Today we’re going to look at a basic and very cheap home recording setup. This setup
has some essential equipment to record a microphone and direct instrument, and it’s surprising
how much it’s capable of doing. Before checking out this video, make sure to subscribe to
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This recording setup that we created is the lowest
budget setup that can record multiple real instruments in the home studio. We can do
direct recordings of instruments and microphone recordings. The cost of this entire setup
was around $150 when creating this video, but we haven’t provided a price breakdown
since the price of all these products can vary a lot over time. Somethings in this setup
can also be substituted if you wanted to use different accessories, but the basic idea
will remain the same. As an overview, this setup has an audio interface,
XLR cable, tripod, headphones, pop filter, and instrument cable. We haven’t included
the computer in this price, since we expect people to use whatever computer they might
have available to them. Most computers should be able to run a basic digital audio workstation,
and all the sound is processed through the audio interface over USB so that is not dependent
on what computer you have. Let’s start with our equipment choices.
For the audio interface, I’m using a Behringer U-PHORIA UM-2. This interface has an input
for an XLR microphone, 1 instrument input, and a headphone output. It also has preamp
and level controls for everything, as well as a phantom power switch on the back to be
used with a condenser microphone. This audio interface is as basic as it gets, but it will
allow us to record a microphone and a direct instrument, so it’s fairly versatile. The
audio interface is configured on our computer with the ASIO4ALL driver to make recording
and playback low latency, and that way we can even monitor a direct guitar with amp
simulation in real-time without any delay in the signal.
Next for playback we have our Behringer HPM-1000 Headphones. These are a set of fairly cheap
headphones with a ¼” connection and a 2-meter cable. They’re not the most accurate headphones
by any means and they also are completely made out of plastic, but they definitely will
allow you to playback your audio through the audio interface, and they can be used for
recording as well. Full disclosure though, these headphones are very mid heavy in their
frequency response, and they don’t have a lot of treble or bass.
For recording with a microphone, we have the Neewer condenser microphone. This is a fairly
sensitive microphone that can be used on different instruments from an acoustic guitar to voice.
Since it’s a condenser microphone, it will use the 48V phantom power that is provided
by the Behringer audio interface, so all this works together. The condenser microphone is
connected to the audio interface with an AmazonBasics XLR cable. I recommend 25 feet if you’re
just going to get one cable. It’s enough length to get to most places you may need
to record in a small room, but you’re also not paying for too much length that you might
not use. The microphone can be mounted on any stand
you may choose, but I do recommend getting a boom stand and that makes it a lot easier
to place the microphone in whatever position you want, compared to a regular straight microphone
stand. Along with the stand, we also have a pop filter. Pop filters are placed between
the microphone and the singer for recording voice. These pop filters prevent blasts of
air from hitting the microphone when someone is singing or talking into it, otherwise it
would create a big pop in the signal. Last, we recommend a simple 10-foot instrument
cable. This is used to connect an electric guitar or bass, acoustic-electric guitar,
or electric keyboard to the computer. These instruments are connected to the instrument
input on the Behringer audio interface, which then acts as a direct box, and also has a
level control on the top. Then, you can take that signal and process it with amp simulation
software. This can be found in some free digital audio workstations like Cakewalk by BandLab,
or there are other plugins that can be downloaded online and added to digital audio workstations
that don’t have amp simulation pre-installed. Last for software we recommend getting a free
digital audio workstation to get started. These have a lot of professional features
for recording audio, working with MIDI and mixing our track. We have a separate video
on this channel for some of the free digital audio workstations that you can choose to
work with this home studio. Thanks for checking out this video on a basic
budget home recording setup. If this video helped you out, don’t forget to give it
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new videos. You can also check the video description for links to products featured in this video,
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