"I bought a Dutch barge and turned it into a recording studio. My plan was to go to Paris and record rolling down the Seine."
Pete Townshend, The Who

What do you get when you combine a $150 microphone, a simple audio interface, a computer, audio recording and mixing software, and some musical talent? Maybe a hit record, even if it's made in an apartment living room in the middle of the night. The tools to produce quality music recordings are ridiculously good, affordable, and plentiful these days. It wasn't always like that.

Tags: Recording, records, reel-to-reel, Tascam, TEAC, Fostex, Scully, Les Paul, Led Belly, Mary Ford, Boston, shure

"I used to judge the quality of music by whether I could make a 90-minute cassette and not repeat any artists."

John Hughes

What? Another old audio format is making a comeback? Yessiree! If you want to be hip, then dust off your old Sony Walkman. But like me, you've probably dumped all your old cassettes along with your floppy disks and Trivial Pursuit. These days, my pocket can carry the same amount of music that drawers and drawers of cassettes can.

Tags: Analog, Cassette, Maxell, LP, vinyl, 8-track, High-bias, Tascam, Portastudio, Hip-Hop, Noise reduction, dolby, DBX