My New Studio Build (perhaps overly detailed)

[silky smoove]

Haven't chosen yet. That's far enough down the road that it's not getting any of my attention.

 

[beans-on-toast]

Many manage to work entirely in the box, it makes life easier. They are so many good products available. I get tempted by too many offers and spend way too much on plugins.

Clients sometimes come with a laundry list of equipment that they want to use. At least rental companies can help out there.

 

[silky smoove]

I too spend more than I should on plugins. The ease of it all is a blessing and an expensive curse, haha.

 

[silky smoove]

The rain ended up not cooperating over the weekend. By that I mean it didn't rain very much. This morning there was some rain and snow, but not a huge amount. No leaks showing up as of yesterday. Not much rain until later in the week so I'm going to continue playing the waiting game to more thoroughly determine if the leak is fixed or not.

 

[silky smoove]

It's not often when living in western Washington that you get annoyed by rain NOT occurring.

There's currently no water leaking into the studio, but the amount of rain coming down hasn't been sufficient for me to really feel comfortable with it giving it a "repaired" assessment.

 

[Will_White]

It's not often when living in western Washington that you get annoyed by rain NOT occurring.

At least not this time of year.

 

[beans-on-toast]

Would hosing it down be pushing fate too much?

 

[silky smoove]

Would hosing it down be pushing fate too much?

I considered that, but decided I could wait until Thursday and through the weekend when the wet weather is supposed to return. If it stays unseasonably dry for much longer (after two months of record setting rain levels) I'll break out a hose and give the whole thing a good soaking.

 

[silky smoove]

I've poured over this idea many times. I've even looked at these little track and wheel systems that can be retrofitted onto the bottoms of desks as an option to make moving the desk out of the way and back into the mix position easy and with repeatable results. The Argosy desk I have in mind has wheels, but I suspect it will be heavy and unlikely to roll smoothly (desk wheels are often pretty flimsy, there will be a multitude of cables in the way, did I mention the whole thing will be heavy? haha) For now I'm designing around the most confining layout in a static position that provides the highest benefit to compromise ratio. That is what I have shown here. If I can come up with a solution that's easy enough to apply to this arrangement it will only serve as a further benefit to the space's functionality.

Quoting myself here. I've put some more thought into this and have come to realize that I could only move the desk, regardless of method (track and wheel, rollerblade wheels, captive bearings, etc.) just a hair over 2' towards the front wall until the back of the desk runs into the monitors/subwoofer. I'm not convinced that's enough of a benefit to deal with the construction complications and modification of a $1,500 desk.

 

[DirtDog]

Quoting myself here. I've put some more thought into this and have come to realize that I could only move the desk, regardless of method (track and wheel, rollerblade wheels, captive bearings, etc.) just a hair over 2' towards the front wall until the back of the desk runs into the monitors/subwoofer. I'm not convinced that's enough of a benefit to deal with the construction complications and modification of a $1,500 desk.

Could be a fairly easy mod down the road if you find you DO need the extra 2'.

 

[beans-on-toast]

Been looking at the SilentFX drywall site, interesting: SilentFX® QuickCut Drywall

The same company sells a drywall that will absorb VCO's, good for sealed rooms, for years even through many layers of paint: AirRenew Family. Not sure how necessary this is when you have an air exchange system. Still, an interesting product.

Always good to have the option to reconfigure the room. As you pointed out, costs can be prohibitive. When mixing, you need it set up properly to monitor. Tracking is a different story, it isn't as critical. I have a Hammond organ and a pair of stacked Leslie's on wheels. Same with all the amps. I find that some things record better on risers. I sometimes use an Auralex Gramma under amps rather than a hard floor.

I had a recoding workstation on casters but it was heavy to move and snakes running on the floor made moving it difficult. If at all possible, avoid workstation cable runs on the floor. Keep cables only as long as they need to be, don't loop them if they are too long. How many line power circuits, outlets. and where to place them takes a lot of thought. Power crossing speaker cables can result in RF noise. Layout is difficult to predict untill you try it but rules of thumb regarding noise are good to follow.

Speaking of mixing, promaster looks interesting and at $10 per track is affordable: Link Removed. Even during the mixing process, the service can be used to possibly reveal issues with the mix.

 

[silky smoove]

Been snowing and raining steadily since yesterday at about 6:00pm. Should be adequate for confirming whether or not the leak has been fixed.

 

[ahc]

 

[silky smoove]

First check over the weekend shows no water getting into the studio. It's rained a bit more today with a bit more tonight and tomorrow. I'll keep checking, and if no water has gotten in by Monday morning I'm going to declare the repair a success.

 

[silky smoove]

Sorry for the delay. As of today there is still zero water getting into the studio. That makes me think the repair was a success. It's also been unseasonably dry recently, and I'd really like a big storm to roll through to provide a more thorough check. Even the rains over the last couple weeks have been minor in how much they've been hitting the front door of the studio building. Next week looks basically rainy all week, but also shows a little snow. In Seattle that typically means there won't be any wind associated with the rain, which is what I REALLY need to be convinced.

I'm at the point now that I think I can safely call the repair guy back out to finalize everything (fully install the trim pieces he had to remove, touch up the caulking and paint, etc.) but given that the holiday is fast approaching and it's unlikely that he'd be out before then anyway... Well... I don't know. I'll probably message him tomorrow and tell him that it appears to be holding back the water and that he can get started on buttoning everything up, but also that he shouldn't rush. That will allow for more time to bring on some rains next week.

 

[beans-on-toast]

The cold isn't a bad thing. Materials contract and that can open cracks. If the seal remains intact under these conditions, you can have more confidence that it is resolved.

 

[stevenA800]

This is normal for studio building, or at least so the pros tell me.

Contractor would get it done in half the time for double the money, if not more. They also wouldn't get the isolation right because they've never done that kind of work.

This is normal for studio building, or at least so the pros tell me.

the studio I worked for in NYC during the 80's had two carpenters on staff, once the first room was done they knew how to do the others

 

[stevenA800]

i think a lot of that is "mine is bigger/better". if you don't have a free subscription to TapeOp, i highly recommend it. One of the most revered engineers in Jazz, James Farber, states he prefers to use console preamps for everything, he doesn't like the different outboard pre per source. this is a first call NY guy, who all the bigs want recording them. I think most of the gear lust and purchases are by amateur recordists and home recordists hoping to get "that sound" when in reality the big albums sound best because those big studios ACOUSTICS sound best. mic preamps/compressors/etc are about 5% of the tone.

James Farber: Scofield, Redman, Mehldau, Brecker

it's worth noting that some console preamps are excellent

 

[stevenA800]

While I wait to see if the leak repair was successful I decided to do some renderings of my current room plans. These aren't final, but they've evolved a TON since I started this thread one year and eight months ago.

nice drawings

 

[silky smoove]

it's worth noting that some console preamps are excellent

Agreed

These days even modest consumer-level interfaces are coming packed with extremely high quality preamps. The gains available by shooting for higher end prosumer or professional level products are pretty minimal in the preamp department provided you're looking at relatively neutral preamps. It's when you start getting into character/color type preamps that the differences become more apparent. That's been my experience at least.

As an example, my low cost Mackie Onyx Blackbird has eight of Mackie's Onyx preamps which are shockingly good given the price point of this interface. They're as good or "better" than any of the typical Presonus, Focusrite (non-Clarrett and Red models), MOTU, Steinberg etc. preamps out there. Once you step up to Apogee, UA Apollo, Focusrite Clarrett, Audient, etc. you're getting a better preamp, but not by a massively different amount. Definitely a game of inches at this point. Now compare a Mackie Onyx preamp to something like a UA LA610, an A-Designs Pacifica, or any of the Neve 1073 products (clones and of course the mighty original) and the differences start becoming much more apparent. So does the price tag