Building A Home Studio

**kimball492** · 11-11-2016, 08:52 AM

**wokkaboy** · 11-11-2016, 09:44 AM

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 ?

**DrNomis_44** · 11-11-2016, 11:30 AM

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.

**Dedman** · 11-11-2016, 01:08 PM

thanks KB.

**Simon Barden** · 11-11-2016, 05:35 PM

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.

**dave.king1** · 11-11-2016, 06:36 PM

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.

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

**DrNomis_44** · 11-11-2016, 09:58 PM

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

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.

**Tweaky** · 12-11-2016, 03:20 PM

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

**Simon Barden** · 12-11-2016, 07:35 PM

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.

**kimball492** · 12-11-2016, 11:28 PM

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.

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