DIY: Home Recording

Words by Ren Alcantara

We did a quick article on home recording a few months back, but with the continuation of social distancing, more and more people are getting into creating content from their homes. Whether it’s for a podcast, making music, or a side-gig doing voice overs, recording at home is more possible now than it has ever been. You just need a little hardware, a space, and most importantly, creativity.

To be perfectly honest, if you have a modern smartphone, you have enough hardware to record. The microphones on these phones are surprisingly good, and as long as you’re not trying to meet some sort of recording industry standard, it should be more than capable for the task.

If you’re going to use your phone for recording, bear in mind a few things. Firstly, you’re going to want to get close to your device’s microphone. This achieves a few things, not the least of which is capturing as much of your sound source as possible. When you get close and the microphone picks up more of the source, it also gives background sounds less of a chance to get into the recording. Remember though, that getting too close may change the quality of the audio being recorded, so experiment with distance a bit until you get the sound you want. You don’t even really need a stand—putting your phone atop a standing roll of toilet paper will do. Just increase the recording resolution to as high as your app will allow, and let your creativity shine. We’ve actually recorded a podcast this way, while the quality wasn’t the same as our regular equipment, it was surprisingly usable. A step up from recording with a bare phone is using a plug-in microphone. Lots of options exist here, but they are essentially the same. A dedicated mic that plugs into your phone’s 3.5mm jack will likely have better hardware than the little mic inside your mobile phone, and if you have something like a lavalier mic with a long wire, you can get it nice and close to your mouth if you’re speaking or singing, without having to talk into the buttom of your mobile. As a proof of concept, we also tried recording with my personal mobile and the Boya BY-M1 mic, and the quality was good enough that we have decided to stick with this audio for our regular Gadgets Magazine video newscasts (check those out on YouTube if you want to get an idea of the sound it manages to capture). Some lavalier microphones (like our Boya, and other similar ones) even have the ability to work with other recorders such as cameras, thanks to batteries that can provide the power that those devices need. Should your podcast evolve into a vlog or stream, you’ll be spared from immediately having to purchase new gear.

The next rung on the ladder is a standalone audio recorder. This is the setup I started with, and I chose it primarily for the versatility. With a standalone recorder (I have the Zoom H1n and the Zoom H5), you aren’t physically tied to more than a single piece of equipment, which makes recording anywhere—even your car, if it comes to it—possible. The Zoom recorders I mentioned have their own perfectly capable microphones, and are small enough to pop in a bag. As a bonus, many of these recorders also work as audio interfaces, allowing you to connect straight into a computer or even iPad with a bit of additional hardware, giving it even more usability. The portability, versatility, and decent quality made this option a clear winner for my use case, and it continues to serve me well. The drawback here is that there are better-sounding microphones and interfaces in the market, as a device that does many things well, still probably won’t do any of those things as well as a piece of kit that’s dedicated to a single task.

Another option that’s about the same as a recorder, at least price-wise, is a USB microphone. There has been an explosion of capable USB microphones of late, and a quick search on on your online retailer of choice will likely show

Regardless of the route you take with hardware, something that is of paramount importance is the space in which you will be recording. The “best,” most expensive hardware setup recording in an echo-y, reverb-y bathroom won’t give you a recording that’s as good as a decent setup in a quiet, even DIY-treated room. If you have a walk-in closet, you’re all set. The clothes in there should soak up enough of the audio bounce to deaden the sound of your recording to a manageable level. If you don’t have that, but have a cabinet, that will make for a reasonable audio booth as well. Just part some clothes, shove your mic in there, and get recording. It’s surprising how well that works. If that isn’t an option either, grab some pillows, comforters, mattresses, cushions—- anything thick, fluffy and sound absorbent, and make yourself a pillow fort. It might not be particularly roomy, so it might not be an option for musical instruments, but that should work great for recording voice. Just try not to fall asleep. Alternatively, propping some of those materials up on the walls of a reasonably-sized room might work well enough to make musical recordings. Just keep tweaking until you get as much of the reverb deadened as you can.

Free recording software is all over the place and some, like Bandlab, even let you record different tracks to stitch together later on, right on your phone. If you have an iOS device, you’ve got it even easier. Garageband is a great, easy-to-use piece of software that will allow you to do a LOT of stuff, even more so if you have a large device like an iPad. Other Digital audio workstations include the free Audacity, Reaper, and a whole host of others that offer varied prices and features. All these take varying amounts of time to understand and use effectively, but the basics of stitching tracks together should be straightforward enough to grasp in one sitting.