The Best-Selling Recording Gear of 2024

What pro audio gear did the pros—and the home recordists—buy the most this year? We're going to answer both questions, separately, in our best-selling lists below.

Every year, we create these annual best-selling music gear lists to get a read on what products resonated the most with musicians, producers, and engineers. And we usually rank gear only by the number of units sold, not by the dollars spent. But we're changing that up here.

The first list you'll see below is indeed ranked by the total amount of money spent on this gear, and it shows just how popular some of the leading professional equipment really is. Then, we look at the recording gear market by order count, and get a great sense of what mics, interfaces, and other gear the majority of musicians are buying.

It's worth noting that, regardless of price point, the vast majority of sales on this list came from you: the community of musicians who actively use Reverb to sell. In a way, this data is not only what the buying community found most appealing, but also what musicians decided to part with to make room for fresh pieces to their music-making rigs.

If you haven't already checked out the rest of our 2024 best-sellers, you can find them all here: 2024's best-selling guitars, 2024's best-selling electronic gear, and 2024's best-selling effects pedals.

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Key takeaways

As we said above, this first list—unlike all others in our annual best-selling posts—ranks gear by the total amount of dollars spent. While it's no surprise then that expensive, professional-grade equipment dominates the list, it allows for some interesting comparisons:

• By the dollars, the Tube-Tech CL 1B Compressor is the single best-selling piece of studio gear. Other outboard processors that make the list include Rupert Neve Designs Shelford Channel, Solid State Logic Fusion, and the Universal Audio LA-2A.
• The Sony C800G, the go-to mic for today's pop stars and hip-hop artists, is the highest-grossing microphone of any kind, beating out Shure microphones like the SM57 and SM7B even though those mics sell in much, much greater numbers.
• Neumanns, which have long been the cream of the microphone crop, are also well-represented here, including true vintage U 87s built between 1967 and 1985. But no single Neumann model beat the Sony C800G when looking at total money spent.

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Key takeaways

Those of you who have seen our overall best-selling lists of past years will immediately recognize the similarities. Here again, the ever-popular and inexpensive Shure microphones—SM57, SM58, and SM7B—continue to top the list, followed by various sizes of the Scarlett interfaces that pretty much every musician and home recordist owns (or has at least owned at one time).

Another notable entrant here is the Walrus Audio Canvas Stereo DI. Known more as a pedal brand, Walrus Audio launched the Canvas DI boxes back in 2022. They were best-sellers right away, and their popularity continues, coming in at No. 8 in the overall best-sellers list, just as they did in 2023.

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Key takeaways

When filtering the sales to just used products, a few more storylines emerge. Yes, the affordable Shures and Scarletts still dominate (they are, after all, even more affordable when buying used, and are all built to withstand many years of use). But, likely thanks to the price difference between new ($1,195) vs. used (from $655), Neumann TLM 103s jump up several spots.

We also see some near-vintage recording equipment that has spiked again in popularity. The Alesis 3630, once considered almost unusable, has hit a resurgence for fans of Daft Punk and easy side-chaining. (And despite this resurgence, it still sells for average prices under $100.)

The Tascam Portastudio 414 MKII also makes this list, thanks not just to increased interest in cassette recorders overall but to a sea of guitarists trying to get the Mk.gee sound this year.

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Beyond individual products, how do brands rank when we take total sales into account?

This concludes our look at the best-selling recording gear of 2024. Check out all the other annual lists below.