For mastering, undoubtedly you will aspire to a DAT recorder. Digital Audio Tape is now the professional standard and there are few reasons to use anything else. If you can't afford DAT yet, then you will have to make do with cassette for the moment, but bear in mind that you will never achieve professional results this way. Even the best cassette decks don't have good enough sound quality, particularly when it comes to making copies of your masters. Use a cassette deck for mastering only while you are practising your skills. Reel to reel tape however is still a very viable option and has the advantage that the tape is easy to edit with simple equipment and materials. I still have a reel to reel stereo recorder as well as a DAT and I won't be getting rid of it until it wears out sometime in the very distant future. I no longer need it for editing because I have digital editing equipment, but I still love that old analogue sound!

To hear what you are creating with your MIDI equipment, you need monitoring - a stereo power amplifier and speakers. Hifi equipment is OK to start off with, but once again you should be using the same equipment as the pros use. The power amplifier should be just that with two inputs, two outputs and a mains switch - no other controls apart from volume controls maybe, and definitely no tone controls! 'Near field’ monitor speakers are available at a reasonable price which are exactly the same models as you will find in the top professional studios. I won't name names since fashions in monitoring will undoubtedly change, but look out for the near field monitors perched on top of the mixing console in photos of pro studios, and match them up to what you see in adverts. You can't go wrong! Where you can go wrong however is when you want to have 'main’ monitors as well as near fields. Near field monitors are small and therefore don't produce much bass. Main monitors are larger and can produce the bass, but it's not always as accurate as it should be. You may end up making bad judgments about how much bass you put on your recording because of deficiencies in the speakers. I would go for top of the range hifi speakers for main monitors because they are more accurate than speakers that are probably more suitable for PA because of their greater efficiency and sheer sound output. I use B&W 801 main monitors on the grounds that if they are good enough for Abbey Road, they are good enough for me - and they are good! Although I do stress that you should take note of what professionals use, because they have learnt their trade and you are learning yours, in the end decisions on sound quality are down to your own ears. Sooner or later you are going to have to trust them.

Well, after all, this article is all about how to set up a home recording studio! By 'recording studio’ it is generally understood that you can bring in any combination of musicians with any combination of instruments, up to the physical capacity of the room, playing any style of music, and make a successful recording. To do this you must have a multitrack tape recorder, either analogue or digital. You may even have a multitrack hard disk recorder and it will achieve the same ends. Modular digital multitracks (sometimes called MDMs) are popular since you can start off with one and add more, which will synchronize quite easily, as finances permit. The recording studio may incorporate MIDI equipment, but it's a bigger, all-encompassing concept than the MIDI studio. For such an all-encompassing concept, a more complex mixing console is necessary. All recording consoles have a monitoring section, which is in effect a mixer within a mixer. The monitoring section allows you to listen to, and make a temporary mix of, the sounds that you have already recorded to tape as you continue to add overdubs. Although it may be possible to use a cheaper PA console and make perfectly adequate recordings, I wouldn't advise it unless you really know what you are doing. Amazingly enough, even the lowest cost consoles from the reputable manufacturers offer excellent sound quality. If you can afford to pay more, then you will get extra channels and extra facilities, and digital recording consoles are now available at the top end of the project studio price bracket which have facilities that were once the domain of the highest cost studio facilities only. Don't forget that any professional mixing console should be able to provide phantom power to capacitor microphones.