How to Build a Budget Studio

Clear out a closet that's at least big enough to walk into, about six feet by six feet. If producing a live band, you may need to set aside a small room. The ideal room will have a carpeted floor, for acoustic value. Hardwood floors need to be dampened for sound. The walls and ceiling should be covered with eggshell foam, pasted or stapled to the walls.

Set up your audio interface in the "booth," along with the various cords needed on both ends. In the booth, you'll need RCA plugs, amplifier plugs and other audio inputs to connect to audio equipment like guitars and microphones. The output should connect to a storage server that stores raw audio data. An extremely fast connection should be used to encode this data live, so Firewire, USB 3.0 or eSATA are the proper connectors for your audio interface.

Create a dedicated "work" computer for audio processing and post-processing. On the server connected to the audio interface, your raw digital audio can be leveled and mixed with various post-processing elements, like the beat in hip-hop songs, for example. Various software, like MixPad Pro, GarageBand and Apple's Logic Studio can be used for all of these tasks, and require a powerful, dedicated computer to process the huge files generated by live recording.