Building A Home Studio

[dave.king1]

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.

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.

[dave.king1]

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.

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



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


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

[DrNomis_44]

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



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


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

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.

[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

[DrNomis_44]

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

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

[Simon Barden]

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'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.

[DrNomis_44]

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.

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?