mmmm.....all-nighters...
lately i've been staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning working on the studio. but since the electricians are coming a little after 8, i figured i may as well just stay up all night and plow through a bunch of stuff.
disco came over tonight to help building the bass traps. he spent most of the evening cutting out wedge-shaped pieces of rigid insulation while i started building the frames. i'll try to have pix up tomorrow so everyone can see how i'm building them.
i built a new access panel to replace the one i messed up over the weekend. overall it turned out ok, but i'm still not thrilled with the way it's engaging the seal when closed. i made it 2" thick this time around instead of 2 1/4", which helped a bit, but i still can't get the panel to go flush with the jamb. i suspect i'll have to go back to my original plan of angling in the door edges so it tucks into the seal better. i had disco crawl into the access panel and then i closed it behind him and had him check for any light seepage. everything checked out there, but i'm still hearing a little more sound transmission through the panel than i'd like. i need to experiment with a few things to see if i can improve it. it's not like horrible or anything right now, i just think i could do better.
i'm almost done building the wooden boxes to encapsulate the lighting junction boxes and make the lighting assemblies look all nice. i just need to cut out the holes for the junction boxes and do a little more gluing and sanding and stuff and then they'll be ready to be painted.
on the mudding/taping front, everything is taped now. well, save for the outside corner on the iso booth bulkhead, but we won't talk about that. i'm typing this up while i wait for the most recent mud coat in the vox booth to dry so i can slap on another coat.
on the gear front, i purchased the PCI card for the RME audio interface a few mins ago. i'd been looking on ebay for the past week but wasn't turning up much, so i decided to just give up and buy a new one from somewhere. i found a place that was selling them for $570, which is about $30 below the average. just as i was getting ready to place the order, i decided to check ebay one last time just for the hell of it. i'm glad i did--i found someone had put one up with a buy-it-now of $340 just a few hours ago. needless to say, i snatched that little bugger right up.
i talked with dave at work today about how one might go about building the metal frame to hold the absorption cloud above the mix area. he suggested i get a machine shop to fabricate the frame for me out of welded aluminum. i'm now completely convinced that this is the right way to do it and will have the most professional-looking finish. only downside is i'm probably looking at around $100-150 for materials and then anywhere from $100-200 for the labor, depending on some of the joint particulars. i'm gonna try and get an estimate this week or next.
man, even after 3 energy drinks i still feel like crashing. i'm gettin old. can't handle these all-nighters like i used to.