Building a Beat Making Studio with $1000

This is the last post in this Home Studio Basics series and if you missed the last two then I'll be linking the first post HERE and the second one HERE. I highly encourage you to check those out first because this post builds off of them.

To quickly recap, however, in the first part of this series we built a beat making studio with $350 and got Studio One Artist, the 3rd Party VST Support Add On, and a pair of Audio Technics ATH M50x. In the second post, we expanded the budget to $500, kept the previous purchases and added an M-Audio Keystation 49 MIDI Controller and a copy of Scaler. Today we are concluding this series by expanding our budget once again to 1000 and adding a few more things to our existing setup so let's dive right in.

So if we take our budget of $1000 and subtract the purchases from the first two videos in the series we are left with a total of $543.06. From here the next thing that I would buy is an audio interface and some studio monitors.

AUDIO INTERFACE

I mentioned in a video on my YouTube channel that you don't need an audio interface to actually make beats and especially if you're just starting out. Nonetheless, if you're at a point where you are ready to add some speakers to your setup you will, in fact, need one to connect those speakers. Additionally, an audio interface also allows you to record if you choose to do that later on whether it be artists or simply just to sample external sounds.

When it comes to audio interfaces in this range I immediately look at either the Focusrite Scarlet Solo or the PreSonus Audiobox. Now although the Audiobox is great and would pair nicely with Studio One Artist, the Scarlett Solo comes with too many good free extras to pass up. When you purchase a Scarlett Solo you also get Addictive Keys by XLN Audio, the Focusrite Red Plugin Suite, which includes an EQ and a Compressor, the Softube Time and Tone Bundle, which includes some more mixing plugins like reverb and delay, Ableton Live Lite and Avid Pro Tools First, which are both starter DAWs from each company, 2GB of free samples from the good people over at Loopmasters and even some free tutorial content and all that for $109.99 so like I said, too good to pass up.

Now, something to note is that the Scarlett Solo only has 1 mic input and you can certainly get something with more if you wish but for making beats I don't personally see a need or the value of getting something with more than 1. The only time you need more than 1 mic input is when you're recording multiple sources AT THE SAME TIME and we're being honest, that's rarely the case for us home studio producers and beat makers. I highly recommend the Scarlett Solo but of course, you know your situation best.

STUDIO MONITORS

Now as for the actual speakers my vote is gonna go to the Yamaha HS5s. When looking at speakers in this range I also considered the KRK Rokit 5s and although I do like those as well, I still prefer the Yamahas because, in my opinion, they produce a much flatter response (I myself own the HS8s and I absolutely love them).

Now I'm not gonna life choosing between these two sets of speakers was a bit difficult because the Yamahas are about $100 more expensive than the KRKs and when getting speakers you also need to consider things like cables and if you can some sort of isolation material to decouple them from your desk or stands. Given that each Yamaha speaker is $200 it was becoming a bit tough but luckily I found a great bundle on Amazon that includes both speakers, cables and some Auralex MoPads, which are speaker isolators for $399.98 so you're basically getting the cables and MoPads for free.

Once we take our remaining budget of $543.06 and subtract the $109.99 for the Scarlett Solo and the $399.98 for the Yamaha bundle we are left with $33.09.

So there you have it guys, we've built a beat making studio for $350, $500 and $1,000 dollars.

Now, of course, these are things that I would personally get if I was starting over but you might choose differently and that's ok. The goal with this series was to give you a better idea of what you need and showcase some practical choices within specific price ranges.

Happy beat making!