Mac Audio Guy

I recently received an e-mail from Mike Hohmann and he wants to set-up a home studio using his new iMac and GarageBand, but he was confused with what mics, audio interface and reference monitors he should get, in short, he asked “I know this is a lot of info to cover but I am doing as much research as I can before I spend my hard earned money and simply put I need professional advice from anyone who really knows this stuff inside out and can ask the right questions and say okay here is what you need to get and you should be good to go for awhile. I would like to spend around 1000 dollars for this stuff give or take a little…”

This got me to thinking. What gear I would buy, in order to put together a flexible Mac based home audio recording studio?
Okay, here it is; The amazing $1000 Mac Audio Guy home studio gear list.

First you will need some microphones, whether you’re a guitarist who needs to mic your amp or your acoustic guitar or if you’re a singer, or even if you’re a drummer, you’ll need some good mics. The most versatile, most rugged and the one mic I’d take to a desert island is the Shure SM 58. Note that the SM-57 and the SM-58 are nearly identical mics . The SM-58 has a spherical windscreen whereas the SM-57 does not. The windscreen makes the SM-58 a little better to sing into because it takes care of a lot of vocal pops. Shop around and you can find a SM-58 for $99. Next I would recommend getting a pair of matched condenser microphones. Condenser mics are generally more precise mics and are great at capturing the nuances of a performance, however they are fragile and require a phantom power source, so condensers are more likely to be used in the studio, rather than onstage. To stay under the $1000 dollar budget I chose the Audio Teknika AT2020 as a good condenser for about a $100 and I put two on our list and I actually was able to get some headphones thrown in as a package deal. The reason you want two matched condenser mics is so that you can do stereo recording, for a drum kit, for example. There are some other good condensers in this price range, the AKG Perception 1000, the M-audio Nova, a couple from Blue Microphones, and from MXL, you can shop these microphones and see if you like the sound of one over another, but for the purposes of simplicity and a value I’ll go with the AT2020 for my list.
So i’ve spent a third of the budget on three Mics. Now, if you are a keyboardist/composer, you may want to substitute a MIDI Keyboard controller like the M-Audio Keystation 61 for one of the mics, but for the purposes of this article I’ll consider your instruments as separate from the studio budget.

Next we need an audio interface to get the audio from the mics into your Mac. There are a bunch of two channel interfaces out there ranging from $150-$500, but I’m going to go with an audio interface that is also an analog mixer. The Alesis Multimix 8 FW or the Multimix USB2.0 mixer/interfaces are a great bargain. For $300 you get an eight channel mixer with four pro-quality mic pre-amps and it acts as an ten channel in and two channel out audio interface, either over Firewire or USB 2.0. I would choose the USB 2.0 model simply because I have more USB inputs than Firewire inputs on my Mac. So I killed two birds with one stone by adding the Alesis Multimix 8 USB 2.0 to my list at $299.99. But wait there’s more! The Alesis Multimix ships with Cubase LE music software that you can use in addition to GarageBand on your project. But wait there’s ever MORE!! By shopping around, I found I could get the Mulimix, an AKG Perception Mic and a table mic stand and cable package from BSW http://bswusa.com/ for the same $299.99 price! So now I’ve got four Mics and a interface/mixer for just under $600. Yeah Baby!

If you’re going to be recording you’ll need some headphones and some reference monitors (speakers) Reference monitors is just a fancy name for speakers that are supposed to be more accurate than home speakers. First off, I’l add Sony MDR-7506 headphones to our list. These are very accurate professional headphones and at $99 they are a bargain. And so that only leaves us $200 to buy speakers. If I want to stay under my budget, I have to to go with a Bargain. The Alesis M1 ACTIVE 520s are a 75W bi-amped active speaker for $199 a Pair. And that just squeaks me under my budget at $993.99, enough for a six pack left over. .

(Note on my shopping cart figure they didn’t total up the two AT2020s so that’s why it’s a hundred dollars too low.)

Okay, so I was able to put together a studio for under a thousand, but to be honest I would have spent about another $200. I would have spent an extra $100 over budget and purchased the KRK RP5 monitors for $300 a pair. And then add another $100 for Mic stands and cables and we’re really at $1200. However, with some clever comparison shopping online you may be able to get everything for a little less or get cables thrown in as a package deal.
So there you have it, the amazing Mac Audio Guy $1000 dollar studio (give or take a little.)

written by macaudioguy