Soul Search Records Studio Build!!!!

[llmonty]

looks amazing! nice job! Can I ask what security camera system you are using? looking into that now and not finding much between the cheapo costco versions and the expensive systems provided by my security company. thanks!

[docdj112]

Originally Posted by llmonty

looks amazing! nice job! Can I ask what security camera system you are using? looking into that now and not finding much between the cheapo costco versions and the expensive systems provided by my security company. thanks!

I went with a system from costco that got really good ratings across the board and I'm pretty happy with it. I can view it from anywhere in the world and the quality is very good. The only thing is that it doesn't have the security company attached to it. The reason for the system really is for liability say for like slip and fall type stuff. If someone wants to rob me hey its just equipment and I'm less then half a mile from the police station.

[docdj112]

Alright guys I've got some new photos. Its been a busy weekend around here for me and my compatriots. A lot of new equipment has come in this week and needed to be set up but my order from redco hadn't arrived as I had hoped so it was on to plan B, C, D, E. We put up foam in the control room. Found the rugs that we wanted and got the couches for both the control room and the lounge. Now its on to the TV mounts for the control room and lounge.

On the outside the driveway still has yet to see any work done as the weather has just been aweful and I heard today that we may see upwards of a foot of snow. (hard to believe its almost april) but that should go away quickly and we are trying to do some more grading and hopefully some paving next week. The opening date for the studio is tentatively set for april 6th and as long as the equipment sets up ok and the test sessions go well we should be up and running very shortly.

[mc_deli]

Can you tell about the stone treatment in the live room... what is it, what references/examples did you base it on, why was it right for you, what does it sound like, would you do it again...?

(I've been trying to research stone drum rooms and stone corners of live rooms but haven't found much - yet)

Looks great BTW

[docdj112]

Originally Posted by mc_deli

Can you tell about the stone treatment in the live room... what is it, what references/examples did you base it on, why was it right for you, what does it sound like, would you do it again...?

(I've been trying to research stone drum rooms and stone corners of live rooms but haven't found much - yet)

Looks great BTW

Thanks, mc_deli. The stone wall is actually the original foundation of the house that we built the studio in. The reason I went with the stone wall was because of its natural ability to 1 diffuse the sound evenly and 2 to give the live room a unique look and feel. I had been to a couple other studios and I had been to an old church in my town made entirely of stone. The acoustics in the church were simply amazing without the need for any diffusors or panels and the tracks that they recorded at the studios were full of life and yet it has some really organic qualities with out the need to much adjustment. Recently my projects have been more singer song writer type thing and the acoustic guitar is a main instrument. So it was a main consideration to design a room that instruments would sound natural with this because so much is dependent on the space it was recorded in. When I get the multi track up I'll post some test tracks and you can use your own judgement because no matter what I say everyone one can perceive it differently

[docdj112]

Hey guys I know its been a while things have been a little haywire around here to get things into place. But as you can see from the photos its pretty much complete. Over the past month or so I've been doing fine tuning the live room acoustics fixing some wiring glitches (one should not pull cable while consuming adult beverages), and getting the final pieces set up for creature comforts.

First I'll start with the live room. We had a band come in about 3 weeks ago to test out the room and see where we were at simply acoustically in the room to much echo too little echo frequency bumps/gaps ect. As expected the stone does a magnificent job of keeping standing waves down to a minimum however the echo was a little excessive even for the most live sounding rooms. So to fix this I came up with a very simple and economical solution. Run to Home depot and pick up some pre cut carpet, some pop rivets, and 8 or so hooks. These we hung along the wall parallel to the long stone wall. This significantly cut the echo back and made it much more "dead" sounding. However when I came up with this idea I wanted to make sure that I could add the live effect back as needed when the situation called for it so to accomplish this I simply unhook the pieces that I want and put them in the store room and I have an incredibly good control over the live feeling.

The control room it self was pretty straight forward to get sounding true. The Skyline style diffusor behind the mixing seat and the acoustic foam on the wall did a magnificent job of killing off flutter and keeping everything nice and balanced.

In terms of the equipment hookup everything seemed to work pretty nice once it was all hooked. The power is supplied through 3 power conditioners that clean and filter all the juice. One problem that I'm having is this piece of prosumer gear (Focusrite TT pro) that I liked when I first got it many years ago (because I didn't know any better). Besides the fact that it has a short in it and the meters don't behave as they should (and the pre's sound like crap)...the list could go on. I've decided to sell it and upgrade to another dual channel strip...possibly a Manly Langevin.

One more cool thing that was pretty important we finally got a driveway!!!!! no more dirt being tracked around!

Finally as for the lounge the only thing left to do is hang some art on the wall and get a nice shelf for the cable box and game system!!!


Thank you all for following my thread over the past few months. I promise this is not the last post and my next one will contain audio samples of the live room as well as the final promotional pictures for the website. So please enjoy the photos and check out the website we've done some updates and added a music lesson page!. Soul Search Records and if any of you guys are in the NY/NJ area let me know and I can give you a tour of the facilities or if you have any questions please feel free to post and I will try to answer them to the best I can.

[Downsound]

Congratulations!! - it really turned out nice!!!

[docdj112]

Here are some pictures from Johnny B. & The Good Tones test recording session today. Things went really well today. WE HAD OUR FIRST FULL TEST OF THE SYSTEM. I am happy to report that we had NO major melt downs. The studio worked great and the session was a lot of fun to say the least.

Things we have added to the shopping list

3 Shorty boom stands
2 Rolling boom stands
3 Regular boom stands
1 cable tester (this would have saved us some very valuable time)

Enjoy the pics. We'll have some audio up shortly as soon as I go through the takes!

[docdj112]

Hello all,

So while the physical construction is coming to an end the behind the scenes work is just getting started. The next phase of this project is to get as many clients as possible. Our budget for marketing is fairly small but in todays tech heavy world one can get the word out quick. To start we created your typical social media accounts. Facebook, twitter, and a youtube account in which we will be posting videos from the studio as well as some online mixing lessons on the basics. So as this is my first time doing an ad push of this kind ill be letting you know how the response is.

Here are the links to the twitter and facebook pages and if any of you have suggestions on how to make them better im all ears!

Soul Search Records | Facebook

Twitter: @soulsearchrec

[docdj112]

The Studio has now been up and running for a couple of weeks now. After Ironing out some bugs things seem to be getting into a groove. Couple little problems came up in the last session. The JLM compressor had a weird buzzing going through the whole signal to converters…This led me on a wild goose chase trying to find out where the grounding issues were. After a long and drawn out search it turns out that a clip in the patch bay had come loose and wasn't allowing the parts to make contact. Very easy fix. Another issue that I want to take care of is the need for some more skyline diffusors in the control room. Once I get some extra time on my hands I'll bust out the miter box saw for a little while. If anyone has any questions or suggestions please let me know! anywhooo back to the studio! if any of you guys have a min give us a like on facebook!

Soul Search Records | Facebook

Soul Search Records