Building Our Own Studio (HELP!)

Hey guys! Things have been so rough financially lately it’s been difficult getting back into the studio. With taxes, property taxes, and a shit load of fees to start my real estate career, plus money for Holly’s MRI for her shoulder, it’s been super difficult to find the time OR finances to get back into the studio to finish our song.
She’s been out of work for 2 weeks so I’ve been trying my hardest to help pick up her financial setbacks. And in this time we realized that it’s still going to cost us almost $400 to finish our song the way we want. We started really talking about it, and by the time this song is done it will have nearly $1,500 put into it. I had a really eye-opening conversation with someone and they told me, “You really should invest in doing this yourself.” So we made up our minds.
I’m looking for a comprised list of what you need to do a decent home studio. I mean like right down to desks and speakers, cables and mics. Thank you guys so much!!!

DUDE ED!! I knew I could count on you! I love the shitter vocal booth, lol! I’m screenshotting all of this, thank you!

I agree with @Radu-Cristian Perde about the mic. SM7b is a better studio choice that’s still affordable, other popular vocal mics start going up into the $900+ price range.
I also agree 100% with @Firsty Lasty when he said “don’t go into this expecting it to be cheap and easy; that won’t be the case, even if making a home studio is the right thing to do.”
Investing into a home studio is definitely the right direction today, but it is not cheap or easy. As long as you can be patient and accept that it will take time to both obtain the things you need as well as learn how to use them and learn how to record and mix properly, you will be fine. From experience I can tell you that it is DEFINITELY WORTH IT, but it does come with its share of frustration and a steep learning curve. In any case, I am here to help if you have any questions at all.
Lastly, I disagree with some of the comments about acoustic treatment; it is helpful, but not imperative. Good acoustic treatment is expensive, cutting corners here is useless because it does NOT provide the same absorption, dampening etc. that good materials would so you would waste your money on something you would have to replace later. In the meantime, you can work around a less than ideal room. By close micking guitar cabinets and adding an IR or reverb in the box. I loved the shitter thing, but I would actually avoid recording vocals in a bathroom, too many reflections that you have no control over. That’s not to say you can’t record the bathroom’s reverb separately from the main vocal by re-amping or capturing an IR. In a small environment, stick to close range speakers (the ones previously recommended are fine, but you will need a sub and that is NOT cheap) or even start with a really good pair of headphones, I mixed with headphones for years before getting monitors and you’ll need headphones to track vocals anyway (I use Beyerdynamic 880s, a really trusted colleague has recommended Sennheiser HD 650 too).The human hearing is very adaptive. Despite the thing that many people will tell you,stay a bit closer to your speakers and monitor at lower volume. This way you will hear most of the sounds coming directly from your speakers and will diminish the reflections of your room or other surfaces.

I think this video should help too Jak!
It features most of the gear everyone recommended above plus some other stuff, I agree with his recommendations too.
Also, the headphones I recommended are Beyerdynamic DT880s (forgot to add the DT)






This reply was modified 5 months, 4 weeks ago by  Aileé Guerra Aréizaga.

Thanks @Radu! Yes, I agree on using a closet as a vocal booth.
@Sayonil maybe you can take screenshots and save them.

Thank you all SO much for your help everyone! I haven’t had time yet to read over these responses but I’m subscribing to this forum topic. I downloaded Reaper and HOLY SHIT. THIS is what I’ve needed. The videos are so broken down and easy to understand. If if I have questions I’ll post them here. Thank you everyone!