Mark's mix room build

[Mark Williams]

Man Cave? Gangster? I thought I was just a lumpy old mixer with a cool new personal workshop!

[NCP]

man, haven't you seen "Office Space?" :-) Well Mark, you can be the Gangster of Love if you want, but when a person has it going on like you have it going on, that person can be referred to in modern vernacular as "Gangsta" and since we're too white & nerdy to be real cool, I'll say it "Gangster"...

[Mark Williams]

I'll try to live up (or down) to the monicker, thanks!

[VenVile]

WOW! This is amazing! Very inspiring. I'm building my new studio space, everything dyi, but some time, I'll like to work with some pros to have everything built to the required specs.

Thanks for the inspiration guys!

[Mark Williams]

DYI has certain satisfactions but if you get the right people to get it right the first time, you will be more successful in your work over the years. Ultimately it isn't about building your studio so much as it is about using your studio. Wacky monitoring and patched together acoustics will just make it a longer path to get to the level of work you want to deliver.

[Mark Williams]

Sorry, that should have been, "DIY" (Do It Yourself).

[NCP]

For me the most interesting thing of all about all this is that over the last 30 years I've observed that without exception, small rooms just suck! Yet, here's this one that doesn't. I think it is safe to say that for the majority that people are doing more with less and the use of small spaces is part of that. It's pretty incredible that the level of knowledge has progressed to the point where a working design like this is possible. Will it handle tons of SPL without folding up, No. But it doesn't need to! Because everything is completely to scale, it feels like a big control room with impossibly well tuned large format monitors, sound wise. The point is, it's INSPIRING! When you are talking in the room you get pretty much no aural clues as to the actual size of the room, yet you can definitely feel energy return. The room even allows the deep bass to happen without getting all scrunchy. Personally I've never experienced that in a space this small. So, like many of you I'm sure- I think the audio world has taken some steps backward over the last decade or so, frankly I'm a bit cynical but clearly it is also still moving forward and adapting to the times.

[Mark Williams]

The Clarity folks are doing the last touchups, Rob is tweaking odds an ends in cabling, and I have been working in the new studio (and loving it!).

Now that it exists, I have to name it. This is functionally an in-house studio since it is just for my own work, but it still needs a name. My wife and i have a company called East Oak Media and I have been calling the studio East Oak Mixing, but I'm open to suggestions..

Got another idea for a name?

[Mark Williams]

Another suggestion I need is for a track light fixture that can spot my work surfaces. I may need three of them. The hanging fixtures seen in the photos I've posted were just in the way, acoustically and physically, so I too them down. It's now a bit dark in there!

How do you light your own control surfaces and avoid glare and shadows?

[Mark Williams]

a line of analog (the digits are mostly in the mix area):

[Mark Williams]

Well, Bill Weir and Jeff Hedback are about done with tweaking the monitors and acoustics, and I have to say that in over 40 years of recording I have never had such a high definition room and monitor system.

My original expectations for the room were to have a nicer place to mix projects with some better acoustics. I've ended up with a room so good it challenges me to do better work. That part was not anticipated but it is certainly welcome! My calendar is filling up and I'm going to enjoy this new chapter in my career.

Master fabricator Doug Burns is finishing up odds and ends to get us ready for promo shots. I'll post some stuff here and there but this thread is probably winding up.

The new web site for East Oak Media (my wife's and my company) is up at <http://www.eastoakmedia.com/> but I haven't put my half of it together. Once I get it together to do that, I will have a list of credits for the remarkable people that put this room together for me! My thanks to all.

[Jeffrey Hedback]

Here is the LF response looking at pressure amplitude and a waterfall.

Funny thing happened on the way to this result that was beyond the acoustical devices and the speakers...physics. The room is obviously not purpose designed and has dimensional subsets. The main mix area is in fact a near perfect cube with the deck ceiling having an average height roughly equaling the length & width of this part of the space: 11.5'. In addition, the speaker locations create speaker/boundary and listener/boundary nulls that in combination created a pressure absence between ~60>90Hz that was beyond acceptability.
So...we added a sub as a velocity amplitude counter. With careful placement and a DSP curve, the sub was integrated not for lo freq extension but simply to "convert" velocity to pressure. The main L & R speakers themselves are fully engaged at ~30Hz...the sub is really part of the acoustical devices (think Bag End E-Trap).

You will note a secondary resonance at ~75Hz in the waterfall that is gone before 400ms...this is evident in this particular measurement but does not seem to be global within the mix area or room as a whole. It's not a modal resonance...most likely a combination of sub and stuff specific to this measurement location.

Mark's now been working in the room for two or three weeks since this data was taken and I'll let him comment on how things are translating, the sound quality...etc. Well, actually he already has in the previous post.

[Mark Williams]

The net result is the best monitoring I've ever used, and I've worked in quite a few studios!

[NCP]

Wow Mark, Thanks! I was just gonna say to Jeff, You know- I'm pretty sure now that I think of it that the last tone sweeps I captured had something vibrating... The gain was up a bit and there was some equipment in a rack sounding off. I'm sure that's what is happening so late in the measurement.

I'll sort out a day to make another measurement for us with nothing woken up in the room.

Also, I am only using one mic to measure, since that's all I have at the moment. I would bet that the averaged room response from say, 4 mics at the apex points of an imaginary parallelogram across the room would show much smoother response, more like what we're hearing which is clearly to all who hear it flatter than this measurement indicates, yes I realize its 1/24th octave... :-)

[Jeffrey Hedback]

Finished photos of Mixer Mark's room.

[EricF]

Very, very cool! That looks like a wonderful space to work in.

[Mark Williams]

My new mix studio has been a wonderful workshop for me. Despite being quite compact, it doesn't sound small in there at all and my clients love the mixes we are turning out.

So far this year, I have been booked solid with only two or three days off each month. When I have time to work on our new web site, I plan to have a page that identifies everyone who made this place happen!

[clip6]

Two 301's. Hey.......

[Mark Williams]

and an A-320. I use a variety of what is now called parallel compression (back in the day we called it "compression under").

[Jeffrey Hedback]

the custom Clarity Inc Motiv monitors are designed by Bill Weir and much of their design has been covered in this diary. Beautiful, simply beautiful...looking and sounding.

[Mark Williams]

I'm glad to see some photographs that reveal the beautiful form of these monitors. honestly, I am usually looking at the DAW screens or the console, but these loudspeakers look like sculpture more than the usual boxes.

[Syncamorea]

Mark's mix room sez:

I'm soooo SEXY!!!

[Mark Williams]

well, I'm glad the room says it because I am not likely to project that on my own.

[Noise10]

Mark was kind enough to let me come listen for a while a few weeks ago and I gotta say the room is perfectly balanced. Sounds great!

PB

[pathdoc]

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Hedback

the custom Clarity Inc Motiv monitors are designed by Bill Weir and much of their design has been covered in this diary. Beautiful, simply beautiful...looking and sounding.

Those are slick as hell. Very nice setup, indeed!

[Mark Williams]

Jeff Hedback has a new interview with an online HiFi magazine that's a good read. Jeff of course worked with Clarity Incorporated to create this mix studio:

http://www.dagogo.com/View-Article.asp?hArticle=1010