Over the past decade-and-a-half or so, one of the biggest changes I’ve seen in the music industry has been the accessibility of budget recording gear. Things like low-noise preamps, more efficient power supplies, and faster processing chips are now easier to manufacture, resulting in cleaner signals with more dynamic range. Chalk it up to Moore’s Law, but this has opened up the market to huge advances in great quality interfaces

In my early career days of music retail, I saw numerous pieces of previously high-end gear get listed for sale at a price far less than their owners paid for them new, only to be swapped out with something far cheaper and often smaller. The common belief among those who were accustomed to using yesteryears’ gear such as the Digidesign 003 was that there was no way these new pieces of gear could stack up in terms of sound quality. After encountering this mentality so often, myself and a few other engineer friends started to compare older pieces of equipment with newer ones, and found some interesting results. Despite something like a Digidesign 003 costing around $1,695 new in 2007, the results between it and other interfaces costing less than half of that were unnoticeable, or negligible at best. 

With advances in technology, it’s now become possible to include higher quality parts and components into smaller sized pieces of gear, and this has had a great effect on musicians and engineers alike. The barrier to entry on good quality recordings has become significantly more affordable to the point where most can have a small recording setup at home and capture perfectly usable recordings with something like a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 or Universal Audio Volt, which has inspired many people to start working on their own music. As a musician first and an engineer second, I always recommend people start recording with what they can afford, and fine tune the gear later on. Letting the gear stop you from creating music is a large pitfall in the music climate today, but the reality is that what you can get for an affordable price in today’s market is more than sufficient to get you started in your journey to making music.