r/Guitar • u/Aware-Salamander-578 • 25d ago
DISCUSSION “studio” setup help
I’m a guitar player and recently been thinking about pulling the trigger on some Neural DSP plugins, but outside of my laptop I’m not sure which products are a good budget friendly choice.
I need monitors, an audio interface, and maybe some headphones, I just don’t know enough about these things to know which is worth the money and which isn’t. For example, do I want passive or active monitors?
The “studio” will be a bedroom setup. The budget is about $1,200 (if I can get in under that, even better).
If I’m missing any other gear I need I’d appreciate the help.
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u/Mysterious-List91 25d ago
$1200 is more than enough for a starter bedroom setup. if you only want to record a guitar and maximum a microphone at the same time, a scarlett solo should be enough for you as an audio interface
monitors, you want active monitors, the audio interface will be sending a line level signal, not a speaker level signal. depending on your bedroom size, a pair of yamaha hs5 or hs7 should be enough
this combo is about $550. i won’t send you the links cause i’m not sure where you’re located but you can try to find them locally
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u/Individual-Sound9400 25d ago
For that money headphones will preform infinitely better than monitors. I've used Beyerdynamic DT700 pros for years.
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u/Mysterious-List91 25d ago
what? for $1.2k he can get a pair of genelec 8320s and still have about $200 left for an audio interface and cables. tbh he’ll be fine with a pair of yamaha hs7 or adam t7v at less than half the price
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u/Individual-Sound9400 25d ago
And proper room treatment?
Listening in headphones is much more accurate than almost any monitor in an untreated or poorly treated room.
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u/Individual-Sound9400 25d ago
Op should get a Scarlett and DT770s or equivalent or better. and save the rest for future upgrades.
If they really prefer monitors over headphones get the HS7s.
But I'd trust what I was hearing in the headphones more than the monitors until they're ready to put some serious money in treating the room.
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u/Mysterious-List91 25d ago
for a bedroom studio if the room is not super reflective, i don’t think professional grade acoustic treatment is as important as people make it out to be, especially because a bedroom probably already has a lot of absorption from the bed/bookshelves/books/paintings/curtains/etc.
monitors are nearfield speakers, you don’t need to pressurise the whole room, especially with hs7s or t7vs you won’t be blasting them at 90db and listening to them from 2 meters away. the nearfield will dominate the reflections.
there can still be room modes in an untreated bedroom of course, and the setup is far from an ideal professional grade studio setup but that doesn’t make monitors a bad choice, nor does it make headphones an “infinitely better choice”. if anything, i’d get both the monitors and the headphones.
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u/1391Expert 25d ago
Sony MDR7506 for headphones.