Building a home music studio for under $550

Can you build a home music studio for under $550? Challenge accepted!

For this build, we’re going to focus on gear value over volume of gear. What simple set of gear can we buy that provides the most bang for the buck, at the given budget?

We might end up with less total pieces of gear in the end, but the gear we do choose to buy will be of higher quality, easier and more fun to use, and will give us a much better sounding end result.

You can find many different example studio builds done at various price points inside of my Building a Home Music Studio series. Both this build, and the “under $750” build, attempt to hit a home studio sweet spot: high-quality enough for the casual music hobbyist to grow into for many years of fun songwriting at home, yet not so expensive as to be cost-prohibitive for a hobby.

Our final budget

Here’s the final gear list: we’re under our budget by $5!

Focusrite 2i2 USB Audio Interface + Audio-Technica ATH-M30x Headphone bundle: $259

Sennheiser e835: $94

Sennheiser e609: $99

Hosa MCL-110 10 foot XLR microphone cable x2: $34

Behringer MS2050-L Professional Tripod Microphone Stand: $19

Gator Frameworks GFW-MIC-0821 Compact-base Bass Drum and Amp Mic Stand: $40

Total: $545

Read on to learn more.

Design assumptions

I’ll assume that you already have some instruments lying around, and we’ll focus on gathering the gear necessary to record the commonly used instruments a home songwriter might write music with.

There’s no speciality mics included here; just good-sounding, general-purpose options that are easy to use.

I’ll also assume that you already own a computer and some basic recording software like Apple’s GarageBand, Ableton, Cubase, etc. If you don’t, or aren’t interested in computer-based recording, never fear! You don’t need to touch a computer to make music, and some simple gear options for doing this can be found inside of my Portable Recorder Writing Setup page.

Let’s get started.

Audio Interfaces

Having a lower budget means we have to sacrifice channel count, and we’ll need to stick to only two-channel interfaces. This will work perfectly fine for a home music writing studio, even if you’re recording drums: just throw two mics up in front of your drum kit, and that’ll be good enough to finish the writing/demoing of your songs.

For the biggest cost savings, we’re going to look for an interface bundle that also includes some headphones that we can use for both recording and listening back. This will save us money by not having to buy and set up dedicated studio speakers, dealing with room acoustics, and all of that more advanced stuff.

Keep in mind, you won’t be able to accomplish pro-quality music postproduction on a setup like this, so I wouldn’t plan on achieving any super high-quality mixes of your work using this level of gear. But, this will work out great for a simple home writing and demoing studio, plus maybe doing some very rudimentary and rough self-mixing, while still staying within our budget.

Interface bundle deals will change all of the time, but at time of writing here’s a bundle I’d consider:

Focusrite 2i2 USB Audio Interface + Audio-Technica ATH-M30x Headphones ($259)

The Focusrite 2i2 Audio Interface and Audio-Technica ATH-M30X headphones.

This bundle combines a two-channel USB-C interface with a good-quality closed-back headphone that will minimize headphone bleed making it onto your recordings. You get easy-access direct instrument inputs on the front for both recording channels, which is handy. If you decide to upgrade to a more professional, speaker-based system later on, you’ve got that option with the duel speaker outputs on the back of the interface.

So, there’s flexibility and some future-proofing built into this gear.

Other interface options (at a higher budget)

I’m choosing the Focusrite interface system here based purely on making this budget work. If you have just a little bit more money to spend, there’s actually some better interface options available, that I prefer.

It didn’t work out for this particular budget challenge, but I’d recommend checking into the SSL 2+ series of audio interfaces: they cost about $100-150 more than the Focusrite series, but there’s a significant build quality and audio quality bump that’s actually worth way more than the relatively small price bump would indicate, for this particular product. The SSL 2+ is one of the best bangs for the buck in the audio interface market, in my opinion, and is what I personally use for any casual home recording tasks.

SSL 2+ MKII USB Audio Interface ($300)

The SSL 2+ Mk II audio interface.

For the purposes of this budget challenge, we’ll go with the Focusrite interface bundle, but do consider upgrading to the SSL.

Microphones

It’s tough to find the very best-quality mics at this budget level. But, we can try: there’s always pro-sounding mics to be found at all price points.

We’ll need one mic that’s vocals-focused, plus a second mic that’s instrument-focused, and both mics should also be able to share in those duties, to a certain extent.

I’m going to choose two of the budget-model versions of some of my very favorite home studio mics (which you can find inside of my complete Home Studio Gear Guide).

Sennheiser e835 ($94)

The Sennheiser e835 dynamic microphone.

This is a standard, cheap but durable dynamic vocal microphone that’s used often for live sound. The Shure SM58 is the more famous mic in this style, but I think the Sennheiser version sounds much better, for the same price.

Sennheiser e609 ($99)

The Sennheiser e609 microphone.

This is a classic studio dynamic mic used often in the professional setting for recording guitar amps, but it can also work well for recording many different kinds of instruments. Try it out on clarinet, or the sound hole of an acoustic guitar. It can handle very high SPL levels without distorting, and it features very strong off-axis rejection, so it's easier and more intuitive to use in the often noisy setting of a home recording space.

Cables

There’s not much left in our budget to splurge on cables, so we’ll need to go with the budget Hosa brand cable. They’re not amazing, but they’re certainly good enough for casual home use, especially when bought new. You’ll want something that’s at least 10 feet long, and we’ll get one for each microphone.

Hosa MCL-110 10 foot XLR microphone cable ($17 x 2 =$34.00)

10 foot XLR microphone cable.

If you have a bit more to spend, it’s worth considering a slightly higher quality, more durable cable that will last you longer before shorting out. Mogami would be the pro studio name-brand option, and is what I use personally for all of the connections inside of my mastering studio, but those are probably overkill for the casual hobbyist.

The ProCo brand available at Sweetwater sits in-between the budget and pro audio brands of cable, and promises slightly higher quality at a slightly higher price. Might be worth a try, though I don’t have personal experience using this brand.

Mic stands

Our budget for mic stands also needs to stretch, so we’ll focus more on price than on quality here. No matter what brand we buy, we want one traditional-height boom stand, plus one shortie stand for maximum flexibility and convenience in our recording setups.

Behringer MS2050-L Professional Tripod Microphone Stand ($19)

A standard height boom microphone.

Not the most amazing quality here, but certainly good enough for the casual home user who’s working with mics that aren’t too heavy.

Gator Frameworks GFW-MIC-0821 Compact-base Bass Drum and Amp Mic Stand ($40)

Gator Frameworks Compact-base mic stand.

This stand is a very good deal; solidly constructed, and the weighted base means it can be used for kick drum, guitar and bass amps, and even as a desktop stand for something like a podcast, all in one piece of gear. There’s a lot of versatility in this shortie stand choice.

Caveats on mic stands and cables

All of these mic cable and mic stand choices are very much lower budget, good-enough choices made to fit into this particular budget challenge. I’ve prioritized our overall budget here towards maintaining our audio interface and microphone quality, as that’s what makes the biggest value difference for the hobbyist writing music at home.

But, for the record: I’m not a fan of buying the absolute dirt cheapest mic cables or mic stands. The constant daily frustrations of the buzzing in that shorted-out cable you bought used, or that cheap sagging mic stand that’s always moving around outweighs any of the one-time cost savings you get by going cheap, in my opinion. Quality stands and cables are not a sexy purchase, but they are a very practical and pragmatic investment into your daily quality of life inside the recording studio.

So, if you have a little bit more to spend, I always recommend going with K&M stands. They’re the pro audio studio standard for good reason, even though they didn’t fit into the budget on this particular challenge.

On the other hand, for the absolute maximum in cable and stand savings, you can always find $5 used mic and instrument cables and $10 used mic stands on Craigslist, or elsewhere on the used market. You’ll get what you pay for if you go that route, though it is a way to save some money.

How to save even more

I’m showing prices for new gear here, but new isn’t always necessary. Try searching for any of these items on the used market to save more. You might be able to reduce your total cost by another $50-100 from our initial budget, if you can find good-quality used versions of the gear listed above.

Open-box or in-store demos can also be a way to save, provided the units arrive to you in good working order. I recommend going with “Certified Used” programs from reputable dealers or manufacturers when available, for that reason.

The complete series of home music studio builds done at different price points can be found here.