Small Home Recording Studio

statzern · 12th July 2011

Hey all,

Work is already underway on this small in-home recording setup, and we thought we would share the progress with everyone here.

A little history:
The two of us were in a few bands together over the past 7 years or so, after a chance meeting duing undergrad. Some bands of ours were semi-successful but mostly fell short of our musical expectations, and our last group just randomly disbanded after we lost our vocalist. Following this break up, we were left with a handful of songs that were either mostly complete, or just great ideas at the time - much of which represented our best work. During our time in these groups, much of our favorite experiences were had while recording in various studios. We began recording our own demos about four years ago - the first few were well... awful... but, determined to improve, we have definitely come a long way in our recording and mixing abilities.

After I finished undergrad, I took a year to do research in medicine. During that time, I learned much about building audio gear and servicing audio equipment working part time at a local shop. During that year off I built as much recording equipment as I could afford, and now have a respectable front end for recording.

Now, for ten months out of the year we are living about 500 miles apart, and because of professional obligations, this summer is our last chance to get this material recorded for a long time.

We are recording in a small ranch style home in a suburban area. We are using one bedroom of the home as a control room, and the unfinished basement will be the live room. For treatment in the basement, we are building three 4 foot x6 foot gobos. For treatment in the control room, we have six (four pictured below) 4 inch thick bass traps, as well as floor-to-ceiling corner traps that are approximately 1 x 1 x 2 triangles.
Yesterday we ran a 16 send x 4 return snake and two speaker cables through a small hole in the wall and subfloor we made, which will transmit the signals from mics, the signals for headphone mix for drumming, and the signals from our guitar amp heads to speaker cabinets in the basement. Tonight we are wiring the patchbays and board. Pictures will follow!

Making the hole in the subflooring:

The finished hole from upstairs. It is below where trim will cover in the future, for aesthetics.

A grainy picture of some traps:

A table we restored and have made suitable for our purposes. We are building a small "bridge" that will go over the meterbridge on our Ghost that will hold the two monitors we are using.

The Ghost in its new home:

Some other slutty pix for all you gear guys:
59 P Bass

Sunn Beta Bass loaned to us from a friend:

Much more to come!

statzern · 13th July 2011

Here's a few more pictures of the progress from this afternoon - built the "bridge" for the monitor and wired the entire rack and console.

Syncamorea · 13th July 2011

I appreciate the history behind your bands and your music - it gives it context to where you're heading. Good luck with the studio and getting the music produced!

DR Music · 14th July 2011

NICE!!!
I also have the Profire2626 and ADA8000, i had them modified at Black Lion Audio and they sound amazing!
Very inexpensive!
Can't wait to see more pics!!

statzern · 14th July 2011

DR Music: Cool! I've been happy with both so far. When I get the money, it would be nice to be able to use all 24 channels on the board - but I need 8 more channels of A/D and D/A plus all the cables for that. But, I had my eye on the SSL Alphalink for a long time. I wouldn't mind switching over when the time comes... but I just spent like $600 on cables for the setup I've got!

So, progress continued yesterday with cutting rockwool triangles for superchunk corner traps. I had built some for my room up in Michigan, and hauled the rockwool down south for this. Originally, I had cut the rockwool into 4 triangles per sheet, so that they were 2x2x2.82 feet! We decided that was too much floorspace to lose this time, so I cut them in half - 1x1x1.4 feet. We are wrapping groups of five or six of them in muslin fabric (about 1.45/yd at fabric store), then stacking the bundled groups in the corners, then making grilles for aesthetics. See pictures below of the original corner traps - the new ones will be made exactly the same, just half as big.

DR Music · 14th July 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by statzern

DR Music: Cool! I've been happy with both so far. When I get the money, it would be nice to be able to use all 24 channels on the board - but I need 8 more channels of A/D and D/A plus all the cables for that. But, I had my eye on the SSL Alphalink for a long time. I wouldn't mind switching over when the time comes... but I just spent like $600 on cables for the setup I've got!

So, progress continued yesterday with cutting rockwool triangles for superchunk corner traps. I had built some for my room up in Michigan, and hauled the rockwool down south for this. Originally, I had cut the rockwool into 4 triangles per sheet, so that they were 2x2x2.82 feet! We decided that was too much floorspace to lose this time, so I cut them in half - 1x1x1.4 feet. We are wrapping groups of five or six of them in muslin fabric (about 1.45/yd at fabric store), then stacking the bundled groups in the corners, then making grilles for aesthetics. See pictures below of the original corner traps - the new ones will be made exactly the same, just half as big.

Beautiful!!!! Keep on going!!!!!

apadua · 14th July 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by statzern

, I had my eye on the SSL Alphalink for a long time. I wouldn't mind switching over when the time comes....

Can't wait to see how this turns out. I have a ghost 32LE with a SSL Alphalink/RME 9652 Combo.. been very happy

Where do you plan to place your monitors? Stands? Softfit?

Good luck...

statzern · 22nd July 2011

I'll be placing them on stands. The stands are Actually already constructed, but we are leaving them out until the corner traps are in place. Sorry progress has slowed - we've been rehearsing the past couple days instead of building!! The next steps are to hang the traps and get the corner guys in there. Many pix will follow!

Thanks for the interest! We'll update ASAP!!

statzern · 26th July 2011

Hey all,

We've got some more pictures of progress. We have made the baffles/grilles for the corner traps. We constructed them from 1"x2" lumber and covered them with a nice canvas fabric. In a couple corners there are some structures (a window and a closet with a sliding door) that don't allow the baffle to come flush against the wall. Because of this, the rockwool would still be partially exposed to the room. To prevent stray fibers from floating off into the room, we decided to wrap chunks of 6 2" thick triangles in cheap muslin fabric, and stack the chunks. It worked out ok, but the stack is not super stable - the baffles are holding them up.

By the way, inspiration for this corner trap design came from this thread - see about 1/2 way down the page for pictures: Corner Traps finally finished! - Page 4 - Home Theater Forum and Systems - HomeTheaterShack.com

The baffles were constructed so that they are exactly big enough to fit - they are held by friction between the floor and ceiling. We've constructed all four of them, but we have to cut a bunch more triangles of rockwool.

I realize it might be hard to tell exactly what's going on in the room overall, so I whipped up a quick MS Paint masterpiece for you all. It's attached to this post. Feel free to give any suggestions. Unfortunately, we don't have the time or resources to add traps or well.. anything else... right now, but we can move stuff around if need be.

Once we've got them up, we're going to install the speaker stands and give the room a listen this evening. The other traps will be installed this week! Enjoy the pictures!

statzern · 26th July 2011

Some more bass trap building pictures...

We made a little stand/cable guide for the one pictured here. Worked out pretty well. Just used scrap wood we had left over from making the new table top. The insulation eventually was stacked up to the ceiling, of course :P

All the corner traps are done, except the one that is pictured has a bit of a problem fitting the baffle in because of the cables. We are going to think about the best way to fix it, and try to have it completed tonight.

The next step is to hang all the 4" traps. If anyone sees a better configuration for the 4" traps, let us know what you're thinking before we drill a bunch of holes in the walls!

statzern · 1st August 2011

So our control room is pretty much done now!

The photos included are not the best - iPhone camera is pretty limited... hopefully we are going to have a friend help us out w/ that in a couple days.

We hung all the bass traps yesterday, following the diagram shown in the post before last. All traps have a 4-inch air gap behind them. The pictures below show how the traps were hung. The trap on the front wall got two mounting brackets. They are quite stable, and can stand being run into, but are also easily removable for maintenance or adjustment. I've seen that a lot of people on here suggest a picture wire method of hanging bass traps. I did that for my first time hanging traps in my previous studio, and I had a really hard time getting them all to be exactly the same height. This way provided a much more consistent height of the traps.

There were a few changes to our proposed plan:

1. We didn't mount the trap in the front of the room in the corner as proposed - we just mounted it flat on the wall. A corner trap would have been too difficult right over the console, and moving it is kinda out of the question at this point.

2. The traps on the side walls at the first reflections are not directly across from each other. Because our hanging method relied on finding studs, we placed them as close to the proposed locations as possible.

I also included a terrible drawing of how the cloud was hung. This method is good, because it's adjustable, stable and the cloud could even be angled if you left uneven lengths of chain on each side. It looks really good too, at least I think so!

Some of you may have noticed our lack of keyboard and mousing real estate on the desk. We had thought about installing a keyboard tray (which we have spare from another desk), but opted not to because it sat too low, and made the desk uncomfortable. So, we decided to just install a 11" extension piece of particle board on the front of the desk. It made a huge difference, and now the desk is very comfortable to work at. The distance between the sitting position and monitor is good, and the knobs on the board are fairly easily accessible (except maybe the very top ones by the meter bridge... omg have to stand for 2 sec?? oh no!)

We reinstalled the speakers stands, aligned the speakers and gave the room a listen - sounds awesome! There is no doubt that the room sounds completely different (and better) than before. However, there is significantly more bass in the rear of the room, which is less treated than the front of the room. We are going to take a couple measurements with REW and post the results soon.

Tracking begins one week from today!!!

Syncamorea · 2nd August 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by statzern

We reinstalled the speakers stands, aligned the speakers and gave the room a listen - sounds awesome! There is no doubt that the room sounds completely different (and better) than before.

That's great news. Congrats!

statzern · 2nd August 2011

Thanks! We are definitely excited about it.

We are thinking about putting a small sitting area in the back of the room, like a small couch or something. Do you think that might also help to suck up some of the bass back there? I'm guessing that maybe the covering of the couch may play into how effective it is as a bass trap? Thoughts??

The next step is to build gobos for the live area. Theravada going to be about 6' tall, and filled with OC703. We aren't sure if we will build then 2" or 4" thick yet. They will be used mostly to tame the reflections from the room, which is quite large and has concrete walls all around. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. We will post a sketch of our design ASAP.

Syncamorea · 3rd August 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by statzern

We are thinking about putting a small sitting area in the back of the room, like a small couch or something. Do you think that might also help to suck up some of the bass back there? I'm guessing that maybe the covering of the couch may play into how effective it is as a bass trap? Thoughts??

A large stuffed sofa can have measurable (and audible) bass trapping, absolutely.

erikdrink · 4th August 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by Syncamorea

A large stuffed sofa can have measurable (and audible) bass trapping, absolutely.

skengin · 7th September 2011

I realize you're implementing what is known as the "super-chunk" bass trap. That is to use a corner of insulation so you have a wedge that fits into the corner to "super trap" bass resonance, all the way to the ceiling. However, I've read that the energy of a signal at the wall, including a bass wave, is zero...so no absorption can 'theoretically' occur. However, 16" away from the wall is the optimum distance at which absorption of bass frequencies is possible. So...have you found different results or are you just more comfortable using the "super-chunk" method?? BTW, very amazing project. I am watching to learn and envious of the studio!

statzern · 7th September 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by skengin

I've read that the energy of a signal at the wall, including a bass wave, is zero...so no absorption can 'theoretically' occur. However, 16" away from the wall is the optimum distance at which absorption of bass frequencies is possible.

Hey skengin, thanks for the interest in our project. First of all, from a qualitative aspect, the room sounds completely 1000% different. There is another room identical to this room next door (how convenient...) that we compared with as a before and after - it's just absolutely no comparison. The untreated room's reflections are unbelievable... forget about recording anything in there!

But to your point, as I understand from reading around here, the distance for maximum absorption is frequency-dependent, reaching its maximum at 1/4 wavelength away from the wall. So in the corners, our traps are maximally 0.707 feet from either wall, and are .3535 feet thick. This means we can most effectively absorb down to about 398.16 Hz in the corners.
(Math: v=c/l ... c=1126 ft/sec ... l = 4*.707 ft ... v = 398.16 Hz.)
That doesn't mean that we will get no absorption below that frequency, at least I don't think. The air gap needed to effectively absorb to really low frequencies is huge - losing over a whole foot of the room just couldn't happen. It's helpful that our monitors fall off around 50 Hz or so...

Tracking is pretty much done for now, I'm away at school. We'll resume when I get back. The music sounds awesome so far - we're quite proud of it. Next steps are vocals and mixing. PS, if anyone in this thread is anywhere near the Midwest US and would be interested in helping us mix the tracks, send me a PM or an email to NVSound(at)gmail.com and I can hook you up with a quick demo. We feel like getting some fresh ears on the tracks could really be helpful.

12th July 2011	#1
statzern Gear nut Joined: Oct 2009 Posts: 102 Thread Starter 1 Review written	Small Home Recording Studio Hey all, Work is already underway on this small in-home recording setup, and we thought we would share the progress with everyone here. A little history: The two of us were in a few bands together over the past 7 years or so, after a chance meeting duing undergrad. Some bands of ours were semi-successful but mostly fell short of our musical expectations, and our last group just randomly disbanded after we lost our vocalist. Following this break up, we were left with a handful of songs that were either mostly complete, or just great ideas at the time - much of which represented our best work. During our time in these groups, much of our favorite experiences were had while recording in various studios. We began recording our own demos about four years ago - the first few were well... awful... but, determined to improve, we have definitely come a long way in our recording and mixing abilities. After I finished undergrad, I took a year to do research in medicine. During that time, I learned much about building audio gear and servicing audio equipment working part time at a local shop. During that year off I built as much recording equipment as I could afford, and now have a respectable front end for recording. Now, for ten months out of the year we are living about 500 miles apart, and because of professional obligations, this summer is our last chance to get this material recorded for a long time. We are recording in a small ranch style home in a suburban area. We are using one bedroom of the home as a control room, and the unfinished basement will be the live room. For treatment in the basement, we are building three 4 foot x6 foot gobos. For treatment in the control room, we have six (four pictured below) 4 inch thick bass traps, as well as floor-to-ceiling corner traps that are approximately 1 x 1 x 2 triangles. Yesterday we ran a 16 send x 4 return snake and two speaker cables through a small hole in the wall and subfloor we made, which will transmit the signals from mics, the signals for headphone mix for drumming, and the signals from our guitar amp heads to speaker cabinets in the basement. Tonight we are wiring the patchbays and board. Pictures will follow! Making the hole in the subflooring: The finished hole from upstairs. It is below where trim will cover in the future, for aesthetics. A grainy picture of some traps: A table we restored and have made suitable for our purposes. We are building a small "bridge" that will go over the meterbridge on our Ghost that will hold the two monitors we are using. The Ghost in its new home: Some other slutty pix for all you gear guys: 59 P Bass Sunn Beta Bass loaned to us from a friend: Much more to come!

13th July 2011	#2
statzern Gear nut Joined: Oct 2009 Posts: 102 Thread Starter 1 Review written	Here's a few more pictures of the progress from this afternoon - built the "bridge" for the monitor and wired the entire rack and console. Attached Thumbnails

14th July 2011	#4
DR Music Lives for gear Joined: Feb 2011 Location: Chicago Subs, IL Posts: 1,379 2 Reviews written	NICE!!! I also have the Profire2626 and ADA8000, i had them modified at Black Lion Audio and they sound amazing! Very inexpensive! Can't wait to see more pics!! __________________ Mac Pro 5,1 BlackLionAudio Conversion, Dangerous Music Summing, PTHD, Universal Audio's HW and UAD-2, NS10's, EmotivaPro's 6, GIK Acoustics, DIY (JLM Audio, ClassicAPI, Sound Skulpter, 51X, etc...)

14th July 2011	#5
statzern Gear nut Joined: Oct 2009 Posts: 102 Thread Starter 1 Review written	DR Music: Cool! I've been happy with both so far. When I get the money, it would be nice to be able to use all 24 channels on the board - but I need 8 more channels of A/D and D/A plus all the cables for that. But, I had my eye on the SSL Alphalink for a long time. I wouldn't mind switching over when the time comes... but I just spent like $600 on cables for the setup I've got! So, progress continued yesterday with cutting rockwool triangles for superchunk corner traps. I had built some for my room up in Michigan, and hauled the rockwool down south for this. Originally, I had cut the rockwool into 4 triangles per sheet, so that they were 2x2x2.82 feet! We decided that was too much floorspace to lose this time, so I cut them in half - 1x1x1.4 feet. We are wrapping groups of five or six of them in muslin fabric (about 1.45/yd at fabric store), then stacking the bundled groups in the corners, then making grilles for aesthetics. See pictures below of the original corner traps - the new ones will be made exactly the same, just half as big. Attached Thumbnails

26th July 2011	#9
statzern Gear nut Joined: Oct 2009 Posts: 102 Thread Starter 1 Review written	More Pix & Progress Hey all, We've got some more pictures of progress. We have made the baffles/grilles for the corner traps. We constructed them from 1"x2" lumber and covered them with a nice canvas fabric. In a couple corners there are some structures (a window and a closet with a sliding door) that don't allow the baffle to come flush against the wall. Because of this, the rockwool would still be partially exposed to the room. To prevent stray fibers from floating off into the room, we decided to wrap chunks of 6 2" thick triangles in cheap muslin fabric, and stack the chunks. It worked out ok, but the stack is not super stable - the baffles are holding them up. By the way, inspiration for this corner trap design came from this thread - see about 1/2 way down the page for pictures: Corner Traps finally finished! - Page 4 - Home Theater Forum and Systems - HomeTheaterShack.com The baffles were constructed so that they are exactly big enough to fit - they are held by friction between the floor and ceiling. We've constructed all four of them, but we have to cut a bunch more triangles of rockwool. I realize it might be hard to tell exactly what's going on in the room overall, so I whipped up a quick MS Paint masterpiece for you all. It's attached to this post. Feel free to give any suggestions. Unfortunately, we don't have the time or resources to add traps or well.. anything else... right now, but we can move stuff around if need be. Once we've got them up, we're going to install the speaker stands and give the room a listen this evening. The other traps will be installed this week! Enjoy the pictures! Attached Thumbnails

13th July 2011	#3
Syncamorea Lives for gear Joined: May 2009 Posts: 1,625 3 Reviews written	I appreciate the history behind your bands and your music - it gives it context to where you're heading. Good luck with the studio and getting the music produced!

22nd July 2011	#8
statzern Gear nut Joined: Oct 2009 Posts: 102 Thread Starter 1 Review written	I'll be placing them on stands. The stands are Actually already constructed, but we are leaving them out until the corner traps are in place. Sorry progress has slowed - we've been rehearsing the past couple days instead of building!! The next steps are to hang the traps and get the corner guys in there. Many pix will follow! Thanks for the interest! We'll update ASAP!!

1st August 2011	#11
statzern Gear nut Joined: Oct 2009 Posts: 102 Thread Starter 1 Review written	Control Room Finished! So our control room is pretty much done now! The photos included are not the best - iPhone camera is pretty limited... hopefully we are going to have a friend help us out w/ that in a couple days. We hung all the bass traps yesterday, following the diagram shown in the post before last. All traps have a 4-inch air gap behind them. The pictures below show how the traps were hung. The trap on the front wall got two mounting brackets. They are quite stable, and can stand being run into, but are also easily removable for maintenance or adjustment. I've seen that a lot of people on here suggest a picture wire method of hanging bass traps. I did that for my first time hanging traps in my previous studio, and I had a really hard time getting them all to be exactly the same height. This way provided a much more consistent height of the traps. There were a few changes to our proposed plan: 1. We didn't mount the trap in the front of the room in the corner as proposed - we just mounted it flat on the wall. A corner trap would have been too difficult right over the console, and moving it is kinda out of the question at this point. 2. The traps on the side walls at the first reflections are not directly across from each other. Because our hanging method relied on finding studs, we placed them as close to the proposed locations as possible. I also included a terrible drawing of how the cloud was hung. This method is good, because it's adjustable, stable and the cloud could even be angled if you left uneven lengths of chain on each side. It looks really good too, at least I think so! Some of you may have noticed our lack of keyboard and mousing real estate on the desk. We had thought about installing a keyboard tray (which we have spare from another desk), but opted not to because it sat too low, and made the desk uncomfortable. So, we decided to just install a 11" extension piece of particle board on the front of the desk. It made a huge difference, and now the desk is very comfortable to work at. The distance between the sitting position and monitor is good, and the knobs on the board are fairly easily accessible (except maybe the very top ones by the meter bridge... omg have to stand for 2 sec?? oh no!) We reinstalled the speakers stands, aligned the speakers and gave the room a listen - sounds awesome! There is no doubt that the room sounds completely different (and better) than before. However, there is significantly more bass in the rear of the room, which is less treated than the front of the room. We are going to take a couple measurements with REW and post the results soon. Tracking begins one week from today!!! Attached Thumbnails

2nd August 2011	#13
statzern Gear nut Joined: Oct 2009 Posts: 102 Thread Starter 1 Review written	Thanks! We are definitely excited about it. We are thinking about putting a small sitting area in the back of the room, like a small couch or something. Do you think that might also help to suck up some of the bass back there? I'm guessing that maybe the covering of the couch may play into how effective it is as a bass trap? Thoughts?? The next step is to build gobos for the live area. Theravada going to be about 6' tall, and filled with OC703. We aren't sure if we will build then 2" or 4" thick yet. They will be used mostly to tame the reflections from the room, which is quite large and has concrete walls all around. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. We will post a sketch of our design ASAP.

7th September 2011	#16
skengin Gear interested Joined: Sep 2011 Posts: 7	Just curious about the bass traps I realize you're implementing what is known as the "super-chunk" bass trap. That is to use a corner of insulation so you have a wedge that fits into the corner to "super trap" bass resonance, all the way to the ceiling. However, I've read that the energy of a signal at the wall, including a bass wave, is zero...so no absorption can 'theoretically' occur. However, 16" away from the wall is the optimum distance at which absorption of bass frequencies is possible. So...have you found different results or are you just more comfortable using the "super-chunk" method?? BTW, very amazing project. I am watching to learn and envious of the studio!

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