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My New Studio Build (perhaps overly detailed)

#541
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#542
Stevorebob said:
You have quite an investment here already. What's $1,000 or $1,500 at this point? I'd do the facility right and cut back elsewhere or put off equipment purchases a bit longer.
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It's really about time. The proceeds thus far have been surplus from the sale of my last house. Very soon it will all be coming out of my pocket. It's all doable, but the timeline gets longer and longer with higher costs.
 
#543
beans-on-toast said:
Room in a room works very well but is costly. I've seen it done with a (sometimes sand) base, isolation pads or springs (such as Invalid Link Removed) , the floor on top. High price in terms of lost space though. The cost may not justify the gain for this application.

With a quantity discount, 200 commercial (vs standard) clips are $700 here: Commercial Whisper Clips | Green Glue Commercial Noiseproofing Clips - ™ Soundproofing.
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I was t going to float the floor. Too late to do that properly.

That is a better price on the clips. Thanks for the link.
 
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#544
I would simplify the decision. It's about floor space. You can get marginally better isolation at a lower cost, the trade off is floor space.

In future years you will continue to live within the square footage and isolation you have. Long forgotten will be the cost and time it took to do.
 
#546
The difference in isolation isn't really a concern, I just wanted to note it as a potential difference. It would likely be a 2-3 point difference in overall STC, and probably a bit of an increase to TL performance down low with the room-in-a-room method. Either way the isolation will be sufficient for my needs. The real differential is time which is driven entirely by cost at this point. Next week I'm going to prepare a construction cost estimate difference between the two and see what that does to the timeline.
 
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#547
That moment when the West Seattle Home Depot only has one downspout adapter, so if you have to cross the bridge, head downtown, and ultimately spend 45-minutes to pick up a $4 part.

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#550
Site Construction Day 11:

And so it begins...
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I needed to cut a new trench along the western face of the block wall. It was more of the typical backbreaking work, but it was straight forward and simple.

Western trench with perf pipe.
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The pipe just drops in. It's perforated on the top and solid on the bottom.

Tie-in to the western downspout.
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...and the eastern one.
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Building the outfall corner.
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Slightly complicated here.
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The outfall pipe had to go under a length of landscape edging and three irrigation pipes. I switched from a shovel and mattock to a garden spade. It went in more easily than I'd expected.

Outfall pipe in-place.
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I had to move a 600lbs (seriously) rock about 6" to make room for the pipe. I also had to move two smaller 50'ish pound rocks and nearly dropped one on my foot in the process. Once the pipe was in I built a sort of teepee over the pipe with the two smaller rocks.

Fabric and rock
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The top of the pipe gets covered with a type of geotextile fabric that allows water to pass through, but stops sediment from getting into the pipe.

Making progress.
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I used two 5-gallon buckets and a shovel to transport the washed rock from its one yard pile to the trenches. It was incredibly laborious, but it went fairly quickly.

The scene at the end of the day.
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I'll get some more pictures tomorrow, but suffice it to say it started pouring rain and I didn't want to be outside any longer.

I'm going to try and get all of the cap blocks glued down. I'm going to try and hide the bend in the eastern block wall by adjusting the caps to compensate for it. Once that's done I'll be filling the void along the top of the wall with river rock (they're called Mexican pebbles evidently). More to come tomorrow.
 

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#553
I ended up not getting anything else done on Sunday. It was certainly nice enough out, but the work from Saturday was more labor-intensive than I had expected. I was sore and there's no longer a need to rush on any of this, so I happily just did some stuff around the house and hung out with my wife. I'm traveling to Maryland this coming weekend, so I won't likely get to anything else on this until the weekend of the 25th.
 
#556
I covered this a few dozen pages ago, haha.

silky smoove said:
The key to this operation is staying lean and mean. I would love to have an analog console, but the space constraints and cost for a board with motorized faders that actually sounds good are both too high of limiting factors for this space. To that end I'll be working completely ITB. I've got my little powerhouse late-2012 Mac Mini with a 2.3ghz quadcore i7 processor that I've upgraded to 16gb of RAM. It's got the stock HDD and I'd like to add an SSD to it as well. Programs, plugins, VSTs, etc. on the SSD and file storage on the HDD. At some point I'll upgrade to the Mac Pro Darth Vader's trash can model, but for now my computing needs are handled ably by that little box. I back up everything in my studio up to a large volume external HDD and simultaneously to a massive cloud storage account that my wife and I share (she got it for her business and I started using it as well so we could split the cost between our two operations). The mixes will be controlled with a DAW controller, but I'm still unsure of which one. I've always liked the Euphonix/Avid MC series controllers, but they're quite spendy and some reports say they're a little flimsy in terms of build quality. There's always the Mackie MCU Pro and extenders. Behringer (gasp!) came out with a REALLY cool controller and extender package recently. I don't typically support Behringer gear, but these appear to be an original design that checks a lot of the boxes I'm looking for in a controller. I'd like to see one in person, specifically to see how legible the scribble scripts are before making any decisions. I'll be custom building a desk for whatever controller(s) I end up getting. The desk will be as minimal as possible to make as little sonic impact to the room as possible.

I'm currently using a Mackie Onyx Blackbird as the primary interface, but will be replacing it with something that runs via Thunderbolt2 for higher performance. I'm currently leaning towards a Focusrite Clarett 8PreX as it looks really nice for the price. I would love to go with something like an Apogee Symphony2, but... ugh... So much money. The Clarett 8PreX really gets it done for me in terms of specs, so I suspect that's the direction I'll go. I also like that it has an onboard MIDI i/o which will free up a USB port on my computer, which would be very helpful. I need 16-channels of input, so I'll be adding an 8-channel preamp to the mix. It will have to be a digital i/o that can connect to my interface via ADAT. There are a surprisingly limited number of preamps that fit that bill, but fortunately there are some nice sounding units that won't break the bank. Additionally I'll be adding a single channel preamp or possibly channel strip specifically as a front end for tracking vocals. Vocals are a source where I like to start with a specific vibe, so the unit I go with will certainly not be a "wire with gain" type of flat response box. It will be a big hunk of vibe that I run vocalists through. It will also need to be digital i/o via ADAT.

This room will also be where I rehearse drum parts for my jazz gig, so I'll have a set of small PA speakers operating in the room as well (they need to only be loud enough to hear over the racket of me playing drums). That's an important thing to note because I'll either need an interface that can toggle to an alternate stereo output path via control software, or I'll need to get a dedicated monitor controller. The Presonus Central Station looks great on paper, but it has documented signal path degradation that I don't want to deal with. Same goes for the Mackie Big Knob. Yuck. The Drawmer MC2.1 looks great and has very solid reviews. That's the route I'll go if the interface I end up with doesn't have this functionality built into it's controller software. Hopefully I won't need one. It would simplify talkback mic requirements and thus save me two channels of input which would otherwise have to be dedicated for talkback purposes, but it's an added cost and complication I'd like to avoid.

I'll be continuing to use my Equator D5 monitors and will be adding a subwoofer as well. I haven't picked out the sub yet, but I have spoken to Marty at Equator about which ones they recommend, so I have some ideas. I'll be placing my monitors on Sound Anchors Project 4 stands which will be backfilled with sand and have Sound Anchors Conecoasters installed underneath. I was initially going to soffit/flush mount my monitors, but the cost started getting too high for the project. I might go that route in the future if I upgrade my monitors, but it's quite an undertaking. This setup will work great for now, and conceivably for a very long time.

I've got a small collection of very usable mics. I have a stereo matched pair of vintage spec Neumann U87 clones that I built last year. They're simply amazing mics. I've got a stereo matched pair of original, Russian-built Oktava MC-012s that I like a lot. I've got a handful of Shure SM57s and one random SM58 that I've never used, haha. Speaking of random, I have a Shure Super55 that I bought for stage use while playing drums (I wanted something to look cool and have a vintage aesthetic), but have thus far only ever used it as a prop in a music video. I have a Shure SM7B that I pair with a Triton Audio Fethead inline preamp. I have a set of CAD drum mics (four clip-on dynamic tom mics and one AKG D112 clone that I actually like more than a real D112). I have a cheapo MXL R144 ribbon mic that sounds good, but I honestly don't love it. I'll replace it with a proper ribbon, or ideally a stereo pair of ribbons once I'm operational. I'd also like to add something with a ton of vibe, and possibly tube driven as a dedicated vocal mic. I haven't decided on which one just yet.
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A couple of changes based on things that have happened since I wrote that post:

I'm pretty sure that I'm going to use a Slate Raven MTi for the DAW controller. It's the best compromise for my needs and works better acoustically in the space than having a big monitor mounted on the wall. Additionally, the front wall is about 6' from the listening position. Seeing tiny characters on a screen that far away gets difficult. I could mitigate that by using a larger screen, but that introduces more and more acoustic problems. The Raven MTi is placed on the desk right in front of you. It makes a lot of sense for my room setup.

I'm still uncertain on the desk. I still have these thoughts about building one that's as minimalist as possible to help with acoustics, but I recently got to sit behind an Argosy Halo desk and it was really sweet. The built-in cable management and racks were all very well thought out. It was a very comfortable workstation and it would accommodate a Raven MTi quite well. It's a lot of money, it's hardly minimal, but it sure was sweet.

I've moved my jazz gig onto a set of V-Drums (a Roland TD-25KV that I customized by removing the two 8" pads, replaced them with a single 10" pad to better suit my preferred one-up one-down setup, and added two BT-1 trigger bars), so I no longer need the second set of monitors (PA monitors) and a monitor controller. That'll be a cost and space savings that I'm quite excited about. Additionally, since I'm building as one big space as opposed to two, the need for a talkback mic is no longer there.

I've since sold that Shure Super55 microphone.
 
#557
The move to single room is interesting. I've been doing more looping and experimenting with micing my rig, but pedal clicks have been a problem. I guess at a high enough volume it wouldn't neccessarily present an issue but how would eliminate that?
 
#558
Marial said:
The move to single room is interesting. I've been doing more looping and experimenting with micing my rig, but pedal clicks have been a problem. I guess at a high enough volume it wouldn't neccessarily present an issue but how would eliminate that?
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Under ideal circumstances you wouldn't track across anything that involves stepping on a pedal. Pedals, even the most well-built ones, have the potential to introduce noise when engaging/disengaging. I would track all the parts that require different pedalboard processing separately.

If I were working with someone that didn't want to break it up into pieces and therefore would have the pedal clicks in place during the recording, I would do one of two things:

1. Do what I could to keep the clicking sound out of the mics (amp placement, pedalboard placement, gobos, etc.) and just live with the results.

2. Do what was described in item 1, but then show the client the result, explain how to fix it via an overdub and then proceed.

Item 1 is nice because you get the intended "live" performance, but you have to live with some potential noise. Item 2 is nice because you remedy the noise, but you get a stitched together performance that might not feel as natural as a live run at it. If you don't have a world class facility and an endless budget of money and time you're always going to be faced with compromises when recording music. Most compromises are manageable and as long as the end product as a whole is good, people tend to forget about them.

With specific regard to your looping question; I wouldn't record a looped track with other content on top of it. I would record one part of the loop, then separately record the next, and then next, and the next, and so on. The studio computer essentially becomes your TC Ditto pedal :p
 

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