Recording and Audio Equipment

Choosing audio or recording equipment is a very personal thing. Ask various professional guitarists, audio engineers, and retailers for recommendations on specific equipment, and you will get dozens of different answers.

One very important thing to remember is that most audio equipment and a lot of recording equipment is engineered for popular music. It intentionally emphasizes high frequencies and oftentimes, boomy bass. For example, popular consumer brands like Bose or headphones like Beats by Dr. Dre can be great for pop music but are totally unsuitable for working with classical guitar and other classical music. This is true even of very expensive equipment.

When you go shopping, you can read specs and look at prices, but in the end, you have to experiment to see what works best for you in your environment, with your particular instrument, and your style of playing. I recommend finding a retailer with a liberal return policy (full refund and no or a very low restocking fee). For example, you are shopping for microphones. Buy several, test them over several days or a couple of weeks, decide which you like best, and return the rest. Be sure to open everything carefully and repack each item as carefully as possible. Most retailers have restocking fees, but if you are purchasing expensive items, it is worth paying the restocking fees to get the best microphone you can afford, and that is the best for your situation, rather than being stuck with a mic everyone says is great, but doesn’t capture classical guitar well.

Just like guitars, the more you spend on a piece of audio equipment, the better it will probably be, and the better your sound will be. Even though the equipment will sound better the more you spend, as you spend more and more, especially as you get to the higher-end choices above $5,000, the less improvement you will hear. In other words, a pair of $50,000 speakers will sound fantastic, but most people will not hear much of a difference between them and a pair of $10,000 speakers that also sound fantastic. And it gets wild. There are audiophiles out there, some of whom are obsessed with finding the best of anything audio, who will spend more than $100,000 at this writing for a set of extremely high-end Ansuz Speakz D-TC Gold Signature Speaker Cables. (Note: they are NOT returnable.)

It is a fascinating subject and market. If you are into it as I have been now and then, there are some excellent magazines to check out, listed below under “Audio magazines.” WARNING: This stuff can be addictive. Proceed at your own risk 😊.