What equipment would I need for a home recording studio?

Home recording studios can vary tremendously. A home studio can be as simple as a cassette deck and an inexpensive microphone set up in the corner of your bedroom. Of course, you can opt for something elaborate, like a multitrack digital recorder with thousands of dollars in outboard gear and expensive instruments residing in an acoustically treated addition built onto the side of your house (whew!). Your first step in choosing what type of home recording system to buy is to determine your recording goals. Use the following questions to help you uncover what it is that you truly see yourself needing (and wanting) in your home studio. As you answer these questions, remember that most recording studios aren't built all at once — pieces of equipment are added slowly over time (a mic here, a preamp there). When getting your first home studio system, start with only those pieces of gear that you really need and then add on slowly when you get to know your equipment. For most home recordists, the weakest link in their recording system is their skill as an engineer. A $2,000 mic is useless to you until you gain an understanding of the subtleties of mic placement, for example. You may want to wait to buy that next piece of gear until you completely outgrow your present piece of equipment. To get an understanding of what kind of home studio is best for you, ask yourself the following questions: 1) How much money can I spend on equipment? 2) Is this studio just for me or do I intend to hire it out to record others? 3) Will I be recording everything directly into the mixing board or will I be miking most of the instruments? 4) How many tracks do I need? 5) Will I be sequencing the parts or playing the instruments live?