now for software and/or books on the basics of recording at home or anything else to help you beef up your home recording studio and your chops!

STARTING POINT

The heart & soul of any recording studio is what we refer to as the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). It is generally composed of the computer and the audio recording/editing software. If you can only invest in one aspect of this entire process... invest in these two critical things.

Your computer (box) should be a powerful PC, with the latest operating system. Macs are also excellent machines, but since they cost much more and are more expensive to outfit and maintain. My logic is, why invest in a mac when it all comes down to your ear. I've heard a lot of good music that came out of macs and I've also heard a lot of crap come out of them. Save your money for more important things. Here are some good computer specs for a dedicated DAW at the time of this writing:

HOW TO RECORD AT HOME - Minimal PC Specs

Most of the Record At Home visitors and community are not at this site because they want to build a high end recording studio. You are here because you want to build a home studio that doesn't that break the bank and will allow you to create to your hearts content. Here's a measuring stick of hard and software that you can use as a "minimum" needs basis.

These recommended specs will allow you to run most of the software advertised on this site. For advanced questions and before you make significant investments, you should always consult a technician. No matter how clear this site can be about specs, it's like white noise to someone new to it all... a tech can easily wrap his head around what you want to do and what you need to do it. Here's some basic lingo you should be familiar with:

1. 1.6 Ghz. Pentium III or Athlon cpu
2. 512mb ram
3. 40gb 7200 rpm hard drive
4. 32mb AGP video card
5. On board AC97 audio or separate soundcard
6. 24X CDRW drive
7. Windows XP (home or professional) with service pack 2

STORAGE
Because audio files are very large you want to have sufficient RAM and hard drive (7200 rpm) storage (or an external USB drive). External drives are now cheap compared to the past. I just bought a 1 terabyte external drive for about 100 dollars. A .wav file can be from 30 to 80MB or more. As an MP3 that song would be from 3 to 8MB.

OS
Get at least XP, Vista or Windows 7 for you OS.

LAPTOPS
Laptop recording is becoming popular, but if you go this way, be prepared to invest in a decent machine. Laptops can choke your creativity if they aren't outfitted with the right RAM, audio and video cards. Nothing is more frustrating than slow cumbersome load and save times when you're in the creative flow.

DESIRED PC SPECS

+ CPU: Intel Core 2 Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33GHz or AMD Athlon 64X2 4000 Dual Core Processor
+ RAM: 2GB DDR-2 RAM (4GB Vista) 800MHz Dual Channel - Matched Pair
+ Video: GeForce 8600 GT PCI-E 256MB Video Card with Dual DVI-I Connectors
+ Operating System Drive: 250GB 7200RPM Ultra 300 SATA II with 16 MB buffer
+ Audio Drive: 500GB 7200RPM Ultra 300 SATA II with 16 MB buffer
+ Optical Drive: Dual Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Combo Optical Drive w/LightScribe
+ USB Ports: 6 USB 2.0 (4 Rear/2 Front)
+ 1394 IEEE (FireWire): At least One FireWire Port

The rest of the specs are so technical that only your local best-buy geek will care. But if you have the above, you probably have the inner computer guts required.

Basic Software Recommendations

Software is in constant evolution... This content is in revision: