Home recording

Home recording is the practice of sound recording in a private home, rather than in a professional recording studio. A studio set up for home recording is called a project studio or home studio. Home recording is practiced by indie bands, singer-songwriters, hobbyists, podcasters, documentarians, and even top-name acts. The cost of professional audio equipment has been dropping steadily in recent years, and information about recording techniques has become increasingly available due to the internet. These trends have resulted in a dramatic increase in the popularity of home recording, and a shift in the recording industry toward recording in the home studio.

At minimum, a home studio consists of a recording device, monitoring equipment (speakers and/or headphones), input devices (e.g., microphones) and musical instruments.

Until the late 1970s, music could be recorded either on low-quality tape recorders or on large, expensive reel-to-reel tape machines. Due to their high price and specialized nature, reel-to-reel machines were only practical for professional studios and wealthy artists. In 1979, Tascam invented the Portastudio, a small four-track machine aimed at the consumer market. With this new product, small multitrack tape recorders became widely available, and grew in popularity throughout the 1980s. In the 1990s, analog tape machines were supplanted by digital recorders and computer-based digital audio workstations (DAWs). These new devices were designed to convert audio tracks into digital files, and record the files onto magnetic tape (such as ADAT), hard disk, compact disc, or flash ROM.

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