Building A Home Studio

[Tweaky]

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

[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.

[Simon Barden]

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.

[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?