My New Studio Build (perhaps overly detailed)

[silky smoove]

Welp, i just read this whole dang thread [pins medal on own chest].

I salute you!

but you’ve sufficiently scared the crap out of me!

It has definitely been a trying and expensive process, but definitely a good one. In retrospect I might have gone a different route if I were to do it over again, but I still feel like I've made the right decision. Don't let apprehension get in your way.

Oh well, the spare bedroom is always still there for me! My vDrums live on, I guess...

I've done many an album in a spare bedroom with a set of V-Drums.

The big question is, could I get it quiet enough for drumming?

That's always the concern. Everything else is loud, but drums are LOUD.

However, the HVAC, mold (humid as heck around here), bugs, wiring — all that stuff gets a bit scary for me. Drainage. Insurance. Security... [passes out]

HVAC is easy and it sorts out the mold for you if done correctly. Bugs... Well... A sound isolated structure will be more resilient to bugs than any residential structure you could build, so you've got that going for you. Wiring is tricky if you don't know what you're doing, which is specifically why I hired it out. Expensive, but worth it. Insurance is just another bill each month, or an increase to one you're already paying. No biggie there to just cut out a trip to the drive-thru twice a month. Security might not even be needed depending on where you're located. I'm just extending my existing security system, so another easy one!

To hear it broken down like that it all sounds dead simple. I should be done already!

 

[beans-on-toast]

A build can be daunting. The never ending quest for new studio equipment is more scary.

 

[dmt]

To hear it broken down like that it all sounds dead simple. I should be done already!

That’s the spirit!

 

[dmt]

One difference between your studio and my cloud castle, besides that yours is almost real and mine is purely imaginary at this point, is that mine would be more a practice space/jam room first and a recording space second. The thought certainly has occurred of then putting it to use as a "hobby studio business and see what happens" kind of thing since I would have a soundproofed space equipped with instruments and mics and recording gear and all just sitting there — but that’s really getting into major mission creep, i’m now thinking. Once the word "studio" comes in, it seems one starts going down a rabbit hole into a whole complex and expensive separate world. The main idea here is, in many ways, simply to escape the dreaded vDrums

My wife and I call this imaginary building "the music room", the size of which would be roughly in the neighborhood of what you’ve got. It would be for a creative space (and, of course, storage space for all my music crap). Guitar, bass, drums, keys, trumpet. Noodling around, jamming, songwriting, recording...but when I say recording, I’ve been happy enough, really, recording in my bedrooom or living room or a basement over the years and editing/mixing with my near field monitors in a small spare bedroom with the monitors, while on stands at good listening height and stereo positioning, within a foot or two of the wall. Looks-wise, i’ll be content just throwing a few posters on the walls between the inevitable bookshelves and equipment. Might paint a mural... The place should be clean, dry, mold and bug free, at a comfortable temp, etc., but I don’t really care about the aesthetics, per se. The floor can be whatever works. The bass traps, the wall treatments, the ideal acoustic placement of the monitors — l could skip all that, especially in the beginning, but maybe indefinitely. Now, the siding and outside trim matching the main house like you’ve done would sure be sweet (the more I think about it, the more I like it), but I could skip that to get started.

Okay, so given the above, that it would be more a rough-ish general personal music space (including more casual recording) than a beautiful dedicated semi-pro/pro recording studio, could you share any thoughts on how, if such were your goals, that might de-scope your project? The big driver would still be soundproofing the drums it seems, regarding which I’ve been thinking of going with a slightly smaller than typical rock kit, something with a 20" kick (I want to stay above a bop kit though, ideally). Anyway, any quick thoughts on how much that might reduce time/effort/expense involved?

 

[markjazzbassist]

It has definitely been a trying and expensive process, but definitely a good one. In retrospect I might have gone a different route if I were to do it over again, but I still feel like I've made the right decision.

for arguments sake what route would you have gone?

 

[TedH]

One difference between your studio and my cloud castle, ...

Well there's your studio name!

 

[silky smoove]

is that mine would be more a practice space/jam room first and a recording space second.

An important distinction to make. I've often wondered if, after completing the build, I'll offer to host more rehearsals at my place or not. I'm still on the fence about it.

but that’s really getting into major mission creep

Absolutely. It's easy to let things get carried away. I have a buddy that built out a full-sized professional studio and he had to wrestle with the idea of letting other engineers come in and use his space. That's certainly how all of the big time studios do it (i.e. bring your own engineer, or you can hire one of ours), but he was understandably torn about the idea. With a structure the size of mine, and conceivably what you're describing, farming out any part of it wouldn't be an impossibility, but the complications were overcome by logistical concerns on my end. I won't be allowing anyone else but me to work in there from an engineering and/or production perspective.

The main idea here is, in many ways, simply to escape the dreaded vDrums

V-Drums are great once you figure out how to move passed their limitations. Your best bet is to use the MIDI or USB output to send MIDI to your computer which will then in turn trigger something like Superior Drummer. I'm currently using SD2.0 (although I need to upgrade to 3.0 one of these days) along with a customized Roland TD-25KV and have always been exceedingly happy with the results. I've done entire albums using SD2.0 and a set of V-Drums Lite, which are the tiny ones on a stand that look like they should be part of Rock Band or Guitar Hero. Get the MIDI side of things working and you might not find them to be "dreaded" anymore.

with the monitors, while on stands at good listening height and stereo positioning, within a foot or two of the wall.

In a small room you're MUCH better off placing your monitors as close to the wall as possible without them actually touching. Here's a handy calculator that will determine the cancellation frequencies you'll encounter with different monitor placements relative to the front wall: Invalid Link Removed

At two feet out from the wall you've got a half wavelength cancellation frequency of 65hz, which is incredibly difficult to treat acoustically, especially in something the size of a bedroom. Assuming your monitors are around 6" deep and you could get the back of the cabinet to within an inch of the wall you move the half wavelength cancellation to around 220hz, which is pretty darn easy to treat acoustically by comparison.

The big driver would still be soundproofing the drums it seems, regarding which I’ve been thinking of going with a slightly smaller than typical rock kit, something with a 20" kick (I want to stay above a bop kit though, ideally). Anyway, any quick thoughts on how much that might reduce time/effort/expense involved?

That's the ONLY driver in terms of costs. Once you decide you want a sound isolated structure (soundproof is a misnomer) all of the costs go crazy. The amount of drywall at least doubles. The necessity for more involved HVAC rears its ugly head. Doors and windows go from being a simple affair to requiring specific hardware and possibly certified installers. Even flooring comes with new complications!

Regarding the 20" bass drum; I've got an 18" that I can get down into hiphop territory in terms of low frequency content, it just won't play quite as loud as my 24" bass drum at that tuning. It'll certainly still get loud enough to need sound isolation, so... Not really a cost savings there unfortunately.

 

[silky smoove]

for arguments sake what route would you have gone?

Smaller facility only intended for my use as a musician, songwriter, composer, with some extra business coming in for doing mixes online and possibly producing solo singer-songwriter type artists who wanted to farm out EVERYTHING to me other than their vocals and whatever instrument they happen to play. If I had gone that route I would be operational already, but my scope would be severely reduced.

 

[markjazzbassist]

Smaller facility only intended for my use as a musician, songwriter, composer, with some extra business coming in for doing mixes online and possibly producing solo singer-songwriter type artists who wanted to farm out EVERYTHING to me other than their vocals and whatever instrument they happen to play. If I had gone that route I would be operational already, but my scope would be severely reduced.

so basically a small space where you can mix and record everything except drums. just do drums at the local "big shot" studio with a nice sounding room?

 

[silky smoove]

so basically a small space where you can mix and record everything except drums. just do drums at the local "big shot" studio with a nice sounding room?

I’d just do drums using Superior Drummer and my TD-25KV like I do now.

 

[dmt]

Thanks for the reply, silky smoove.

I actually have a pretty nice TD-12-based vDrums set with all mesh heads and nice Vcymbals, and I agree that Superior does yield fine sounding results. Just isn’t my style though, at least ideally. I really have mixed feelings over them — I consider them a blessing in that I’ve been able to drum at home and they’re easy to record with (and easy to edit via a MIDI track!), but a curse in that, well, they’re just not what I fully enjoy playing. Nor do I enjoy having to access a drum library to get good sounds (a Pearl Mimic Pro module could solve that part though). My wife wants to drum (she has good rhythm) but she HATES the vDrums (whereas, like I said, there are some aspects to having them that I actually really like), so that’s a lot of why she’s in on this whole music room idea too.

But, the vDrums kinda do what I need, and so I haven’t quite pulled the trigger on the whole big music outbuilding project yet. It’s an interesting point you make that if one gives up the acoustic drums, the size, cost and complexity can come down. It’s all about the drums, man!

Your comment about the monitor speakers vs. distance from the wall was also interesting. When I was doing more mixing, I actually had them close to the wall (simply because my desk was against the wall), but now I have them a good 2 feet out due to the speaker stand feet not having sufficient space if closer to the wall in my current setup. I guess i’ll revisit their placement; your studio mock-up had me thinking that maybe I should have had them way out from the wall. Anyway, good to know, and thanks for the link.

I look forward to reading more about your progress

 

[silky smoove]

I’m off work until Monday, so hopefully I can make some progress on the next few steps by then.

 

[silky smoove]

More insulation got installed today. I’ve still got most of the ceiling left to do, which I’ll be chipping away at over the next couple days.

 

[silky smoove]

All of the insulation I can do for now has been completed. Next I need to get some more lumber to finish framing the upper triangle of the vestibule wall, as well as building some corner and gable end ledgers for hanging drywall. I never noticed that the builder hadn’t provided them when they framed out the structure. In an idea world I would have caught this prior to insulation and electrical, but it is what it is I suppose. I’ll be able to make it work, but it will require some careful planning when it comes to Whisper Clip placement.

I’m taking tomorrow off to go rock climbing with my wife and some friends, but as the weather continues to get more winter-like here in Seattle I’ll be working more and more on the studio.

 

[silky smoove]

All of the corner ledgers have been cut, and the test fit of my solution to building ledgers after the electrical has been installed proved successful. I’ll be working on those and stuffing insulation in the bays adjacent to the corners next weekend.

 

[silky smoove]

All of the corner ledgers have been cut, and the test fit of my solution to building ledgers after the electrical has been installed proved successful. I’ll be working on those and stuffing insulation in the bays adjacent to the corners next weekend.

Quoting myself here to reflect on the fact that I totally wimped out

I had two opportunities to go rock climbing on Saturday, and a gig on Sunday. On top of that it was particularly cold for Seattle over the weekend, and I didn't want to do all of that plus freeze my butt off working in the studio at the same time. The rains are supposed to return on Thursday night, which will bring cloud cover and increased temperatures over the weekend likely to be in the mid to upper 40s. I can deal with that.

In related news, the HRV arrived and I've got the mini split selected and ready to order. I need to update my order quantities for Whisper Clips, hat channel, Green Glue and Green Glue sealant, and then get them ordered as well. I'll be doing that this week. I suspect the cost of all of those items will go up in January to keep up with 2018 inflation.

 

[beans-on-toast]

They are talking snow storms here in the east. I fear that the cold weather is here to stay. Enjoy your mild weather.

I got an email from SSL today offering a drum processing plugin for $15. Bought the thing only to find out that you need an ($49) iLok dongle for it to work. All my other plugins that use iLok allow the activation codes to reside on the computer. Oh well.

 

[silky smoove]

They are talking snow storms here in the east. I fear that the cold weather is here to stay. Enjoy your mild weather.

I'm often thankful to live in a place with such comparatively mild weather. Even when I was just on the other side of the mountains in eastern Washington I'd be envious of western Washington. Sure it's more damp, but it's drastically more mild.

I got an email from SSL today offering a drum processing plugin for $15. Bought the thing only to find out that you need an ($49) iLok dongle for it to work. All my other plugins that use iLok allow the activation codes to reside on the computer. Oh well.

I didn't know anything worked with iLok activation on the computer without the dongle. I bought one a few years ago to run some Slate plugins and basically just forget it's tethered to a USB slot.

 

[beans-on-toast]

I didn't know anything worked with iLok activation on the computer without the dongle. I bought one a few years ago to run some Slate plugins and basically just forget it's tethered to a USB slot.

I find the dongle sticking out is a bit of a pain when using a portable, no problem with a desktop computer.

The plugin manufacturer dictates how iLok will work and if you can use their product without a dongle. Often free plugins that use iLok for example, allow you to have the activation on your computer, a dongle isn’t required. Eventide requires an ilok account but no dongle for all their plugins.

The advantage of the dongle is that you can easily move from one computer to another. With waves for example, which doesn’t use iLok, you can copy you licenses onto a usb memory stick and use it much like an iLok dongle works. Otherwise, you move the licenses from computer A to your waves cloud space, then move them from the cloud to computer B. You have to be on the internet to do this.

————-

BTW, the $15 SSL plugin is Drumstrip: Invalid Link Removed

 

[silky smoove]

Just ordered the mini split system along with all of the required components for it. Total was $1,417, which is about $400 less than I'd budgeted. Hooray!

This was for a 9,000 btu system that will provide sufficient heating and cooling on its low setting and yet isn't so oversized that I'd run into short cycle problems (components wearing out faster, lack of dehumidification benefits, etc.). On said low setting the unit operates at 19db (A-weighted), which is pretty darn quiet.

I've got some meetings to attend (day job getting in the way of studio building once again ) but later this afternoon I'll be ordering all of the Whisper Clips, hat channel and Green Glue.