• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Show Us Your Inexpensive "Frankenstein" Mini-Studios.

#21
hahaha marching army sound, god bless us bass players and our radical creativity. i think ive got 3+ hours worth of 4-5 minute songs recorded on my loop pedal. honestly, those sound better (after i really learned what i was doing) than most cheap laptop recording setups.

a cool thing about my "studio" is that the boss loop pedal has a reverse button. so when i'd be playing the "loop"/ recording into the input of my computer (thats right, i record into "sound recorder") i would sometimes hit the reverse button real fast for a second of "what the hell" kinda trippy effects..

in the end, those hours and hours of experimenting with that thing, i actually learned a lot about recording. if i can use that thing as my only recording equiptment, then when i'd be in a real studio all hell would break loose..
 
#22
EricF said:
Inexpensive is relative. For a home studio crammed into a small corner of my condo, there's a fair amount of $/sq ft involved here, but compared to a decent setup for recording a full band, I haven't scratched the surface.
Invalid Link Removed
Click to expand...

Can anyone here tell me how they made their sound blocks on the wall, like in this picture? I was going to try to find some inexpensive eggshell foam, but that stuff is expensive. Then I thought about moving blankets...but I think the boxes like the red one's above would work the best and sound the best.

Any info is appreciated! Thanks!
 
#25
I'm surprised no one has mentioned hanging fabric from the ceiling about 4-5 inches from the wall. I've been in many TV studios and thats the way they do it. Although they aren't trying to isolate audio like we are trying to do, but it does work....and it's cheap!!!
 
#26
Mikeyd74 said:
I'm surprised no one has mentioned hanging fabric from the ceiling about 4-5 inches from the wall. I've been in many TV studios and thats the way they do it. Although they aren't trying to isolate audio like we are trying to do, but it does work....and it's cheap!!!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have been looking at moving blankets on ebay too..but really you can get the foam wedges for less
 
#27
here's myn:
 

Attachments

  • studio.jpg
    studio.jpg
    39.5 KB · Views: 148
#29
sleepy_monkey said:
Yeah, I have been looking at moving blankets on ebay too..but really you can get the foam wedges for less
Click to expand...
They really don't have to be all that thick. A trip to the fabric store or Ikea should do the trick. Check out the curtains hanging in my studio, those kill the sound from outside extremely well. I got those from Ikea including the brackets, I think I paid around $60 for everything.
P1010602.jpg
 
#30
Great looking room for music! Luckily, I have a basement room I am going to build the walls and everything. I am going to make it a music room for now, but when we move it will be a "bedroom"...haha.

Just spoke to my boss and he has several 6x7 panels that were used in the Tweeter sound rooms for audio dampening or whatever...and he is going to give me 6 of them and I can hang those on the wall....awesome!
 
#31
sleepy_monkey said:
Great looking room for music! Luckily, I have a basement room I am going to build the walls and everything. I am going to make it a music room for now, but when we move it will be a "bedroom"...haha.

Just spoke to my boss and he has several 6x7 panels that were used in the Tweeter sound rooms for audio dampening or whatever...and he is going to give me 6 of them and I can hang those on the wall....awesome!
Click to expand...
Thanks! My room is getting there. It's actually all pulled apart right now. I'm making room for a "frankenstein" PC and a CRT monitor.
Nice score on the acoustic panels man!
 
#32
My studio is the smallest former guest-room in the house -- about 6' X 9', give or take a few inches. I have cheap Walmart comforters hanging on the opposing walls to deaden the sound and dampen standing waves. I'm software intensive, using a computer I built from old cast off parts, with a newly installed motherboard, processor and memory. It sits in the closet to the room, with foan backing on the door to keep the fan noise down. I run my Cakewalk Pro-Tracks across two 17" monitors (also cast offs). There's also a Yamaha keyboard midi-ed into an old Gateway laptop (that sits on top the keyboard) where I run my soft synths. Condensor mics, laptop, even guitars and basses, plug into two dual-input DI boxes. My Digitech DNX300 operates as my analog/digital interface, and gives me 4 channels of input, 2 channels out. Sound monitoring is through a Shewood (Radio Shack) stereo deck plugged into a set of Yamaha Speakers and a set of 6" x 9" heavy duty auto speakers that I canabalized from a junk car, mounted into small cabinets I made. Guitars and basses hang on the walls (along with the comforter), and the DB sits in a corner in front of the closet door.

It's small, cobbled together, relatively cheap, and it ain't pretty. I certainly could have spent more, but it suits my purposes right now.
 
#34
sleepy_monkey said:
Thanks! I just found this.... www.foambymail.com

About a 1/3 of the price of Auralex. It is only 1" thick but I am just looking for an improvement over my BLOCK walls..and I am sure those squares will do the trick!

I found it while reading through reviews of Auralex on MF's website..haha.

This site is great too...Invalid Link Removed
Click to expand...

Nooooo!!!! :eek:

Foam (even "acoustic" foam) will have an effect on high end and flutter echoes, but will do NOTHING for the biggest problems in most small studio rooms - bass and midrange. The reason why "Foam By Mail" is so cheap is because it's crap (seriously). Although Auralex foam is better, it still doesn't do the job right. The Auralex "bass traps" aren't dense enough or large enough to provide much in actual bass frequency reduction. Blankets will have the same problem - not enough mass and density to do much besides kill high end. Proper materials for acoustic treatment usually involve rigid fibergass or rockwool insulation.

The panels I built are wood frames filled with Owens Corning 703 rigid fiberglass (my MySpace site has a blog about my DIY project, if you want more detailed info). The improvement in my tiny space was DRAMATIC! The low end and midrange became tighter and much better defined, and my stero imaging became MUCH more clear. It is - by far - the best investment I've made in my recording setup.

For your own education, here some more good things to read (in addition to the link that projectMalamute provided)...
http://www.massivemastering.com/blog/html/blog_files/Basic_Room_Setup.html
http://www.gikacoustics.com/education.html

I'm glad to see you found Tweakheadz. There's a lot of great info there. The forum (studio-central.com) is fantastic - not as fun as TB, but just as educational.
 
#35
EricF said:
Nooooo!!!! :eek:

Foam (even "acoustic" foam) will have an effect on high end and flutter echoes, but will do NOTHING for the biggest problems in most small studio rooms - bass and midrange. The reason why "Foam By Mail" is so cheap is because it's crap (seriously). Although Auralex foam is better, it still doesn't do the job right. The Auralex "bass traps" aren't dense enough or large enough to provide much in actual bass frequency reduction. Blankets will have the same problem - not enough mass and density to do much besides kill high end. Proper materials for acoustic treatment usually involve rigid fibergass or rockwool insulation.

The panels I built are wood frames filled with Owens Corning 703 rigid fiberglass (my MySpace site has a blog about my DIY project, if you want more detailed info). The improvement in my tiny space was DRAMATIC! The low end and midrange became tighter and much better defined, and my stero imaging became MUCH more clear. It is - by far - the best investment I've made in my recording setup.

For your own education, here some more good things to read (in addition to the link that projectMalamute provided)...
http://www.massivemastering.com/blog/html/blog_files/Basic_Room_Setup.html
http://www.gikacoustics.com/education.html

I'm glad to see you found Tweakheadz. There's a lot of great info there. The forum (studio-central.com) is fantastic - not as fun as TB, but just as educational.
Click to expand...

+1
 
#38
I've got a conundrum in my house in that when the kids are awake, they make too much noise for me to record and when they're asleep, I'd make too much noise. I use a Zoom H4 to record so capturing bass isn't the problem - it's the vocals, acoustic guitar, etc.

So my temporary solution is to record in the garage, inside our minivan. There's a fair amount of room, and it's quiet as a tomb in there. I'm sure the acoustics are less than ideal, but it's the closest thing to the "box in a box" studio design as I can get.
 
#39
Sheldon681 said:
I've got a conundrum in my house in that when the kids are awake, they make too much noise for me to record and when they're asleep, I'd make too much noise. I use a Zoom H4 to record so capturing bass isn't the problem - it's the vocals, acoustic guitar, etc.

So my temporary solution is to record in the garage, inside our minivan. There's a fair amount of room, and it's quiet as a tomb in there. I'm sure the acoustics are less than ideal, but it's the closest thing to the "box in a box" studio design as I can get.
Click to expand...
Recording in a mini-van? That's a really interesting idea!
 
#40
jordanm said:
Weres the herps?!? I see the computer and the music stuff. I'm in the same boat accept.. I use my bands studio to record lol. More room for snakes!
Click to expand...

My girlfriend's the snake lady. ;) 6 ball pythons (more soon, we're incubating eggs right now!), 4 carpet pythons, and a motley corn snake... Plus one errant bearded dragon.

My music & her herpetological hobbies haven't slowed down, even though our space has become much more limited. We're outgrowing this house, so hopefully soon I can find one with either a garage or basement I can convert to my own purposes, and leave a room for her + snakes. I'll dig up pics to post when I get home.
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back