Perhaps you have a beautiful voice and dream of recording it down. Unable to make it come true? Don’t make yourself at a loss, just a few gadgets and several steps will make it.

First of all, you have to check if you have got all the following equipment in hand:

• Microphone
• Audio interface
• Digital Audio Workstation software
• Studio Monitor/Speaker/ Headphone
• Computer

Microphone may be regarded as the most important equipment of your home recording system. A microphone good or bad will make a big difference but decent microphones means more money you have to spend. What's more, a whole recording system always cost the earth. Nobody wants to break the bank at last, so a USB microphone will be your best choice.

Audio interface will be connected to your microphone, computer and studio monitor. Bad audio interface will ruin the final effect as well. There are batches of audio interfaces on the market. Some with good reviews are worth of shelling out your money.

As for DAW software, some audio interface suppliers will provide such kind of recording and mixing software. What you need to do is to install it into your computer.

You may hear that studio monitor is a fancy name for speaker. To be fair, they are a little different. Speakers are good enough for you to watch movies and listen to certain music. But if you want to check the final effect of your voice, you will be better off with studio monitors. And to make sure you can hear your voice in reality, a decent pair is a must. Try to aim around $300.

If you want to keep your total expenditure to less than $1000, headphones will be better than speakers and studio monitors. Compared with speakers and studio monitors, headphones are more often used by people though studio monitors can give a more realistic presentation of your voice.

You don’t need the fastest computer. A computer with Core-I or Core-2 series processor will be ok.

Once you get all the equipment, what you need to do is to hook them up and install the software driver. Before recording, learn some mixing and how to use the software.