studioporn

i spent the evening taping all the corners in the iso booth. goddamn there are a lot of corners for such a tiny room, what with the bulkhead and all. on the one hand, mudding and taping is horrible, tedious, monotonous, not very rewarding, emboldening to terrorists, harmful to children, and loaded with transfats. on the other hand, i find it has a certain flow and i can achieve a kind of zen-like state while doing it, which enables me to zone out and plow through stuff without even realizing how much time has passed. i'm probably the only person on the planet who enjoys finishing drywall way more than actually putting the drywall up. the initial taping part isn't as great, but i find doing the subsequent layers almost, dare i say, relaxing. my finishing skillz aren't yet in the "mad" category, but i'm definitely getting better.

speaking of which, when i finished the drywall in the main room, by far the worst job i did was on corners. i was using regular drywall tape to do them, but due to a combination of my corner-taping inexperience and the funky 1/4" gaps at all the corners with the caulk and stuff, i had the worst time getting a nice, crisp, straight line along the corners, and we had to do a lot of trickery during the room painting in order to compensate for the unevenness. this time around i wanted to do a better job, so i decided to ditch the drywall tape for the corners and use strait-flex instead for all the inside corners. this stuff is much stiffer than tape, which helps produce some really straight corners. it's also amazingly easy to work with and i'm very pleased with the way the corners turned out, which is a pleasantly different experience from the other corner product i'm using.

for the one outside corner in the main room and for the bulkhead outside corners, i'm using a different product called ultraflex, which is much wider and better able to span outside corners involving 5/8" dyrwall with gaps and all that fun stuff. however, it's also quite thick and just a little too stiff, even for outside corner material. my general approach to putting the intial mud layer down for taping is to apply it very liberally to make sure i have full coverage and then squeeze all the excess out by dragging a taping knife very tightly along the tape after applying it. however, the ultraflex is so stiff that if you put down too much of a mud bed, it's really difficult to squeeze out all the excess and it ends up feeling really lumpy. i spent a fair amount of time trying to work just the one bulkhead corner so that it didn't feel quite so much like...like....idunno, roseanne barr's thighs or something...when you run your finger along it.

in other news, i ordered a shitload more rigid insulation today so that i can build a couple of superchunk corner traps in the mix area. it's only been in the past week or so that i've found out about these things, and even though they're a bit costlier than other DIY corner treatments, it sounds like the extra dough is worth it.

Posted by Len at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

first 2 room analyses didn't turn up as much as i had hoped. combination of the software being good in the acoustics department but really bad in the software department, and getting my reference mic with the calibration info on a 3.5" floppy. it's bad enough these days when something comes on a floppy, but even worse when the metal slider is broken. so i had to rip off the slider and try on a few machines before i finally got stacey's old laptop to read the files off of it.

last night i stumbled across a free java app called Room EQ Wizard which has some really nice features and is really easy to use. below are some graphs of measurements i took in the room. there was a speaker near one end of the room doing a log sweep, and in each test i moved the mic to a different location in the room and took a reading. the graphs you see show frequency vs. amplitude vs. time; in other words, they're a very good way to visualize the overall frequency response as well as the reverberation response of the room:

the goal of a well-tuned room is to have a nice, smooth reverberation. overall i'm in the right ballpark, but there are some things that stand out in these graphs:

1. the area around 60Hz going up towards 70Hz is resonating like crazy. long after everything else has decayed, that frequency is still going strong. this will most likely need to be addressed through the use of bass traps in the corners (that's where low-frequency energy is the strongest--particularly in trihedrals, where wall corners meet up with the floor or ceiling)


2. there is also a slightly less intense, but still noticeable, spike right around 300Hz. i will probably tackle this with one or more helmholtz resonators. the convenient thing here is that 300Hz is also the area where kick drums can get boomy-sounding, so in drum rooms and other spaces where drums will be regularly recorded, it's recommended that this frequency be absorbed anyway, even if there aren't any problems there with the room itself.


3. there's a strange dip centered roughly around 90Hz and spanning as much as an octave or so depending on the position in the room. i don't yet fully understand the data here--i consistently see this behavior regardless of speaker or mic position, and have verified the data with 2 separate analysis programs and separate sets of readings. before finalizing room treatment plans, i need to do some more research to better help me interpret this particular data point.


4. the low mids as a whole could probably benefit from a little absorption. up to about 400Hz there are some peaks that jump out a little more than they should.

the really nice thing about this data is that it confirms what my ears have been hearing, which is a relatively decent reverberation save for some beefiness in the lows and low mids.

Posted by Len at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

this weekend i spent a considerable amount of time planning out how everything is going to be wired together once i start putting gear into the studio. in the past i was very haphazard with my wiring and ended up with lots of half-implemented and unintuitive signal flow. not to mention the lack of attention to the physical running of the wires, which led to some nice copper-and-rubber spaghetti all over the floor. i've decided that this time i'm going to think everything through before connecting a single wire.

my primary goal is flexibility--i want to be able to connect any mic to any preamp to any channel to any effect to any output. i also want to have a nice, intuitive setup. like a rack of patchbays with a nice top-down flow. and when it comes to hooking everything up, i want to have a very clean, streamlined flow of wires and do a better job than i have in the past with strain relief and the like.

anyway, if you want to see what i have in mind for the signal-routing aspects, click on the image below.

Posted by Len at 01:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

just a few minutes ago i finished putting up the final piece of drywall inside the studio. this means i can finally start thinking about life beyond drywall. i've been putting this shit up on and off for nearly 4 months now, and i was beginning to think i'd never actually get to this point. as i was putting sheets up tonight, i began to do some calibrations and found that each sheet of drywall was taking me on average 1 hour to do. this includes measuring, cutting, loading onto the lift, rasping down edges that might be too long, poking holes for electrical and other stuff, chalking lines, screwing, and doing the foam-and-caulk stuff at each corner. there are somewhere on the order of 120 pieces of drywall in that room, so i've spent somewhere around that many hours just hanging drywall. and then on top of that there's the final layer of foam and caulk and mudding and taping and all that fun stuff. man, drywalling is a bitch.

anyway, i'm going to do some cleaning up tomorrow, after which i'll take some photos of the vox booth and iso booth.

Posted by Len at 02:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

last night we got the rest of the second wall layer in the iso booth up. tonight i hauled ass and got all the first ceiling layer up in there and caulked and mudded everything. tomorrow night i'm going to do the same for the second layer. and then i am going to consume massive amounts of alcohol to celebrate finally getting every last piece of drywall up in the studio. i still won't be completely done with drywall--i still need to mud and tape everything, not to mention putting up more pieces elsewhere in the basement--but just getting all the pieces up in the studio is a monster accomplishment.

in other news, i bought all the laminate flooring today and ordered all the wiring panels and connectors and stuff for the audio wiring. and now that the drywall is all but done, i'll be contacting the electricians tomorrow to schedule them to come out and hook up all the electrical outlets in the rooms.

Posted by Len at 03:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

i've been really dragging my ass on the remaining critical drywall work, so i dragged myself out to monroeville today to rent a drywall lift. again. i put up the last pain-in-the-ass piece of drywall up in the vox booth today. the room and the bulkhead are both funky shapes, which makes for a really funky shape for the bulkhead ceiling--no right angles or parallel surfaces at all. these things are such a nightmare to measure, cut, and get into position. but i don't care anymore because it's up, and after putting up two more small pieces the vox booth is completely drywalled now. woohoo!

i'm going to turn my attention next to finishing up the drywall in the other booth. thankfully, the shapes in there aren't nearly as bizarre, so it should go at least relatively quickly. man, i am so sick of drywall. doing normal rooms isn't so bad, but for studio stuff it's soooooo damn tedious with the layers and the caulking and the weird angles and shit. the worst part is, even when i finish the other booth, i still won't be done with the drywall--i'll have to come back at some point and do parts of the garage, lounge, and bathroom. but i'm going to defer those as long as i possibly can because i'm tired of being covered in white powder 24/7.

i spent friday and yesterday working on door tweaks and putting foam and caulk in the gaps between the jambs and the drywall.

this week i hope to buy all the laminate flooring as well as order all the boxes and connectors and stuff for the audio wiring. i'm also going to try and start on the window assemblies and do more door work in between drywalling. did i mention i'm sick of drywall?

Posted by Len at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

i got 2 more doors hung this week, one for each of the booths:

i'm slowly getting better at my hanging skills. the last jamb i put up was almost entirely square and for the first time i didn't have to do any shaving along any of the door edges to make it fit.

there's still a lot of work to be done on these doors, though--i still have to install the stops and foam gaskets, as well as settling on a door-closing solution. oh yeah....and i still have to break off all the protruding shims and fill in the jamb perimeter with acoustic caulk.

window stuff will have to start happening soon, so i've begun tracking down the various pieces i need for the window assemblies. looks like the only really tricky thing for me to track down will be the neoprene to hold the glass tightly in place, and i found some leads on that front last night.

Posted by Len at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

painting was finished last night. disco came over tonight to help me run the rest of the cabling, make a pass at cleaning up and organizing the mess that was the basement, and take some photos of the finish paint job in the main room.

i've included some of the better photos below. we still don't have the lighting fixtures installed, so getting good lighting is still a bit tricky, especially for photography. but these should at least give you a general idea of how the paint looks. it's hard to see some of the detail on the gold-ish colored walls, so disco took a few close-ups to better show the funky lines and patterns and stuff.

Posted by Len at 08:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

several people have asked for more pictures of the painting and other progress. i plan to take a bunch of photos as soon as the painting is done in the main room, which should happen by about monday. michelle started working on the last 2 walls today, and it'll take 3 separate coats of paint. each of which requires 4+ hours to dry, so it'll be spread out over at least 3 days. the paint is coming out really well. only thing is, metallic paints bring out every slightest imperfection in the drywall and mud, so before she started painting this morning i went through every bit of those two walls with a flashlight at an oblique angle to find any dings, dips, bulges, or other imperfections, and fix them up. it was tedious work, but it'll be worth it.

mic and preamp for the room analysis software arrived today. now i have everything i need to begin analyzing the room once the construction is done.

set up the table saw last night, but i haven't had a chance to use it yet. because i'm a moron. only i can cut myself on a table saw, not once but twice, and quite seriously at that, before the thing has even been plugged in or been given a blade. the first time i cut myself was while trying to remove the styrofoam block holding the motor assembly in place. yes, i cut myself while removing styrofoam. how? i have no clue. then after i attached the rip fence i was gliding it back and forth to make sure it moved straight and smoothly and all, and in the process i accidentally rammed my finger pretty hard into a sharp metal piece that was jutting out of the scale adjuster. the metal ended up sliding under my fingernail and made quite a mess. fortunately all i needed were some band aids, although it's still really sore today. especially when i type. which i'm going to stop doing now.

Posted by Len at 02:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)