An Introduction to PC Home Recording on a Budget

I first got involved in home recording about 2 1/2 years ago when I bought a copy of Cakewalk's Guitar Tracks Pro after trying out an eval copy that came with my Johnson J-Station. The J-Station is a DSP-based direct amplifier whose primary purpose is to be used as a headphone practice amp, or guitar effects box, or direct recording amplifier. I later upgraded to the Behringer V-Amp, because I thought it had a few more features and sounded a little bit better for the guitars I used and type of music I wanted to play. I still use GTPro as my recording software, mainly because its inexpensive (about $99), can be used for much more than just guitars, and actually is pretty rich with features. It allows you to record up to 32 stereo or mono channels and patch in effects like reverb, parametric EQ, delay, etc. It also has 2 aux busses, which are used mainly for patching the same effects to a group of recording channels. While there are more expensive recording software packages out there on the market, I've found that I spent about 2 years learning how to use all of GTPro's features. Once I've max'd out on the learning process, then it might be time to upgrade to something that does more.

My next major purchase was the M-Audio Audiophile 2496, which is a pretty prevalent sound card for computer-based systems. It has 2 inputs and 2 outputs, plus S/PDIF in and out and MIDI. It costs about $150 and is not essential for the beginner. You can use your PC's sound interface until you learn how to operate all the software, figure out all the connections, etc. After you've gotten the hang of things, a pro sound interface will give you a much improved signal quality as well as more options with your signal routing.

The next thing you will undoubtedly need are a set of decent quality microphones. By this I mean "sound good", since you can spend quite a bit on high quality microphones and not really notice the difference unless the rest of your equipment is top shelf. Trust your ears if you get the opportunity to listen to some mics before making your purchase.

If you decide to buy a condenser mic, you will need a microphone pre-amp with XLR connections and 48V phantom power. Condenser mics are good for vocal and acoustic instrument recording while dynamic mics are best for mic’ing guitar amplifiers for that up-close big guitar sound.

If you intend to record vocals you might also want to invest in a compressor. This is used to gate (filter out background noise when you’ve got gaps and pauses in your performance) and also compresses your signal going into the computer’s sound card interface so that it doesn’t clip, thereby causing pops and clicks in your material. For vocal recording, this device is essential because it evens out your performance since the human voice is one of the most dynamic things you'll want to record.

If you’ve got the intestinal fortitude (and the $$$), I would also recommend building your own PC to be used solely for your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). My reasons for this are as follows:

• You don’t want to mess up the family household computer with all of your fine performance tuning (i.e. disabling the network, desktop wallpapers, screensavers, etc.).
• Oftentimes, the consumer PC is optimized for cost and therefore will not have an abundance of add-on PCI slots (you need these for additional soundcards, Firewire interfaces, etc.). Also, you will eventually want to add additional hard-disk drives because each of your audio projects will take up around 500Mbytes of storage.
• You may want to locate your DAW PC in a room where you can leave things connected and ready to go (like where your guitars, amps, keyboards, etc. might be).

All of the necessary parts are available at any number of websites that market computer parts and accessories. See www.tomshardware.com for instructions on how to build your own PC.

My recommendations for the beginner PC recording enthusiast is as follows:

• PC – at least a 1 GHz Pentium Processor with 256 Mbytes of RAM and a 40GB Hard disk drive.
• Recording software for the computer (I use Cakewalk GTPro).
• Microphone Pre-Amp (make sure it has XLR connections and 48 volt phantom power).
• Microphone(s) - Condenser mic for recording vocals and acoustic instruments, Dynamic mic for recording guitar amps.
• Compressor – for squashing your signal so it doesn’t peak and cause digital clipping (which you can hear and essentially ruins your recording).

I hope this article helps a beginner (like I was a few short years ago) get started in recording their own music and other audio projects.