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The Pros and Cons of the $5 Home PC Recording Studio

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Pros and cons of Cheap Home Recording StudioMost people don’t know that they can get started recording audio with a budget as small as $5.00. The only reason I don’t say zero dollars is that if you don’t have a microphone, you’ll need to buy one. A plastic PC mic will even suffice at this point. Now, those folks with experience recording audio from home will likely take issue with what I just said, so for them allow me to clarify. I recommend the cheapest recording set-up for beginners because they can still learn most of the basics they’ll ever need to know with that gear. Also, by learning the limitations of their current set-up, they will be better informed as to what else they need to get to the next level. I do not propose that the lowest budget recording studio will allow the most stunning audio ever. But most folks, even you experts out there, would be surprised at how good the audio produced from a “low-end” studio can be!
The Pros of a $5.00 PC Recording Studio
So what are the “pros” of a $5.00 home recording studio? Let’s take a look at the top three:

  • Cost: According to the US Census Bureau as long ago as 2003, “The majority of households have personal computers and Internet access. In 2003, 70 million American households, or 62 percent, had one or more computers, up from 56 percent in 2001.” More recent estimates put that percentage closer to 70 percent. That means that if they wanted to, 7 out of every 10 people in the US could start a home recording studio in the next hour.
  • Capability: In 2013, the availability of open source audio software and the average quality of consumer computers make it possible to do: multi-track” (recording one sound, then recording another on top of the first as you listen, etc.) recording at this budget level. Editing and mixing tools in the software make it possible to pan sounds left and right, equalize and otherwise treat or fix audio problems, and mix down to a stereo master file. That was pretty-much unheard of 10 years ago.
  • Affordable Upgrading: If you walked into a music store today and told a salesman you wanted to start a home studio, he’d try to talk you into spending several hundred (or even thousands of) dollars. You’d have some pretty nice gear, but odds are that you won’t need a majority of that gear to do what you need to do. You’ll also be totally overwhelmed by the knowledge needed to operate all this gear. The $5.00 studio is easy to learn, and allows you to incrementally add gear and/or software in order to achieve exactly the quality you need. That will save you time, frustration, and money in the long run.

The Cons of a $5.00 PC Recording Studio

  • Noise: At the lowest budget, sound is recorded through a very small microphone going directly into a factory sound card on an “average” computer. You’ll have noticed that there is a lot of buzzing, humming and hissing noise when you record with this equipment. There are things you can do to minimize noise, such as keeping the mic wire as far from plugs or other power sources as possible. You can also treat the noise after it’s recorded. But at the end of the day, the physical limitations in the amplifiers in “regular” sound cards, and construction of the $5.00 PC mics will mean a fair amount of noise is inevitable.
  • Capability: There are things you simply cannot do at the lowest budget level, such as use make use of MIDI, virtual instruments, record more than one track at a time, etc.
  • Ease of use: The $5.00 budget studio doesn’t have room in the budget for things like microphone stands, patch bays, cables, etc. It can be pretty slow-going trying to set the PC mic up to capture piano or guitar without a little more effort than many folks find feasible. Also, the cables for these mics tend to be pretty short, again making it difficult logistically to record.

Those are the major pros and cons of starting your home studio with the “zero-to-five-dollar” budget. The great thing about that budget level, though, is that you have little-to-nothing to lose and everything to gain. Once you get comfortable with the limitations, you can address them one-by-one, incrementally improving your set-up according to your own needs. Chances are good that if all you need to do is record your voice for podcasts, or video narration, you can get the quality you need by spending as little as $25 extra dollars for a USB microphone. Whatever your ultimate needs are, you really can’t go wrong starting at the lowest budget and working your way up.

Learn to record and produce professional-sounding audio from home without spending a dime for gear. Fun and short video tutorials show you how. We’ll show you how to start with a $0-$5 budget, and then how to improve your studio for a few dollars at a time as your knowledge and confidence increase.
See you around campus!

What is Digital Audio and Why Should I Care?

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digital-audio-pic

What is digital audio?

Wow, that’s a question that you’ll find answered all over the internet. And you might actually be able to understand some of them. It is almost an irrelevant question in this day and age, because it is the rare person who can even FIND analog (the opposite of digital) recording gear anymore…at least stuff you can afford on a really tight budget. If you want to start recording right now, for a budget of $5.00 or less, then you’ll be recording on computer, which means you’ll be creating digital audio.
OK, so I kind of hinted that I’d explain what digital audio was so that regular people can understand it, so I hope this will do the trick. If the audio is in a computer, it’s digital.
See? Was that so hard? Now you’re asking what I meant earlier when I said that “analog” is the opposite of “digital.” OK, how’s this? If the audio is on something physical like tape or on a record (those are the black, round, flat things your parents used to listen to music on) it’s analog.
Now there are some trouble-makers out there…I see you in the back! You want to get all picky and point out that “lots of audio outside the computer is still digital,” and just because it’s on tape, the audio could be digital.” The trouble-makers aren’t wrong, folks.
But ignore that! Yeah, forget about the fact that audio on phones and iPods is digital also. The smart ones out there knew that those things are just little computers anyway, right? And it won’t affect many of you to know that some digital media can be recorded to tape. But guess why you don’t need to remember that? Because if it’s digital tape, IT WILL SAY SO. It is rare enough that it will have a label saying something like DAT (digital audio tape) or something similar with the word “digital” in it.
So now you know the difference, right? Digital audio is “computerized” audio, and analog audio is recorded in some physical way onto records (all those little grooves) or tape (all those little magnetic particles).
Why should you care if you are going to be recording audio on your computer anyway? It’s digital right? Well…yes and no.

Getting Audio Into A Computer

It WILL be digital once it’s in the computer. But when it’s just a voice coming out of your face, it’s still analog. The physical medium is the air molecules your voice is moving. In order to make it digital, there has to be a machine that converts analog audio to digital audio. Amazingly enough, these are called “analog-to-digital” (A-to-D) converters. The converters play a large role in how good the audio sounds. If you’re just using the ones on the garden-variety sound card, the audio probably won’t be “high-end.” Audio interface boxes (mainly USB these days) typically have much better A-to-D converters.
One good example (and not just because I use one :-)) is the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 or Focusrite Solo.
focusrite_scarlett_soloThese interface units are actually doing two main jobs – conversion, as I just discusses a bit (no pun intended :-)), and amplification (mic preamps). In the old days you’d have two units for this – a converter and a preamplifier. But mostly these days (updating this in 2018) these interface units combine many functions, including A-D conversion, D-A conversion, and preamplifiers.
So now you understand the difference between digital and analog audio. Go forth and use your knew knowledge well!

Do You Know What EQ Is? The Killer Sound Edit

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EQ PictureHow many times have you seen the term “EQ” on your car radio or CD player, or your home entertainment system? If you are just learning audio production, no doubt you’ve been bombarded with references to different kinds of EQ (parametric, dynamic, etc.). But has anyone ever just broken it down for you in terms anyone could understand? Let me see if I can do that for you in this article.
Some people just take in information better if it is explained with very few technical terms, regardless of education or intellect. Heck, I have a bachelor of science degree and a masters degree, and I still hate reading overly-technical descriptions. So in that spirit, let’s talk about something that is bafflingly called “equalization,” or “EQ” for short. See, the name itself is not very descriptive, I don’t think. Here is what it really is. Ready for this?
EQ is turning volume up or down. That’s pretty-much it. Too broad? OK, let me add one more thing. EQ is turning volumes up or down on bass and/or treble knobs. I happily use those last two terms because you’ve seen them on your car stereos all your life, so I am making an assumption you’ve played with them and kinda know the difference between bass and treble.
Wasn’t that an informative article? Oh, you need a bit more? Ah, you’d like to know why it’s useful, or at least why you should care. Oh, alright; if you insist. Let’s take probably the easiest example I can think of…your car stereo. The most basic EQ controls are bass and treble. If you’re listening to hip-hop, you may enjoy turning the bass knob (or slider) up because it will make the kick drum and bass synth or guitar much boomier. You can actually feel that bass now. On the other hand, let’s say you just want to listen to a basketball game on the radio. If your bass is turned up, the voice may sound muddy and hard to understand. Turn the bass back down and maybe bump the treble up a little bit. Bingo, you can now hear the voice much better. It will be more clear and easier to understand.
Are you getting the idea? Sometimes people turn both the bass and treble knobs all the way up. Well, this didn’t really accomplish anything except to do exactly what turning the “volume” knob up would have done! Now are you getting it? The difference between the main volume control and the EQ control is that the EQ adjusts ONLY the bass or the treble independently, while the volume turns EVERYTHING (bass and treble) up or down.
Now I sense you can handle a new term…”frequency.” When we say bass, we mean the sounds in the low frequencies of a song. Treble means the higher frequencies. More sophisticated EQs allow you to control more than just the bass and treble, adding a few more frequencies between the two, like “middle” or “low-middle” and “high-middle“. Obviously this gives you more control over what parts of the sound you turn up or down.
There is quite a lot to learn about EQ and frequencies. But for now, take this useful lesson: if you want to impress your friends with what an audio-geek you are, never turn all the EQ knobs or sliders all the way up or down at the same time, or else all you’ve done is turn the master volume up or down. Try turning one up and one down to see how that sounds. Or try moving just one control up or down and leaving the other one alone. That will make you seem much cooler;).

Binaural Brainwave Entrainment

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If you want to change your state of mind in about 20 minutes, all you need is a pair of headphones!

Did you know that just by playing two different (as in not the same note) steady tones, one in each ear, you can change the rhythms of your own brainwaves?  “And why would I want to do that?” you may ask.  Well let me finish;).  Did you know that certain brainwave rhythms, or frequencies, are associated with certain states-of-mind?  Ahhh, now I see a spark of understanding starting to flicker in your eyes.  YES!  Wouldn’t it be wonderful…almost magical…if we could change our states-of-mind in less than 10 minutes by putting headphones on and picking a mood?  Why, it sounds almost “Matrix”-like.  Welcome to the reality of binaural brainwave entrainment!  I know, the term doesn’t exactly trip lightly off the tongue, but it was coined by the neuro-scientists who discovered it.  It’s a fancy way of saying “syncing your brain to a beat.”
It doesn’t work if you just pound on your skull with your fist, or listen to rap music, though.  The beats needed for this to work have to be set up between your ears.  Stay with me for just a bit longer and let me try to explain.  If there is a musical note steadily sounding, and then someone starts playing a SECOND note that is just slightly different in tune, you’ll hear a sort of rhythmic “thrumming” sound.  Guitar players know this “thrumming,” beating sound very well.  It’s one way they can tune their guitar strings. You pluck two neighboring simultaneously, one of them pressed down on, say, the 5th fret.  If they are “in tune,” they will sound the same note, and a nice steady tone of both strings ringing will be heard.  However, if the open string is slightly out of tune (a little higher or lower in pitch) with the fretted one, you will hear beats.  Even if the two notes are only slightly different.  That’s how a guitar player knows the strings are out of tune.  He then slowly tunes one of the strings until the beats get slower…slower…and eventually go away completely, which is what happens when the two notes are the same.
The interesting thing about this is that the beats are kind of an illusion.  If the rhythm of these beats is, say, 10 beats per second, it isn’t because either one of the notes have a rhythm of 10 beats per second!  Huh?  I know!  Freaky-deaky isn’t it?  It’s the combination of these two notes that causes our brains to sense thrumming instead of a steady tone.  If you ever took wave-mechanics in school, THAT is what we’re talking about.  Sound is made of waves in the air.  Two slightly different waves in the air will crash into each other, messing with both waves, until the result is something totally different from either original wave.  The resulting rhythmic thrumming is known as “binaural beats.”
So like I said, not just any rhythm will work for the mind-altering (ooo THAT sounds fun:)) mojo that IS brainwave entrainment.  It’s got to come from binaural beats, which your brain will best “hear” if the two tones needed are played in headphones, one in each ear.
So where in the world do you get such tones?  Well, you could make them yourself on your computer (learn how at http://www.homebrewaudio.com).  But wouldn’t it be better to get them from folks who have been studying and creating programs for EXACTLY this reason for 20 years?
Yeah, I thought so too.  I got my first Brainwave Sync tape (yeah…I said TAPE) back in the early 90s, and have relied on them for stress-relief, meditation, relaxation, focus, concentration, and just plain “shuttin’ out the world.”
They are still going strong! Click Here! to go to their site and browse around.
Here are some of their best programs:

-Tinnitus Cure
-Improve Memory
-Stress Reducer
-Power Nap

For their entire catalog, Click Here!

Binaural Beats – Helpful Real Thing Or Myth?

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Brain-WavesIf you’re wondering what the heck a “binaural beat” is you’re not alone. It’s basically about trying to align your brain waves with a desired frequency to influence your state-of-mind. Binaural beats refer to a pulsing sound we hear when two different sounds, each with different frequencies, are fed into our ears.
It is a phenomenon of human physiology, like where our ears are and how we process audio, that makes binaural beats real things. Yeah, I know, I answered that question a little early in the article, right? Actually I didn’t. I didn’t say if it was a helpful real thing. That part is yet unanswered. Curious? I hoped you would be.
First let me ask another question. Is hypnosis a helpful real thing? I know for absolute certain that trances are real. We go into and out of them all the time. But does that make them the doorway to changing deep-seated beliefs and behaviors in people. The scientist that lives in my head says there is some dearth of evidence on that last point. So it is with binaural beats. They are mathematically real, but do they actually DO anything for us?
When one of our ears is presented with a sine wave of a certain frequency, and the other ear is presented with a sine wave of a different frequency, our brains make it feel like we’re hearing a rhythmic thrumming or beating. We can control the source audio frequencies to speed up or slow down these beats in our heads. That part is undeniably and scientifically real. What may not be so real is the effect these beats have on our mood, minds, behavior, etc.
Neuroscience has lots of data to support the relationship between brainwave frequencies and mood. For example, alpha waves (8-14 Hz) occur in the brain when a person is relaxed but awake. If a person is focused and alert, beta waves (14-30 Hz) occur. There are associations with other frequencies but this should give you the idea.
The idea behind how to make this information useful is that it may be possible to “entrain” these brainwave frequencies in a person by having them listen to tones in headphones. If, say the proponents, listening to rhythmic hums beating at 10 Hz can cause alpha waves in the brain, then we can cause the relaxed feelings associated with alpha waves. We have evidence of the first direction (when a person is relaxed, alpha waves tend to occur), but whether it works in reverse (we can make alpha waves occur which will then cause relaxation) is another matter.
There are companies selling mp3s and CDs with music and sound effects mixed with binaural beats to produce a specific effect, or combination of effects. For example, there are programs for smoking cessation, stress reduction, memory improvement, meditation, losing weight, healing, etc. Wow. It really would be nice to think that all you have to do is listen to some music and you could stop smoking wouldn’t it? So what is the science behind all this?
Actually there is some science to support a proof-of-concept that brainwaves can be entrained as explained above, and that measurable changes in behavior can occur as a correlation in blind experiments (Lane JD, Kasian SJ, Owens JE, Marsh GR, Duke University, 1998 is one such). So that’s a good thing. I like actual evidence. It is logical to then assume that if binaural beats can entrain brainwaves of predictable frequency followed by predictable state of mind, behaviors associated with the particular states of mind are likely.
However, there is less evidence that binaural beats can make you lose weight or quit smoking. There is anecdotal evidence for this, as there is with hypnosis doing the same thing, but let us not forget the power of the placebo effect. If someone knows they have purchased the weight-loss program mp3 or CD, they are likely to already be motivated. And expectation effects could see them through to losing weight. Results that rely on that effect are not usually repeatable or consistent. Some people are just better at changing their behavior than others, I imagine.
So I think I have shown that binaural beats are not mythical. They’re definitely real. And there is some very convincing and real scientific evidence to support the possibility of brainwave entrainment to affect mood and state-of-mind. Whether those other things are possible remains to be studied. Your mileage may vary. I’d really like to see a double-blind experiment lead to better memory in the long term, or weight-loss. Then I’ll really go “all-in” with binaural beats as a useful therapy tool. Until then, at least I know my iPod can play me some alpha waves and I’ll probably relax. That’s pretty cool by itself. You can get pre-produced binaural beats here: http://audiorecordingathome.com/binaural-brainwave-entrainment
If you want to delve into the world of audio production immediately, you can start a home recording studio on your PC in the next 30 minutes or so – for free –  just by filling out the form at the top right of this page. Then you can learn to create your own binaural brainwave entrainment audio. Get started without spending a dime!  We also have free goodies;).