12 Budget-Friendly Upgrades That Transform Your Home Studio

If the words ‘upgrade your studio’ fill you with anxiety and thoughts of maxing out credit cards on vintage synthesisers, high-end microphones, Buddha statues, and expensive coffee machines, fear not. That isn’t the intent of this article. Instead, here are 12 recording studio ideas, many of them overlooked, that are low-cost but can make a huge difference in levelling up your home studio and music-making. A music studio with a professional, creative air can also be a cool home studio. Let’s make it happen!

A studio chair that loves your back

When discussing ideas for a music studio, the usual suspects are microphones, monitors, plugins, that sort of thing. But what about your back? You only get to have one of those. If you want to keep your recording studio budget-friendly, years of bad posture leading to expensive osteopath sessions and pain medication will steal money that you could be spending on fun music gear. There are great office and studio-friendly chairs that aren’t too expensive. Remember, buy an affordable studio chair, not a cheap one. In other words, it’s still well built, provides back support, and is comfortable. 

Desk riser

Speaking of back pain, not enough people are aware that having their computer/laptop screen below their eyeline is an all-too-common cause of bad posture and the associated problems arising down the line. This is where a desk riser comes in: as the name suggests, it will literally raise your computer up to your eyeline so you’re not hunched over during DAW sessions. Just be sure to go for one which is configurable so it can work with your own height, as some don’t offer this.

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Percussion

Ok, let’s put back pain to the side and look at a fun recording studio idea. If you’ve ever been to someone else’s music studio and wondered why there were tambourines and bits of percussion lying around, it’s because they can be a great way to create organic sounds and rhythms when recording. Shakers, hand drums, the humble triangle — these are all mega-cheap, and can bring great value to your recordings. If you’re stuck in a rut of just using drum VSTs and the same old samples for drums and sounds in your sessions, a few bits of percussion could be a wonderful way to add some individuality to proceedings. And don’t forget the musical superpowers of your hands: clicking and clapping. These are free!

Remote recording

We mentioned desks earlier, and sometimes being too desk-bound can be a hindrance. A brilliant way to build up a collection of sounds and samples of your own is with a remote recording device — Zoom are a well-known and trusted brand for this. Instead of relying on the same old sounds and samples in your DAW, get out into your town, city, or the countryside and have your own set of unique sounds to use and edit in your music productions. For Zoom and other handheld recording devices, there are affordable products and, as ever, great deals can be found on eBay and the like. This also gives you the freedom to record around your home without lugging your whole setup with you.

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Acoustic foam panels

It’s all well and good acquiring great mics, monitors, and other top bits of music gear, but it would be churlish to ignore this all-important music studio idea: treating your home studio space acoustically. If you don’t, you’ll be recording unwanted reflections bouncing off the walls and around the room. Acoustic foam panels are a fantastic way to make sure your studio is optimal for recording clarity and mixing accuracy. Best of all, these are one of the cheapest studio upgrades out there.

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Studio monitor stands

Liberate those monitors! A great way to ensure you have a cool home studio is by freeing up some real estate on your desk space by getting your monitors on some studio monitor stands. And, on top of that space-saving, you can adjust the monitors’ height to have the sound aligned with your ears, which is key for making better mixing decisions and music production choices. Not to mention the unwanted bass frequency vibrations when your speakers are stuck on a desk.

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The joys of a hardware synth

Can you really claim to have a cool music studio without owning a single synthesiser? You might think a hardware synth has no rightful place in a home studio kept within a certain budget, but there are some incredible, affordable synths available these days, including fully analogue ones. Here’s our best affordable synthesisers guide that proves it. If you’ve tried being fully ‘in the box’ and find yourself yearning for something different, perhaps the tactile, physical touch of a synth with its keys and effects buttons could bring new inspiration to your studio.

Portable SSD

You might have heard that all those saved project files, sample packs, VST instruments and software effects might put a bit of strain on your computer’s on-board memory. If you don’t want all that to slow your DAW performance to a snail’s pace, getting your most burdensome files and software onto an external hard drive is a godsend. Also, having your precious music and favourite sounds backed up is vital — ask anyone who's lost a portion of their life’s work when a hard drive has died or a nasty virus infects their laptop. Prepare for a rainy day and all that! 

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A good pair of studio headphones: because you’re worth it

We mentioned the importance of buying affordable gear, not cheap gear, earlier, and this applies more than ever when it comes to the headphones you’re making music and mixing with. Being on a budget certainly doesn’t mean you should make music with a pair of headphones that are designed for anything but. The likes of AKG and Sennheiser offer mixing-ready headphones at lovely prices. Here’s our Best Budget Studio Headphones guide to help you make a savvy choice.

Hang your axe with pride

No, this entry isn’t just a recording studio idea for any Vikings reading. We mean the guitar kind of axe. Guitar wall hangers are wonderful because they free up a big chunk of space that a guitar lying around in a case takes up, and you get to show off your beloved instrument and make your home/music studio feel more legit. Similarly, if you have a synth or two, you can look into getting these displayed on your wall too. Both can be done in a budget-friendly way, just don’t go too cheap for fear of your beloved instruments toppling to the ground.

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Tidy cables, tidy mind

Having dozens of cables all mixed up like a nightmarish bowl of abstract spaghetti is not a good music studio set-up idea by any stretch of the imagination. Also, having everything plugged in and ready to go, instead of constantly swapping plugs, is a big time (and stress) saver. Besides your bog standard power adaptors, a great option to explore is a power strip tower, which stands tall and elevated, and really helps with cable management. They also have the power to prevent any unwanted overloads and surges. Some even have filters which combat any humming and noise that you don’t want showing up in your recordings.

Mood lighting

This one is more important than you might think. Your music-making sessions deserve so much better than that garish office-style lighting above your head. If you’ve ever seen the general ambience favoured by online gamers and Twitch streamers, you may have noticed their lights, keyboards, and a lot of their general equipment give off all of the warmest colours of the rainbow. Take a note from this book so that your studio is a cosy, creative den. Look into LED strip lights, RGB lighting, maybe even a lava lamp if you’re feeling retro.

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