home studio for producing and recording hip hop music

Well...at it's simplest, get the highest-spec PC you can afford with plenty or RAM and a decent non-consumer soundcard with the best possible active monitors you can afford.

- soundcard should provide at least 4 x mono out and if you want to record anything non-digital 2 x or 4 x mono in. Make sure you get at least 24-bit/96khz A/D conversion (M-Audio Delta44, E-MU 0404)
- for hip hop (and anything with a fat bassline) get active monitors that respond to the lowest frequency you can afford, you're better of getting second hand KRK or Mackey monitors through e-bay or something, than buying useless El Cheapos
- don't try and save money by getting the cheapest possible cables, connectors, etc. Get good medium- to high-end quality cables to connect your soundcard with speakers, mics, whatever.
- do a lot of googling for and reading of forums like this on audio software, pick up some music mags, do your research and pick whatever software you think will suite you best, get it, install it and stick with it. Learning curve might be steep depending on previous experience with audio, sampling, looping etc. but whichever sw you pick, it's gonna take a while to get results and switching sw because someone says x y or z is easier to use will get you nowhere.

This set-up will basically have you manipulating and recording sounds on your PC using a keyboard and mouse which is a pain but not impossible and provided you got decent components will theoretically let you master CD quality tracks. If you can afford it, get at least one good MIDI-controller with the best spread of faders/rotaries/keys/etc. matching the software instruments you use and make your life a whole lot easier.
And yes, that's all pretty generic and vague, but so was the question ;-)

Laterz,

H

"I blow minds for a living..." (Jello Biafra, 1991)
...or at least try to (me, just now)

oh... total on equip and cables (excluding your computer) is around $200 and heegs is right. Get good cables... the difference in price between good and shitty is only like 30 bucks total. Example. cheap 6' xlr mic cable 12-15 bucks. good one 15-20. Cheap 6' RCA cables 5 bucks good ones 15-18. Cheap 6' unbal instrument cables 10 bucks good ones around 15-20. When i say good i don't mean the best just better than the rest. I didn't even address monitors... that's a whole different ball game... and i don't have or use 'em. I prefer excellent headphones. Sennheiser makes some of the best and they range in price from $30 - $500 and up. Koss PRO4AAT's are also very good.

It'll do what it do till it done
You keep it pimp... I'm a keep it gangata!

http://www.myspace.com/1andonlycapricornone

Don't know about the Monster Cables, but I really don't agree with the cheapest being most honest and accurate and least of all most durable. Especially in a home studio with the smallest amount of kit, you'll be plugging and unplugging them a lot and cheap cables will very quickly start crackling and giving noise in the background, while good cables with solid connectors can easily take a couple thousand times of being plugged and unplugged without influencing sound quality.
As you say, gold tip and ridiculously overpriced cables in general are a waste of money, at least in a home studio. Gold tips have their use in other situations though, where there's other factors involved than just conductivity..for instance things like cross-talk in high-density rack configs where you don't want connectors to be too sensitive too their neighbour's signal.
But at home, get well assembled cables that don't even have to be big brand names, as long as they list their cable and connector component brands and types or the guy at the store can tell you what they are. In general you shouldn't be paying more than about $25 - $30 per cable (depending on length ofcourse, but for an average 3 meters/9 feet) but also not a whole lot less.

"I blow minds for a living..." (Jello Biafra, 1991)
...or at least try to (me, just now)

I'm still trying to get a grip on my bass management in the mix... not easy to do, and impossible with headphones because lower frequencies have a very long wavelength, up to 18 feet, and if the speaker is right up against your ear those frequencies will not develop enough for you to hear them correctly.

Headphones are good for a reference, just to see how it sounds in a headset because you should test it with many different common types of speakers (headphones, earbuds, car stereos...), but, as heegs just said, they are no good for a mixdown!!

yo there are many things that i have learned here,listen to what i got,i have takin the cheapest and best products for litle home studio,that's what the seller said,and i am satisfated,a mic-STC-3D(it cost me 250 euros),
i have a simple keyboard(300 euros....yeah ok it's a lil to much for a simple keyboard)i'll buy me a yamaha motif XS7 soon,i have a pc,with 2,2 ghz ddr ram memory but i still have problems using fl studio when i add fx it blocks,i think it's due to the many programs that i have in it,i have an interface soundcard UA-25(260 euros),a don't have a mixer yet but i'll buy one soon,so if you wanna do it professionnaly u need to spend some money not to much but i have spent 1000 euros just for a mic,interface,keyboard and 2 Gb of ddr ram memoryyeah cables..and think good before you buy things,don't go to fast into buying,peace man

oh yeah and also monitoring are also very important to make good quality music,i have bought HS50 M(350 euro 2 unites)

What I used to do was record separate Reason tracks in Wavelab 5 and using tools similar to the ones you describe in Logic do the downmix and mastering from there. Painstaking process since Wavelab 5 doesn't function as a ReWire host, so I had to run multiple passes recording different tracks before downmixing or downmix in Reason and only record and master the main 2 L/R tracks from Reason in Wavelab.
I finally upgraded my CoolEdit Pro to Audition though, which has excellent ReWire support now, and multitrack recording as well as editing is at least as good as it already was in CoolEdit, so I'm trying to decide between different possible workflows for the best result:

- pre-master and downmix in Reason, record main L/R through ReWire into Audition, edit/clean/scrub whatever in Audition and master in Wavelab
- do the same but try and use Audition's own mastering tools instead of having to go out through Wavelab...they're not as good as the ones in Wavelab, so I doubt I'll end up doing that
- do the same again, but since Audition also has VST support, see if I can use the mastering tools I use in Wavelab (which are VSTs as well) equally well in Audition without having to export to Wavelab itself
- record separate tracks from Reason without downmixing into Audition through ReWire-channels for each of my individual L/R tracks (usually about 8 or 9 L/R pairs coming from different combinators), downmix and clean-up/analyse in Audition and then again the choice of VST's in Audition or going through Wavelab.

So..I'm trying to both see as well as hear the differences between these workflows using two diverse but well-mixed balanced tracks to try and find the one that gives the best results.
Hopefully the last option using my Wavelab VSTs inside Audition so I just have to deal with two software packages. Problem is all of these methods give different results, that all sound different but not necessarily better or worse and they're pretty similar in spectral view and waveform as well, so it's tough to decide and I don't feel like trying to perfect three or four different workflows for different types of tracks or sounds.
Comparing these side-by-side in great detail is a lot of work and a bloody nuisance at times so I'm spreading this out over a few weeks, since I'd far rather spent my free time making music than comparing mastering suites.
Then again, it's turning out to be a very good way of discovering a lot about mastering subtleties I never even knew existed, so it's all for a good cause in the end...probably by the time I'm old and grey I'll finally discover they're all the same and I've wasted a lifetime chasing mastering-ghosts :-P

Later,

H

"I blow minds for a living..." (Jello Biafra, 1991)
...or at least try to (me, just now)

savanhu
well i would recommend a Rode NTA1 mic and an edirol FA101 soundcard as i use those they do give u good quality for your home recording studio in hip hop.I use cubase sx3 which brings out better qaulity than mixcraft i used to use before.I wouldnt knoe about mixing and mastering on vocals as am still learning about it so if they is anyone out the who can help on mixing and mastering hip hop vocals please help.This where i got an idea before i bought y rig
http://www.tweakheadz.com/rigs3.htm try it out trust me