Alright.  You’ve just booked a massively large account and your agent says you need a home studio as part of the deal.  Congratulations.  Now let’s go spend some of that money you haven’t made yet.  The buy list below assumes that you’ve got an idea of how this all goes together.  And also that you’re not squeamish about spending money – gotta spend money to make money kid.  Cheap out on anything you feel at your own peril.  Chances are the engineer on the other end is gonna know that that RODE you’re passing off as a U87 - isn’t, and will probably bitch about all the extra work you made them do – to the the client – not good.  Other than that I’ll list where substitutions can be made in the spirit of Yankee thrift.  On with the show.

1.  Computer. You can’t get it done without a solid CPU, I recommend a 15 MacBook Pro laptop as you’ll have the option for portability.  An iMac would work fine too.  PC users I’m cool with you all, love me some Windows 7, but do you really want that virus alert coming up during your session, fubaring the whole thing?  No. You don’t.  Now buy that Mac, and make sure it has Firewire (that new thunderbolt port is wicked fast but you can’t plug anything into it yet – they haven’t made one peripheral).  Oh and buy refurbished from the Apple Store.  It has the same 1 year warranty as new and it’s up to 30% cheaper.  But don’t be stupid buy the 3 year warranty even though it’s extra.

2.  Audio Interface / Audio Recording software / Hard Drive. You need something to get that audio into the computer. I’m a fan of Firewire audio interfaces, anything from Focusrite.  Their preamps are the bomb.  Unfortunately, Apple in it’s wisdom only put one Firewire port on that shiny new machine of yours, and you’ll need that for the external hard drive, so it’s gonna have to be a USB audio interface for you kid.  Most of them will be fine, its the preamp and mic we really care about.  Just make sure the USB audio interface has ZERO latency monitoring like this one here.  On to Audio Recording Software.  For my money Pro Tools can suck it.  It’s costly hardware and they charge you for software upgrades.  Why should you care?  Cause every time you get an update from Apple, you could be waiting up to 6 months to get an update from Pro Tools just to use your equipment that got broken when Apple updated something.  Oh and the good folks at AVID make you pay extra for it.  Nice.  So IMO buy something that will always work with your stuff and can handle what you’ll need to do, like VST plugins (Source Connect – see below). Go buy Logic Express from Apple.  Always upgrades just fine with your nice MacBook Pro. You’ll also need a Hard Drive to record all this magic to.  That’s an easy one.  With the best warranty in the industry The Glyph-Technologies 1TB Quad Interface found here. Firewire is the connector you want to use as it’s the only one fast enough.

3.  Preamp. If you’re a cheap ass and do spend decent money on a mic (see below), you theoretically can get away without using this if you bought a nice Focusrite Audio Interface.  However, my money says, sound the best the first time you take this thing head on and you’ll never be disappointed.  So spring for a nice mic pre! The Avalon VT-737SP is sweet. The Avalon M5 is pretty nice if you want to spend less.  And for the bargain shoppers out there there’s the Focusrite ISA ONE or the SOLO 610 for a classic tube sound.  But unless you’re doing a lot of trailers stay away from the tube, the current fashion is clean sounding stuff.

4.  Mic. This is easy.  You’ll need a couple.  Which ever one you buy, the client will request the other.  If you can find out before hand, great!  But if you’re not sure – buy both – your competitors have them both.  Each mic listed are studio standards with distinct advantages.  And you’ll be able to say, “yeah I have that too.” and that’s freakin’ cool.  First up: Sennheiser mkh-416 it’s the standard in most promo and many commercials lately.  Second: Neumann U-87, the granddaddy and gold standard.  It’s $3200 and doesn’t even include a mount.  Thanks Neumann.  So if you just can’t stomach buying what you should, get the TLM 103 it sounds almost as good and they’ll be fine with this as a U87 replacement…I hope so anyway. It’s your job, not mine.

5.  Booth. Yeah, you can build out a closet for about $200 so why would you buy a booth?  Because when your neighbor decides to watch a World Cup Match at full volume at 2 p.m. or the dog downstairs goes ape shit due to the door bell going off downstairs constantly for 2 hours, because the UPS guy pushed the button to hard – you won’t care like I did (true stories).  Whisper Room used to be “the booth makers“.  Not so anymore.  Vocal Booth makes a better box IMO and looks nicer and has better features for similar money.  They’ve upped their fit an finish to keep up with the times.  Whisper room looks like the 80′s for realz.  Besides Lady Gaga uses Vocal Booth it so it must be good right?  Vocal Booth, either Gold or Platinum 4×4 for $4295 or $5995 respectively.

6.  ISDN vs Source Connect. For ISDN you’ll need 2 things.  A box like this Zephyr from Telos – retails around $5000 but you can find them used for around 1500 depending on how new you want.  You’ll also need an ISDN line provided by your phone company, @ $50 – $70 per month.  Weeee!  Or you could go the wave of the future and get set up with Source Connect.  You’ll need a fast internet connection but you probably already have that, source connect is cheaper because it works with your Logic Express and there is no extra box.  It’s like skype for VO, it all happens over the internets of technology.  Buy Source Connect’s magic sauce here.

6. Cables, Mic Stand, Headphones, Etc. Jesus we’re not done yet?  Almost.  You should get yourself some decent XLR cables to connect that mic and preamp, also a $20 mic stand will be helpful, a $20 Pop screen, and a $20 music stand that attaches to the mic stand.  Thankfully all the mics you bought have clips that will fit on the standard mic stand you buy.  Just make sure you twist out any adapters and you should be fine (I’m looking at you Ben).  Oh, and you’ll want to monitor yourself in the booth with a nice pair of cans like these classics from Sony. And if you’d like to edit on reference monitors I suggest these. But don’t forget to buy two they don’t come in a pair.

So that’s it.  If you’ve been paying attention and keeping score you just spent around $12,800.00, if you were cheap and skipped the U87 and the Zephyr and opted for Source Connect (estimate before tax and shipping where applicable).

Obviously you could probably skimp out on some of this equipment but that’s a Pro Home VO Studio, which was the title of this thing.  Hey, you gotta spend money to make money.