Jordan Mitchell

If you’ve ever recorded vocals in a regular bedroom or home office and cringed at the echo bouncing back through your headphones, you already know why the best reflection filters earn a permanent spot in home studios. A reflection filter is an acoustic device that mounts behind your microphone to absorb and diffuse room reflections … Read more

If you’ve ever recorded a vocal take only to hear harsh “p” and “b” sounds punching through the audio, you already know why pop filters matter. Those plosive bursts of air can ruin an otherwise clean recording, and no amount of post-production fully fixes them. A good pop filter is the simplest, cheapest solution to … Read more

After spending 90 days in three different studios testing subwoofers from $200 to $500, I learned one hard truth: a great studio subwoofer won’t fix a bad room, but the wrong sub can make a great room sound muddy. The best studio subwoofers extend your low end without coloring your mix, integrate cleanly with your … Read more

After three months of testing in our home studios, untreated bedrooms, and a converted garage, our team landed on a clear list of the best microphones for podcasting in . We ran spoken word tests, plosive stress tests, and noise rejection trials with each mic in quiet and noisy rooms. The ten below are the … Read more

Two years ago I plugged my Stratocaster straight into my laptop’s headphone jack and wondered why every recording sounded like a transistor radio buried in a pillow. The fix was a proper audio interface, and once I started using one, my home recordings transformed overnight. If you want to track guitar with any level of … Read more

Bad audio drives viewers off a stream faster than a fuzzy webcam. I learned that the hard way streaming with a stock laptop jack, and I have spent the last three months running 12 audio interfaces through real Twitch sessions, YouTube Live recordings, and Discord calls to find what actually helps streamers sound like broadcasters. … Read more

I tested 10 pairs of studio monitor isolation pads on my home setup over six weeks, switching between my Yamaha HS5s and KRK Rokit 5s. The difference was not subtle. After just one afternoon, my low-end tightened, stereo imaging snapped into focus, and a faint buzz I’d been blaming on my audio interface vanished. If … Read more

I spent three months putting eight of the most popular drum microphone kits through their paces in our rehearsal space and home studio. I miked up a 5-piece birch kit with a 22-inch kick, a 14-inch snare, three toms, and a pair of 16-inch cymbals. I ran each kit through both a small interface and … Read more

If you want the best microphones for recording guitar, start with the Shure SM57. It sits on more guitar cabs than any other mic, costs less than most cables around it, and has been the industry default for electric guitar since the 1960s. Everything else on this list is either a refinement, an alternative, or … Read more

The best microphones for recording drums combine high Max SPL handling, fast transient response, and strong off-axis rejection, with the Shure SM57 for snare, the Audix D6 for kick, and a small-diaphragm condenser pair like the AKG P170 for overheads being the industry-standard starting point for any serious kit recording. After spending the last six … Read more