The first personal studios.
Around this time, as the size of equipment began to decrease, making it possible for more and more composers to build their own personal studios. At first these were quite rudimentary; the equipment found in such studios might have included one or more tape recorders (stereo, or sometimes a multitrack recorder), a modular synthesizer, a mixing board, filters and a reverb unit.

Little by little, as access to equipment increased, the tools improved in quality and became more affordable to the general consumer. Composers naturally began to acquire their own equipment, and with the arrival of the personal computer, the trend became irreversible. This new tool gradually made the need for peripheral equipment virtually obsolete, as the external equipment and tools of the traditional studio could now be replaced by software or “plugins” stored internally on the computer (Pro Tools being the quintessential example). Today the large majority of composers own a personal computer on which all the essential tools of the studio are available.