New studio equipment

I don't know what they go for in your part of the world, but over here JBL 305P monitors are very inexpensive and they sound very good.

 

You should ask for advice at gearslutz.com.

I like yamaha, jbl, adam and tannoy monitors. They all have something in that range.

You don't need a microphone if you are going to use amp sims.

 

Seconded for the JBLs. I have the 306Ps which are largely the same. They replaced Alesis Elevate 6s which didn't make it three years of very light use.

 

To monitor with speakers, you'll really need room treatment, especially in that small of a room (10 square meters?). Build your own with Rockwool (mineral wool) is the most affordable way to do that in these parts. Not sure what you have available there, or if you can reasonably buy that sort of thing. Don't spend money on "acoustic foam" is the first thing to understand though. It won't help.

You don't say what software you will be recording with, but there are a lot of amp & pedal simulation plugins out there, so you don't really have to buy a guitar-specific kind of interface. Anything with an INST input will work.

 

1) I have one Yamaha 5" and I'm planning to buy another.
2) Mics: Rode NT1A, Shure SM57 and SM58.
3) Audio interface: Steinberg Cl1 (discontinued).
4) I record on my MacBook Air using Garageband. It's user friendly and lots of YouTube tutorials out there.

Disclaimer: I'm a hobbyist so take the above info with a grain of salt. There are guys here with waaay more knowledge and experience than myself.

 

This. Your room will sound so much better once it's treated. If you're not comfortable "rolling your own," then companies such as GIK and ATS Acoustics make pre-made panels that you can hang on your walls, and GIK in particular can provide acoustic advice on how to best treat your room:

https://www.gikacoustics.com/

https://www.atsacoustics.com/

 

When you're choosing an A/I, get as many ins and outs as you can afford - there are plenty out there with one or two inputs, but you'll end up wanting more, I guarantee it. Better yet, get one with an ADAT lightpipe so that you can expand it later on. $400-$500 is easily enough for some good small studio monitors. You could spend half that and still get some great speakers. If your room is "10 squares" I assume you mean 10 square meters (since you're in Greece) not 10 square foot. That's around 100 square feet, I think? So you don't need huge cones - in fact you won't even hear a lot of the bass in a room as small as that. Get some decent mixing/mastering headphones - you can pick up a good set for $100. If you are thinking of buying mics, figure out what kind of recording you're going to do, then decide if you need dynamic or condenser mics (or a mixture of both). There are lots of good Chinese LDCs available now for very reasonable prices, or the ever popular RODE selection for a little more money. Don't cheap out on your cables, either - the super-cheap ones will impact your sound. Buy good ones (or make your own).

Have fun!

 

For what you’re doing, I wouldn’t bother with room treatment for quite some time. If you decide to dig deeper in the engineering rabbit hole or if you hope to make some semi-pro sounding demos, then treat the space.

 

I have a pair of the Yamaha HS5s and previously had 5" JBL speakers in my small room (11ft x 11ft - you can do the conversion ). It's square, which is bad, but pretty well treated. I think that's the best option in those kinds of spaces. If you start mixing bass heavy content, bigger speakers might help, but the small space is always going to be a problem (especially if a small square like mine!).

 

The most important thing, far and away, is to correct your room so it present a neutral sound, or as close to neutral as possible. Its hard to do, but you can find so me guides on the web. I could never get my mixes to "translate" well because my studio had to double as home office. You can record a sine wave and get a good idea of what frequencies your listening space is accentuating or killing

You can mix on headphones and there are various plugins designed to correct for the biases and effects of headphones

 

"Lightpipe" is a proprietary optical connection designed by Alesis I think. The general term is S/PDIF - so look for S/PDIF in the specs. The ADAT input/output on your audio interface allows you to connect additional inputs for more mics or instruments later on down the road. So you can have an A/I with 4 inputs, say, then you get more separate preamps later on, and you just hook them up with the ADAT connection so they can talk to your original A/I. It's a neat solution. Many models of A/I have an ADAT port, but check the specs before you buy.

I have a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 which has loads of preamps and instrument inputs for my current use:

https://focusrite.com/en/usb-audio-interface/scarlett/scarlett-18i20

But if I decided I need additional channels for a big recording project, etc, I could hook up something like this:

https://focusrite.com/en/adat-mic-pre/scarlett/scarlett-octopre


I used to have a MOTU and I loved it - seriously, they make fantastic stuff and the only reason I stopped using it is because it's an older model and it doesn't have firmware to bring it up to date with my current Macbook and the version of Logic Pro I'm using. I reluctantly bought the Focusrite, but actually it is a really excellent A/I - the preamps sound lovely, and they have tons of headroom. No complaints, but I do slightly miss my MOTU! If you can afford to get MOTU you won't be disappointed.