Home Brew Audio
Show Notes
In this podcast, you get to meet Dale Hensel and Ken Theriot, the two creators of Home Brew Audio. Ken schools Dale in the basics of recording and shows him how a $5 microphone can produce better audio than a $500 microphone and preamp, proving once again it’s not the gear that makes for great audio but the know-how.
Link to the Podcast
Start a home studio? You probably already HAVE a home studio! If you are like over 70 percent of Americans, you have a computer in your house. That means 7 out of 10 American readers only have to learn to use the home recording studio they already have. And here’s the best part. You don’t have to spend any money to start using it! If you have internet access, or a friend who does, just download the free (open source) software program called “Audacity,” which does multi-track recording and audio editing. Now you only need a microphone like the little PC mics that often come bundled with new computers. If you don’t already have one of those, you can pick one up for 4 or 5 dollars.
I just did a search on Google for “starting your own home recording studio,” and one of the top searches proudly boasts that you can do so for….wait for it—“under $1,000!” Choke, sputter, gasp. What? That’s supposed to convince me to start a home studio? Folks, even if you had to buy a PC microphone for your set-up, you’d still have 3 fewer “zeros” in your price-tag than that.
Yes, there is gear that costs a lot of money. But if you can start out, which you can, for under $10, and then upgrade your studio a bit at a time, why wouldn’t you? Even if you’re super rich and could afford thousands to start a home studio, you’d likely end up with tons of pretty gear you don’t know how to use, or don’t need. The best bet is to start modest, learn the power of the lowest-price gear, and then gradually upgrade until you reach a point where you can produce the quality you need.
I’ve heard any number of bad-sound audio recordings that came from really good gear. And I have heard excellent recordings that came from gear costing a fraction (and I mean on the order of 1/500th) of the cost. The key is this: knowledge trumps gear. If you learn how to get the best possible audio from the cheapest gear, then ultimately you’ll settle into a home studio set-up that produces exactly what you need to produce, at the lowest possible cost, which, as I have mentioned, can be a tiny fraction of what you might otherwise pay.
There are some great resources on the web to teach the kind of knowledge I’m talking about. One such resource is a site called Home Brew Audio, where you can find tutorials, informative articles, and access to resources geared toward helping you make the best recordings possible. So what are you waiting for? Cost is no longer a reason to avoid starting a home audio recording studio. Go to it, and have fun!
Our primary mission at Home Brew Audio is to teach home recording concepts and skills that can then be used with any recording system or software. It just so happens that you can start this journey with free recording software called Audacity.
In order to demonstrate how little money it takes to get up and running with your new home studio (FREE…for most people!), our first several tutorials are done using Audacity. But these techniques are transferable to any audio software with very little translation. So once you learn the concepts, it will just be a matter of locating where the different controls are in the different programs. The more advanced technique tutorials will use Reaper and Adobe Audition instead, due to the limits of Audacity.
I felt I should make this clear since there are several folks out there uploading tutorial videos on “how to use Audacity,” and I wanted to make it clear that Home Brew Audio is all about producing professional audio from home no matter what program is used.
I’ve been really vocal about the fact that starting a home pc recording studio is much faster and much cheaper than most people realize. In fact, I say you should start out, especially if you’re new to recording, spending no more than $5.00 or so. Why?
Well, first of all…because you CAN. Secondly, when you learn just how good the audio from a studio like that can be, imagine what it could sound like at the next level up! That first jump will cost you only around $25.00. Then you learn a bit more, and max out the audio quality at THAT level, discovering in the process once again that audio quality is more about technique and know-how than about expensive equipment.
At some point along this process, you’ll find the right audio quality for your particular needs. For many, it will be a set-up costing somewhere between $5.00 and $100.00. Others may want more capability and will find their stopping-point at a higher budget level.
The result of following a process lie this is that you ultimately produce exactly the audio quality necessary for you needs without spending money on features and gear that you don’t need. A common mistake recording beginners make is to buy hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars in gear and software, only to find that their recordings just aren’t that great. Sometimes these folks think “maybe I need THAT microphone, or THAT software, to get the audio quality I need. But again, they find their audio didn’t really improve. Eventually these folks are likely to give up on the whole thing, thousands of dollars to the bad.
Starting out with the cheapest gear, however, and squeezing every last drop of audio quality from it before moving on to the next level and doing the same, will both save you money AND improve your odds of producing great audio. It’s a win-win!
If you are convinced, you may be asking how you get the knowledge needed to follow a process like that. Fortunately there are a LOT of tutorials out there on the web for home recording. Go to YouTube and type “home recording” in, and you’ll see. Of course I am partial to our tutorials at Home Brew Audio;). Our tutorial videos are both entertaining and informative. And we add new ones all the time.
Whatever source of knowledge you decide to use, starting out “bare-bones” and adding just what you need when you need it is the fastest way to produce quality audio for the least amount of money. And who would argue against something like that?
By the time you finish reading this article, you will have a functioning multi-track digital audio pc recording studio without having to spend any money. Interested? Read on!