Building A Home Studio

Home Studio Build
Part 1 Vision Is Everything
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...-is-everything

Part 2 Planning And Regulations
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...ng-regulations

Part 3 DIY Or Builder
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...diy-or-builder

Part 4 Glass
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...d-part-4-glass

Part 5 Internal Construction
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...l-construction

Part 6 Electrics And Cabling
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...cs-and-cabling

Part 7 Acoustics
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...eid=1b1c3a3ed0

Latest Updates

Part 8 Fixtures And Fittings
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...art-8-fittings

Part 9 Professionals Give Their Verdict
http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home...-their-verdict

Hey KB I think part zero (before parts 1-5) is to win lotto then you can build a uber cool home studio !

how you going big fella ?

You don't necessarily have to win lotto to be able to afford to build a home Studio, Reaper is a good alternative to ProTools, and the makers of Reaper are Ex-ProTools personnel, they offer a $60.00 non-commercial/small business use License, and best of all, once you have paid the $60.00 licensing fee, you get all subsequent software updates, free for life.

thanks KB.

Not the greatest home build 'studio' I've seen, he's making some fundamental acoustic errors. What I would like to see is a frequency response of the finished room, as I can't see how it's going to be particularly smooth. It would look to have insufficient bass trapping (there appears to be nothing in the corners at all) and his ceiling 'cloud' seems to be in the wrong place; it's not at the mirror reflection point from his speakers and should be positioned a lot neared the desk (or made a lot bigger). The rockwool panels on the rear wall could easily have been moved away further from the walls in order to make them more efficient.

As a mixing-only environment, his soundproofing measures are rudimentary but sufficient for the purpose. Had he decided to make it a tracking room as well for drums and electric instruments, he would have a lot of issues.

Ventilation is also an issue in spaces like these, and you really do need forced ventilation running through heavily silenced ducts. In Australia, some form of near-silent air-con would also be a real requirement as well.

There seems to be someone who knows about acoustics commenting on those blogs, but he is being told that it isn't really a studio but a 'creative environment'. That is fine, but it really isn't a blog that tells you how to build a good home studio, just a nice room to work in and should be treated as such. But that does seem a bit of a poor excuse. It could have been made a lot better with not a lot more effort or expenditure.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrNomis_44

You don't necessarily have to win lotto to be able to afford to build a home Studio, Reaper is a good alternative to ProTools, and the makers of Reaper are Ex-ProTools personnel, they offer a $60.00 non-commercial/small business use License, and best of all, once you have paid the $60.00 licensing fee, you get all subsequent software updates, free for life.

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Not quite true Doc, you get the incremental updates within the release free but you now pay a further $60US for each major update.

I went from 3.x to 4.x for free probably because I joined the game on the cusp or R4 release but had to pay to go to 5.x which as of a couple of days ago is up to 5.2.8

I decided to try Reaper because I was sick of fighting with Cubase and have no intention of going Mac, I'm getting surprisingly good results from a very basic DAW setup.

I have the current release of Reaper on a cheap Vista laptop that I take to rehearsal and then add tracks and polish on the very grunty Win 10 machine in my office.

The mixer is a small USB Peavey and I use Senheiser & Shure mics, generally DI guitar and bass although I do rarely stick a mic in front of an amp for a different dynamic.

Certainly not a professional setup but I am getting good feedback and an album will come out of it in the next 6 months, would be quicker but the three of us have domestic responsibilities that mean we get about 4 hours together each week to collaborate.

I then spend about an hour a day multi tracking guitars and balancing tracks before going back to add the vocals with the other guys

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dave.king1

Not quite true Doc, you get the incremental updates within the release free but you now pay a further $60US for each major update.

I went from 3.x to 4.x for free probably because I joined the game on the cusp or R4 release but had to pay to go to 5.x which as of a couple of days ago is up to 5.2.8




I decided to try Reaper because I was sick of fighting with Cubase and have no intention of going Mac, I'm getting surprisingly good results from a very basic DAW setup.

I have the current release of Reaper on a cheap Vista laptop that I take to rehearsal and then add tracks and polish on the very grunty Win 10 machine in my office.

The mixer is a small USB Peavey and I use Senheiser & Shure mics, generally DI guitar and bass although I do rarely stick a mic in front of an amp for a different dynamic.

Certainly not a professional setup but I am getting good feedback and an album will come out of it in the next 6 months, would be quicker but the three of us have domestic responsibilities that mean we get about 4 hours together each week to collaborate.

I then spend about an hour a day multi tracking guitars and balancing tracks before going back to add the vocals with the other guys

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They must have changed things with the upgrades, cause I didn't have to pay anything to upgrade from Reaper 4 to Reaper 5, maybe my situation was similar to yours, or maybe I just forgot.

Building a Home Studio is very similar to building a Home Theater.

You need to know what are going to be the problem frequencies of the room you intend to use first and foremost.
You can do that easily online by putting in your room dimensions into the calculator below.
http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm

Now you have that information, you need to work out the most effective way to nullify the worse offenders, meaning the frequencies that the room is sympathetic to, and will amplify.
Various was to go about that, depending on the frequencies and just how bad they are... [Hint - Old Egg cartons are not it ]
The other thing that comes into effect when dealing with this problem on paper is, do you intend to soundproof the room? and if so, just how far to you NEED [not intend] to go?

To soundproof, you have to build a room inside a room, and that inside room needs to basically Float, there is NO other way to soundproof, it's Physics, no matter what people will tell you otherwise, or what products you see advertising that they will soundproof a room, it's BS ....I've built one for myself, and help design and build 3 others.

Depending on how much soundproofing [DB lowering to the outside world ] you work out you NEED, your inside room dimensions would have changed, likewise the room modes, so you will have to calculate again.

That will give you the barest of bones to work with.
You then have the real problems to solve, VENTILATION is the most important , your not going to be making much music if you are passed out due to heat stroke and lack of oxygen, and I'm sure the paramedics that revive you will tell you that as well .... many a build I have seen go down the toilet because this wasn't factored in, and had to be deconstructed, then rebuilt to install it...the AVS forum is full of horror stores about this.
Where most people stuff up is they don't factor in the amount of heat generated by the equipment inside the room.
Nearly all pro recording studios that don't have a separate machine room, will have the control room set to be at 70F, which is cold enough to need a jumper, reason is it helps prolong the electronics from thermal failure.... gear going down costs time & $$ in a Pro studio, so they'd rather it not happen.

So Soundproofing [Tick], Room modes dealt with [Tick] Ventilation [Tick]....you next need to work out just how much electrical power is going to needed in the room [Don't forget Lighting ], this might mean that you have to have a separate mains spur installed - Electrician time.... TIP- add 25% to current power MAX power usage calculated...you never know when some vintage power hungry bit of kit might end up being used, plus power dips effect everything else in the chain, sound wise, and can cause PC's to crash.

While you are at this stage you need to consider cabling that you are going to want to use, and how....TIP - Use conduit along the walls carrying the cable to XLR/MIC termination boxes mounted on the walls at various places, it's neat and will save you hours of stuffing about trying to hook stuff up, especially MIC's [Always keep signal and power cables separate, if mixed the power cable can effect the signal = HUM or worse ]

That's it, install your gear and set it up - a whole other saga that is beyond this topic

100% right, Tweaky. One of my friends has been building, installing and updating studios - from project to pro - for the past 20 years (plus general acoustics and soundproofing advice). He's had to give up recently, partly because of his physical health and partly because people just weren't paying their bills. But making somewhere soundproof can be very expensive indeed. The biggest reason is that people buy a new property thinking that 'this room/outbuilding would make a nice project studio space' without calling in an acoustics consultant first. That's when they find their $8k/$12k/$20k/$40k etc. budget for studio modification building works suddenly needs to triple or quadruple because the space just isn't suitable for the purpose. A lot of people seem to chose rooms that aren't on the ground floor (a lot in attic spaces) and often directly adjoining neighbour's properties (especially in London, where there are a lot of older large terraced or semi-detached houses). They haven't really given any thought to the amount of soundproofing required (almost always requiring room-in-room construction as Tweaky said) and the associated weight of such a construction - often requiring major structural support works. Sometimes the buildings are so unsuitable that the resulting studio space would be so small once constructed as to make it impractical to work in - so no studio gets built and the clients end up moving again.

As Tweaky says, power is important, and you'd really want to run separate circuits with separate earths for equipment power and lighting/AC loads. Running in spare cables (of all sorts) whilst the build is going on is so much cheaper than having to retro-fit them later.

Hey Wokka, how you doing what you been up to buddy. Hope everything's good in the luthiers lair.
Thanks
Kimball

Hey Dedman, Pleasure hope you enjoyed it. More info to follow.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tweaky

To soundproof, you have to build a room inside a room, and that inside room needs to basically Float, there is NO other way to soundproof, it's Physics, no matter what people will tell you otherwise, or what products you see advertising that they will soundproof a room, it's BS ....I've built one for myself, and help design and build 3 others.

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Spot on, back in the early 70s at the Festival studios in Harris St Ultimo if you listened real close to the monitors during silence in the playback you could hear the kegs getting bumped in and out of the pub next door and that was 2 floors below, couldn't hear the trains at Studio 301 though so being a more modern studio the build and technology was much better.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrNomis_44

You don't necessarily have to win lotto to be able to afford to build a home Studio, Reaper is a good alternative to ProTools, and the makers of Reaper are Ex-ProTools personnel, they offer a $60.00 non-commercial/small business use License, and best of all, once you have paid the $60.00 licensing fee, you get all subsequent software updates, free for life.

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After a bit of reading it would appear that we a both sort of right about the cost of Reaper.

For your $60US you get the release you buy up to x.99 and then the following release from x.01 - x.99 but then have to stunk up for the next two releases and so on.

So in my case I purchased at 3.xx and got 4.xx with the full series of updates included and then had to pay to go to R5.xx

Should now be fully funded until R7.x comes out unless they change the business model.

I'm currently getting some pretty good results with Reaper and my very basic setup

Attachment 15127
Attachment 15128
The Squier Thinline, STA-1 & Yamaha bass are the main weapons of choice
Attachment 15129

In the band room I'm using the same little Peavey mixer & Senheiser mic with a laptop

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dave.king1

After a bit of reading it would appear that we a both sort of right about the cost of Reaper.

For your $60US you get the release you buy up to x.99 and then the following release from x.01 - x.99 but then have to stunk up for the next two releases and so on.

So in my case I purchased at 3.xx and got 4.xx with the full series of updates included and then had to pay to go to R5.xx

Should now be fully funded until R7.x comes out unless they change the business model.

I'm currently getting some pretty good results with Reaper and my very basic setup

Attachment 15127
Attachment 15128
The Squier Thinline, STA-1 & Yamaha bass are the main weapons of choice
Attachment 15129

In the band room I'm using the same little Peavey mixer & Senheiser mic with a laptop

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My experience has been a bit different, basically, I'd go to launch the Reaper software, then I'd get a notice saying that a new version is available, so I download it and then go through the installation process, and then I register it using my existing registration file, so far I haven't had to pay an additional $60.00, maybe I haven't updated to a version that does require paying an extra $60.00, I don't know, to be honest, I haven't done much with Reaper yet, because of the learning-curve, I've mostly used FL Studio or Ableton Live 9 Standard.

I just did the upgrade from version 5.21.1, to version 5.28, and I didn't have to purchase a new $60.00 license, probably because I purchased one when I installed version 4.xx, the new installation says it is licensed for personal/small business in my name.

G'day Doc,

I'm guessing that you purchased at 5.x so you will go right through to 6.99 with the current subscription and not have to pay again until you choose to go to 7.x whenever that may roll around.

I came in at R3.x and that's why I had to pay when I went to R5.x, got all of R4 free and will pay again at R7 if I choose to take that release.

My first release of Reaper was for XP 32 bit and by the time R5 came out I was on Win 10.1 64 bit so I figured the upgrade was going to be a worthwhile investment.

The sound path does some weird things in Vista 32 bit which is what the laptop runs so I have to be aware when I use it in the band room

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dave.king1

G'day Doc,

I'm guessing that you purchased at 5.x so you will go right through to 6.99 with the current subscription and not have to pay again until you choose to go to 7.x whenever that may roll around.

I came in at R3.x and that's why I had to pay when I went to R5.x, got all of R4 free and will pay again at R7 if I choose to take that release.

My first release of Reaper was for XP 32 bit and by the time R5 came out I was on Win 10.1 64 bit so I figured the upgrade was going to be a worthwhile investment.

The sound path does some weird things in Vista 32 bit which is what the laptop runs so I have to be aware when I use it in the band room

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I most likely did, it's been a while since I purchased my $60.00 license so my memory's a bit rusty, I'm running Windows 10 Home 64 Bit on both my Desktop PC and my Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop, both computers run the same music production software so I can transfer project files from one to the other, I'm using my Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 Firewire Audio Interface with my Desktop PC because my Digi002 died, my sample-rate is usually set to 44,100/16 Bit, I'll have to do some more reading of the Reaper manual, while I'm at it, I'll need to read the user manuals for Ableton Live, FL Studio, and Reason 5 too, I just recently upgraded FL Studio to version 12.4, and in the process I bought a new plugin called Transistor Bass, basically it's a plugin emulation of the old TB-303 Bassline Synthesizer/Sequencer, I used to own an actual TB-303 but it got stolen, it was a real cool bit of 80's retro kit, a bit frustrating to program with it's quirks, foibles, and idiosyncrasies, but the Transistor Bass plugin makes things so much easier, and it gets that sound, I was lucky to get it for only $49.00 (approximately Au$60.00), IK Multimedia offer a real Bass Guitar plugin emulator called Modo Bass, looks interesting.

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products...id=s6kgaAGmlbc

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrNomis_44

I'm using my Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 Firewire Audio Interface with my Desktop PC because my Digi002 died, my sample-rate is usually set to 44,100/16 Bit

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I'd immediately advise you to swap to 24 bit recording. With 16-bit, you need to get the recording level as hot as possible (without overloading and getting digital clipping) to maximise the theoretically available 96dB (in practice a bit less) of dynamic range and headroom above the sysytem noise floor. With 24 bit, you can run at much lower input levels e.g. -18dBFS (which is still 21 bits of data) and get a much better theoretical dynamic range and a lower relative noise floor. All the time you are recording at say -1dB or -0.5dB, even though you may not clip digitally, inter-sample peaks mean that when the D/A converter will clip the sound produced.

You should have somewhere in your software (or find on the web) a true peak meter, which calculates the levels of inter-sample peaks (ISPs). Use it as the last insert on your master bus, and this will tell you if any of your recordings will distort. ISPs are worse on waveforms with sharp, near-vertical, leading edges (such as true square waves) and percussive transients, where they can be almost 3dB above the maximum recorded digital value. ISPs exceeding 0dBFS are one reason why some recordings sound really nasty when converted to MP3s etc.

So always 24 bits, and take things easy on the recording levels.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

I'd immediately advise you to swap to 24 bit recording. With 16-bit, you need to get the recording level as hot as possible (without overloading and getting digital clipping) to maximise the theoretically available 96dB (in practice a bit less) of dynamic range and headroom above the sysytem noise floor. With 24 bit, you can run at much lower input levels e.g. -18dBFS (which is still 21 bits of data) and get a much better theoretical dynamic range and a lower relative noise floor. All the time you are recording at say -1dB or -0.5dB, even though you may not clip digitally, inter-sample peaks mean that when the D/A converter will clip the sound produced.

You should have somewhere in your software (or find on the web) a true peak meter, which calculates the levels of inter-sample peaks (ISPs). Use it as the last insert on your master bus, and this will tell you if any of your recordings will distort. ISPs are worse on waveforms with sharp, near-vertical, leading edges (such as true square waves) and percussive transients, where they can be almost 3dB above the maximum recorded digital value. ISPs exceeding 0dBFS are one reason why some recordings sound really nasty when converted to MP3s etc.

So always 24 bits, and take things easy on the recording levels.

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I'll give that a go, cheers mate, my Saffire Pro40 connects to my Desktop PC via a 6-pin Firewire 400 lead, which plugs into a Firewire 400 port on a PCI card that uses a Texas Instruments chipset, I used a small app called DPC (Deferred Procedure Call) Checker to make sure my PC could handle real-time audio streaming, and the app said that my PC could, DPC Checker is a free app that you can use to troubleshoot audio dropouts and glitches, it took me a while, and lots of headaches, but I think I got my system working at it's best.

My Desktop PC has 8Gb of DDR 3 Ram installed, but I'm going to buy some extra Ram next year, there are three spare Ram slots left on my Desktop PC's motherboard, and the motherboard supports up to 32Gb of Ram according to the user manual, earlier this year I upgraded the power supply from a 600 Watt to an 850 Watt, it has an Intel i5 3.3 Ghz Quad Core CPU installed in it, I'm going to buy a can of Air Duster from Jaycar Electronics this fortnight, and give the case a good blow-out of any cobwebs and dust that may have accumulated in it, what latency figure should I be able to achieve without noticeable audio glitches?, I have been able to get it down to about 12 mili-seconds, should I be able to get it lower than that?