Home Recording Studio Help

[Augustine]

O.k. I'm in the process of building a home recording studio for my son (14). He has most of the equipment for what he wants to do...started with DJ equipment (mixer, turntables, scratch duo II), then got a midi controller/keyboard & Fruitloops software to make beats. Now he's decided to go to college (Full Sail) for a Recording Arts degree & got a mike & Reaper download to start & convinced us to turn the 3rd bedroom into a studio.

So, since I know there are a lot of very talented AOD folks out there, does anyone have any advice on sound dampening and design? Or a good place to find deals on things like a good microphone (he wants some mike by Blue), interfaces, software (pro tools), anything else???

[AutobahnFC]

Treating a room can be very expensive, so unless you plan to record tracks for commercial use, some simple bass traps would suffice. (check out recordingreview.com)
Monitoring system is very important. Invest in a decent pair of near field (flat) monitors and a good set of headphones (flat monitoring headhones)
Microphone...lots to choose from. Depends what you are using them for. But defo get a good pre-amp (mid-range will be good enough)
Get a decent sound card/interface
Your recording software depends on what you want to do really. But really, knowing engineering/producing, learning things like compression/EQing/mixing/etc are the fundamentals and the program is just secondary

[Ralph Mallett]

I DJ as a hobby, and I used to live with a guy who was a professional sound engineer.

The one piece of advice he gave me (expensive I know) was; get a Mac. And then get Logic.