Home Studios, who's got one? Building one?

Just startin' off a new thread... Trying to get some chatter going in the forum again. Don't want Skip to take it away 'cause we aren't using it.


Anyways... Lost most my gear back at the end of 2012... (They said the world didn't really end. Here to tell you, it did... Just not many people noticed.)




So, to replace fire damaged gear I bought some used stuff, close to what I had. Some different gear that I had wanted for some time. A few cheap replacement guitars for axes that can never be replaced. (I built them from raw woods) and an amp or two.


Anyways, I haven't really gotten much together with this "new" stuff, it's kind'a just sittin'. Been busy when I can (health shyt) working on the house or outdoors, so nothing at the moment directly "Studio" related. Though I may scrape a ceiling tonight after dinner. I donno.

So, this is kind of a Gear and Space thread... What you got, where it's at, from wall treatment to your favorite mic preamp. Photo's would be great and I'll add some over time. I'm getting some ideas for my setup but looking around at other ideas.

I'm basically just a guitar/bass guy so much of my stuff ends up with "canned drums" which I hate. Or I create my own drum tracks with something like Fruityloops... Which I hate... and it takes too long. My stuff doesn't fit the standard rock drum kit anyways. So the drum shells and hardware that got damaged in 2010's flood (I have all the luck) will at some point get utilized once rebuilt a long long time from now.

What I do work with, my guitar stuff is an eclectic mix of old rack gear, tape machines and computer based gear/VST/recording... I'll even take digital recordings, run that out to tape or old analog effects unit and then re-record it... or amp it and MIC it again. Play into the front of a tape machine and record the tape output digitally... Weird shit. So some of my "new" gear may leave some wondering WTF's goin' on here?

Right now much of this gear and the guitars are stashed in "the guitar room" or "Studio B" This room needs work, seriously. Including new windows and outside doors, ceiling work. But it's the better of the two. What it does have is solid Honduras Mahogany on two walls and brick on the other two. I'm gonna acoustic tile the ceiling and throw a bunch of rugs over the old carpet on slab that's there now. Should be an interesting room to mic amps in and catch some wall reflections to add into reverb tracks. It's not a very big space, like 12 foot by 15 foot. Outside doors are in a small alcove leading out to the gardens.

My main mixing room is gonna be in a different space which has a ceiling load of chipping lead based paint at the moment. It's gonna need some wall scrape and paint too, floor treatment, etc. Main computers will be in here of which I have most of the parts in un-assembled condition... Cases, motherboards, drives, monitors, yadda-yadda. Yeah I use multiple computers at times, (there's already one in Studio B) so I'mm setting up space for three. One will probably just back stuff up for my whole house, One will double as a media server for the who;e house besides running some VST effects like it was rack gear and then my main DAW system. It's also gonna double as a second bedroom. There's a divider that sets about a quarter of it off as crash pad. It's an accordion wall made of birch so could also isolate vocals or Tibetan bowls or anything else weird. Whole room must be 16 foot by 25 foot. Big space! Plaster walls and slab and that birch divider, front wall is mostly window looking out into the woods... I have some wood furniture I'm gonna use in here, not "Studio Furniture" from Ikea... More like "weigh's a ton" Maple Hotel furniture in a dark cherry stain... Looks like a Lawyers office. But it's gonna fit the computers like a dream and look nice.


One thing about this house, I'm not gonna tear down walls and throw up dry wall because it is being restored/remodled and then preserved in almost original condition. But I'm gonna run cables through the crawlspace and do some wall treatments/sound insulation where it looks appropriate... I'm doing a 70's MOD remodel on a 50's Mid-Century Modern house I bought.


As things move along I'll get photos and specs up.


So what do you guys got?

 

How old is the house? Maybe you mentioned that and I missed it.

I'm doing the home studio thing too but I'm not going to make it very complicated. I just want to record the tracks here and then let our people do what they do from there. They are much better at that stuff than I am.

 

It was built in 1948... Different house than the one that burned.



Thing is I don't have "our people" to do what they do from there. It's just me. I don't even have other musicians.

What do you use to capture what you do record?

 

Actually...nothing set up so far (just got back from vacation). But I'm just experimenting right now. I have this Presonus thing that I haven't tried out yet. I think it should work out ok but it's no big deal if I'm wrong. We have a few different studios that we can work in but I would like to just have something simple at home. I expect to have some issues but it will be fun to try to get it worked out.

 

My first digital recordings were a distortion pedal into a Fostex compressor meant to be used with a cassette 4 track into a laptop mic in... No need for fancy.

A lot of my "gear" revolves around the older Guitar multi-effects units from ART and Digitech so more of a preamp > direct in via line in on a soundcard. I also have a line6 unit running Gearbox (before POD Farm) if I want amp sims. Got several old Audigy cards too (Audigy I and or II ZS running KX driver) that can be used for multi tracking, and a few mics hanging around if I want to mic a cabinet... or a wall.

 

Yeah, programming good drum tracks is tedious as all hell. I hate it. but if you crunch a lot of numbers and get those velocity's and offsets right, you can get damned acceptable shit sometimes, you can even fool most of the people...some of the time, lol

 

With so many only listening to MP3's through ear buds fooling most of the people all of the time becomes reality.

 

Btw.....I shouldn't say "our people" as if we're part of some huge, elaborate organization. We're on a small label but there are people there who are much more experienced at mixing, etc than I am.

 

Good point...a little depressing, but true..

 

I know... You were just throwing airs around.

j/k man

Back in the MySpace days, I still have stuff up there btw, just nobody goes there anymore... Anyways you had to upload MP3's, massively compressed from the WAV files I worked with, which they compressed even further. Digital compression removes frequencies to compact the files. I would listen to them afterwards and there were actual notes missing they were compressed/compacted so badly. These days most people would rather buy something from iTunes or wherever so they can fit a bazillion songs on their phone and they think it's quality sound. They wouldn't know the difference if you hit them in the face with it... sad state of affairs.




Never did scrape that ceiling last night...

 

Who'd have thunk all this increase in technology would lead to a decrease in fidelity for the average consumer, most not even knowing what they are missing. I used to pound the pulpit over stereo speaker placement and bass reproduction...that shits pretty futile nowadays, it's a better guess most will be listening straight off of their I-pod or what ever, not even using ear buds. I just cringe when someone comes up to me and says " check this out" and they just hold up their little device, while some unintelligible tinny-ass squawking comes out the speaker. WTF?

 

Imo....not only has sound quality diminished but so has what passes for music now days. I realize that previous generations have said the same thing. But a lot of us look back on Jimi, Grateful Dead, The Doors, etc. etc. with much respect and admiration. I highly doubt that anyone in 30 years is ever going to look back on Nicki Minaj (or however the hell her name is spelled) or people like that and consider them ground breaking, serious musicians. Even today's country music is complete garbage. I have a friend who loves it and whenever I'm driving with him I call out the 4 topics as I hear them. Beer, girls, dirt roads and pick-up trucks!! How is it possible that an entire genre of music has been reduced to 4 things and a shitty pop beat? It's not even country anymore. It's pop music with a twangy voice singing the lyrics.

 

I did the exact same thing about a month ago when I was painting an awning for the local ReStore... Usually all 4 are in the same song and this particular radio station only had about ten songs. About the only twist is one song mentions a big green tractor. :ack2:


No offence, but Seriously?




Anyways... this ceiling is gonna be a bitch. I may have to strip it completely.

 

Just looked at that pic in the OP again. Man, that is a bummer! Our studio flooded once but nothing like that. Just maybe 5 or 6 inches of water. It definitely effected me the most because all of my pedals where under water and my LP was floating in it's case. I thought for sure that it would be ruined but it was fixed. The pedals even dried out and worked.

As for rebuilding....there is just so much stuff available out there. My plan is to run my stuff into this Presonus box and then to an offline computer. The Presonus came with a recording program. No idea how good it is or if I can use the box with a different program but that's my running idea. The box has multiple inputs for 1/4 in, mics and midi.

 

From Presonus it will likely run with any DAW/Recording software.

I use Reaper and find it very good. Nice "try before you buy" program... no limitations, no crippling, free updates which come quite often, full featured DAW. Low hardware overhead, unlimited possibilities. Cost effective also, especially for home use.

It's Professional software without the Pro price. Google it, it's a download.

I think Protools is over hyped and over priced snobbish crap, they are the ones that lock you into using only certain gear that their sister companies provide. I don't play that game.


Before the fire, back in 2010 I had my jam room in the basement... I got 6 feet of water in less than 15 minutes. I had time to grab my strat and that's it. THAT was a flood! About ten days later Japan had that tsunami and I'm thinking "Nothin' to bitch about here." I lost quite a lot of that gear plus my guitar shop was down there. I cleaned and dried all my pedals and they are still sitting in a box untested... Probably fine. But my amps and speakers... The computer, my mixer, all totaled.

 

Anyways... Back to that main studio room. I was in there about 5-6 days ago scraping that ceiling. I knew there was more water damage along the front wall than elsewhere but from looking at it I wasn't sure how bad. The ceiling is skincoat of plaster over stucco with wire mesh. Most of the skincoat is going to come off leaving rough stucco... basically cement.

I don't have the headroom for a dropped ceiling and don't want the metal grid look either. I'll have to use some sort of glue-up acoustic tile.... or regular drop in tiles beveled, glued and screwed in place. After I get all the loose stuff down. Gonna take awhile.

I would go with studio foam but I don't have that kind of dough and it's not the look I want anyways. The "glued and screwed" method is what I'm going to do in "Studio B" and I already have the acoustic tiles for that... ceiling is not so bad in there.

So, yeah... There's that.

Been working on other parts of the house the rest of the week... I've more to do besides the studio rooms. A lot more... Heating system needs at least ductwork in place and windows/doors in several places before snow flies. I need to bring in firewood too...

Help!

 

Power too ya mang, sounds like you've got a lot of work on your hands. Btw, I used to install acoustic ceilings for a living, drops and glue-ups... I don't know what you have, but most of those commercial grade "acoustic" tiles are hardly that...studio grade acoustic tiles are spendy as all hell.

 

Are you saying there is plaster over stucco and water damage in between that stuff? Because my current deal is drywall over original plaster and our insurance company is saying there is no way to fix it. We have to tear everything out. It seems to me like plaster over stucco would be similar.

 

Yeah, it's like concrete with a skin of plaster. The areas with the most damage the plaster has lost it's bond to the concrete but that base is still solid. This is different than the old horsehair plaster walls, it didn't "fluff" when it got wet and it's not holding water. By the way, the water intrusion problems have already been dealt with. It's not like the whole ceiling is coming down exposing the rafters. The areas further back in the room still has the plaster bonded to it and hammer and scraper doesn't want to separate them. (paint still is coming off though)

I'm not going to re-skin the whole thing with plaster and sand it back to level, once the loose stuff is off I'm gonna cover it with something. I know the common "acoustic" tile is not pro-grade studio quality but it will deaden sound reflections... I'm not worried about sound leakage. Just want to get rid of some of the "ring" from having all those hard surfaces in this room. I'm not recording a band in here... Think "control room"

Walls are the same plaster/stucco and the floor is concrete slab with a thin laminate tile. Floor will get carpet some day and the walls are salvageable as they are (sans chipping paint in a few areas.) Outside wall I haven't seen yet, it is covered with cheap paneling. Even if that is really bad it's a small area and I could re-skin that. Most of that outside wall is a huge window, so there's little surface area to deal with as far as plaster goes. For starters the walls will just be painted with a small accent wall getting wall covering. (Satin cloth wallpaper) I would not be opposed to solid wood paneling on some of the wall space, but I would have to get it surplus. Otherwise it's way out of my budget.

The space is still to be considered "bedroom" if there is a point in time this place has to be sold so what I'm doing isn't building a true music studio with dead air space double walls and all that. Just a space for my computers, some gear, monitors, etc with some decent sound quality for mixing, and playback. Also a bed, nightstand, the cedar closets and built in dresser (original to the room) and my desk spaces. Most of that furniture is solid maple with dark cherry stain. I've also got solid mahogany trim moldings for here, around windows and doors... All the wood is going to be dark cherry stained when finished. So, yeah... It's a bedroom. With improved sound quality.

@ Gongshaman... have you ever glued drop in tiles? I'm wondering if the weight of the tile will tear itself apart if mounted with glue instead of hanging from the grid... What I have for the other room are the common Armstrong 2X2 drop in tile for that space. I figure with 4 screws in the corners it would be fine but if I don't need those why bother... I know it's a weird idea, but I'm full of weird ideas.

 

I can't say that I've done it, but I don't see why you couldn't glue them up, as long as the surface is reasonably flat.
2X2's shouldn't be much of a problem, you just have to get enough adhesive on them to stay up till it cures. Construction adhesive would probably work.

I still think I would opt for the screws for one reason, you can undo it, lol.

Old instrument repair mantra, "Never do anything you can't undo"