studio

I don't think anybody here can answer such a vague question.

Got any gear?

Got a building? Does the building already have treated rooms?

What do you wanna track? Hip-hop beats? String quartets? Death speed metal?

Starting from dead scratch I'd say $20,000 MINIMUM if you're gonna go for this fulltime. By the time you gear up, do room treatments, and get furniture and stuff to outfit a small demo studio, rent/insurance, phones, ISP, etc etc.................

If you have to hire contractors to build your room then figure double-triple what you would pay to do it yourself.
 
i'll be tracking local bands ect. i have minimal gear and i'll don't have a building yet. i'll be leasing / purchasing aside from what i'm looking at spending on contruction / gear / ect though. i am looking for somewhat of a barebones set-up initially.
 
Okay. Barebones is a relatively new computer with minimum 512RAM and 1gig is better. 2 hard drives. Burner.

Music sw of your choice.

Soundcard with 8 I/O. Layla, 1010, etc.

A few 57s, maybe a couple decent condensors for vox and overheads, stands, cables.

Preamps or a decent mixer with phantom power.

Decent monitors. Headphones and headphone amp.

Multi-FX for reverbs and delay. Outboard or sw. If you're computer is powerful enough you can run a lot of sw FX.

Lava lamp. Optional.

You'll need a MIDI interface too. Get something with at least 4 I/O. Really.

I'd figure on at least $1000 for room treatment. You may get away with less, and you could easily spend double that.

So what's that? Maybe $4-5 grand depending on what you already have. Plus the building.
 
I think it's FAR more than that....... for anything even remotely serious I think you should expect somewhere in the neighborhood of 50K at a BARE MINIMUM, plus building costs.

And that IS "bare-bones".......

If you want to build a serious business, there are MANY incidentals that you'll have to accommodate and further, you'll also need cash reserves on top of that to tide you over while you build your clientele. Clients won't come simply because you open your doors. And it usually takes a business 3-5 years to become profitable, so you defintely need some working capital in addition to the startup gear.
 
Not including building costs, I think you could do it for around 20 Grand, like C7sus originally suggested. Something like this:

Mics:
4 SM57s - $200 used (Toms, Amps, Snares)
Pair of Josephsons C42 - $950 (Overheads, Acoustic Guitar, Hand Percussion)
Audix D6 - $170 (Kick)
Shure SM7 - $250-300 used (for strident, screamy singers)
Soundelux U195 - $1150 (for everyone else's vocals, Acoustic, Strings)
BLUE Baby Bottle (For amps, another choice on vocals, strings) - $500
Royer R-121 - $1100

Pres:
3 Syteks - $~2700 (for drums, other instruments)
1 Great River ME 2NV - $2150 (for vocals and other overdubs)

Other Outboard:
4 RNCs - ~$700 (relatively uncolored compression)
1 LA2A - $2400 (character compression)
Kurtzweil Rumour - $500

Computer
Tricked-out Homemade PC - $1200 budget
MOTU 24 I/O - $1500

Software
Sonar 3 Producer Edition - $500
2 UAD-1 Cards (Pultec EQ, LA2A, DreamVerb, 1176) - $1300
Waves Renaissance Maxx Native - $450

Cabling
2 Patchbays - $~200
Miscellaneous Cabling - ~$1500

That comes in at around $20,000. I don't think many people would agree that a setup like this would be less than "professional quality," though I guess there are not outboard converters.
 
We've got very different ideas about what "barebones" means.:)

I'm at well under $10K now, and I could record string bands in my living room with probably another $1000-1500 investment in an 8 channel I/O interface and a few more mics.

My room is far from perfect, but it's improved tons with the treatments I've done so far.

So I figured $20K was a reasonable starting point. I also figured anybody asking the question like it has been presented probably doesn't have $20K, either.

Maybe not even $5K................

Also, I put the stipulation that the $5K figure was sans building/room.;)

Personally, if I had $50K to invest in anything it wouldn't go to a studio. I love music, and have fun fucking around with recording. But I have little doubt that I could deal with all the personalities and the bullshit of working with flaky musicians all day long.:)

Now maybe $50K into a hashish bar.............. yeah, that's the ticket!
 
Yeah even if you cut back on the mics/pres to pay for monitors/phones etc, there's going to be quite a bit of money on room treatment surely? That's why us home recordists don't bother with it ... no-one spends that much money on something that doesn't have dials, faders and flashing lights.:cool:
 
There's a fine line between pro and not pro, in my opinion. It's really hard to definitively create the line between the two. My setup's probably worth about $6000, and I've gotten some pretty damn good results. I doubt your grandma would hear it and say that it was done in a home studio.

Do you have an equipment list online somewhere, C7sus?
 
If I can be so bold, my guess is that the line between pro and not pro is largely in your ear not your gear? I don't mean pros can use cheap gear, but bands go to pros because of their experience and ability to do a job as fast as they can make their music (which is slower if they've been to c7's hashish joint - mwah!).
 
My setup is barer than bare bones.:(

Neolithic-era Dell PIII500, 640mRAM, Sony burner.

CWPA9.03 really.

Darla20 (winces)

Event Tria mons (smiles)

Mackie 1402vlz (liked it when I got it but...............)

Boss DR770

Roland U-20 as controller for JV1010 synth mod.

MM2x2 USB MIDI interface.

JoeMeek VC6Q (needs work. I unplugged my P-bass from it the other night and got about a minute of crackling and weird noise with NOTHING on the input whatsoever.)

Davisound TB-10 (Voxvender's:D) Haynes Davis is cut from different cloth than the rest of us but the guy knows SS preamps.

Lexicon MPX-1

Roland SDE1000 delay

Furman PB-48 patchbay.

Monster 500 cables and snake, BLUE Kiwi cable, normal spaghetti box...............:D

BLUE Cactus

Rode NTV

Rode NT2

AKG C3000

About $1500 worth of studio treatment and 14-space slant rack over a 12" drawer I built myself.

Instruments and other crap:

1974 Gibson SG Standard (custonm-built lefty)

1977 Martin D-35L (another custom)

1985 Martin D-45L-Custom ( yet another custom)

2000 Lefty P-Bass

1970-71 Fender Twin

1947 Martin "A" Mando (converted lefty by John Bentley of Everett, WA)

FRAP pickups, a model "T" and a one-off custom Arnie did for me in 85...........

I dig old stomp boxes. Mutron III and Octave Divider. Early 80's

Morley Flanger from about 1980 or so..........

A Morley Rotating Wah/Volume I got off Ebay last year. Fixed it up and it's retro as it gets!

I keep telling Riley we're only about $20,000 away from having a pretty fucking nice homestudio.:)
 
c7sus said:
I keep telling Riley we're only about $20,000 away from having a pretty fucking nice homestudio.:)
Click to expand...

Actually, you're only about $1000 away from having a really nice studio. Spend $500 on a new computer and $500 on Sonar 3 Producer and you're there! You've got a good preamp and an amazing mic! What else you need?

Thanks for listing your stuff.
 
We're talking more at the level of "Divine intervention" or at the very least a contract signed with the Devil at the Crossroads........
 
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