sprig productions studio build.

and some more The cable in the first pic is the multi running into the booth. Its carrying four xlr and four trs and running through a conduit made of waste wavin pipe. I left a draw string in place to pull through other cables as and when it becomes nessecary

and still there is more.

Looking good. Do the hanging traps move freely? Or are they touching each other at rest?

Hi there, So I am back from being my alter ego now,NICE ONE JOHN!! Lilith the traps can move freely in the space without touching each other, (only a tiny bit like few mill though is there a recommended spacing distance??) However two of them do rest against the wall and dont move at all, there are ten hangers five up high and five down lower. These traps were kinda done as an aftertought, I had originally planned to use this space as an amp booth, But its quite small for that and I also had huge concerns about the effect it was having on the sound in the booth. I had not got the cash to fill it with rockwool and just kill it completely so.... I Started thinking about what i could do with it and noticed a heap of long rockwool trimings in the corner Ten minutes with an electric carving knife and a staple gun later and hey presto..... I understand they look pretty rough :D but they will be covered with a fabric front today and nere be seen again, only by visitors to this post. The effect they had on the sound in the booth is quite dramatic too. Not just in the bottom end but the top end :? Before if you clapped your hands in there the ringing that went on in the high end of the spectrum continued on audibly for three or four seconds and sounded "comby" if ya know what i mean. Now with the hangers and the small corner trap the sound in there is getting pretty dead. I am also going to put a large broadband absorber on the wall on the left in the booth Its going to be 120cmx120cmx50mm of rockwool with a 20mm air gap behing it and also finished in the purple fabric to. Have some guests coming to stay today for a few days and all the gear is in the large spare room, Needs to be all transfered into the small spare room now so i got a whole lot of pulling and dragging to do then maybe i can get some more painting done. Finishing touches, this is getting quite exciting.

Ok so heres a few more pics of the work we have done in the last few days. Traps on the wall are hung and a desk of sorts also has been put in. The six boxes three on either side are designed for both bass and mid trapping with two boxes having 100mm rockwool and four having 50mm rock wool. I couldnt help myself and threw in the speakers and mixer to check how it is souding :D The difference is just huge in all ranges. Bottom end is much tighter and more defined and the high end definitly much more spread out and defined. This "test" was done with not much relevance given to speaker position or the like, as i am waiting to get a cd of test tones before doing anymore work on the accoustics. That said i am very very pleased with the difference already. Listening to u2 with or without you, I could hear the tambourine track all the way through the song even in the middle of the solo! Next up some more painting and trimming and then speaker stand and carpet. Also have to build some rack spaces under the desks. Getting there.... and then there is downstairs.

and some more pics...

Ahhhh Feeling quite pleased with myself... :)

Sure, good looking job. But I do have to inquire as to why you have made a hard connection with your desk and the walls? This seems like it is going to introduce vibration from the entire room directly into your monitoring via the desk. It is a nice looking room/work.

This seems like it is going to introduce vibration from the entire room directly into your monitoring via the desk.

And probably in the other direction too, if the monitors are going to be sitting directly on the desk.

Well, certainly. With a hard connection like this it is basically a free flowing exchange in any direction. I installed a fine glass and brass shelf in my woman's laundry room last year. The shelf isn't very large maybe 4 inches by 12 inches. But it is a hard connection with a rigid material. She and I both have personal cell phones, work related phones and various other small handheld items and this is the are we choose to use to charge batteries and basically keep up with them. The first time one of the phones rang and I was in the room on the other side of that washroom...MAN, scared the hell out of me! I did not know what all that racket was or where it was coming from. And that was one phone vibrating on a small 1/4 inch thick shelf mounted to a sheetrock wall.

Yeah, this is a situation i had not anticipated :( Indeed during the "test" the whole room especially the floor, did seem to be vibrating :( (still, vibrations and all it still sounds way way better!!) I dont really know what to do here, The counter tops came very cheap ( €50 installed and all (( ask no questions and be told no lies :mrgreen: )) and it seemed like a real easy solution. (just a bit too easy i guess) :cry: My plan was not to put the speakers on the desk as seen in the picture, but to build another shelf ten centimetres above the original desk just the width of the speakers (like a step) and hard mount this onto the wall also. I guess thats a bad plan then! Indeed i had also intended to mount another set of speakers higher up, directly to the wall using fittings that came supplied with them for this purpose. (these ones are Storm sam1s from Storm digital broadcasting) so i guess thats out too... So if the situation calls for no hard mounting of speakers, and i just dont have the space, money or time to mount them in a soffit what can i do.. To the best of my understanding i cant have them on stands on the floor either, remember this is an upstairs room with live room below!!) what other options do i have left? Guys i really need some help here!!!! 2 things, Could some really nice person come up with a workable plan (ppppllllllleeeeaaassseeeeeee) or could some highly intellectual person explain in a dummys guide style what is causing this vibration and how it spreads so i can try to do something about it in my own novice type way!!!! Give a little , helps a lot!! cheers df

Given that you have no room/access for stands, you may want to look into Auralex SpeakerDude pads. You may be able to design a better system with these products that allows you more flexibility for wall mounting the monitors.

HHHMMMMM Now why didnt i think of that!! So if i was to build another shelf that was hung from 2x4 screwed (hard fastened) into the wall But hung using the resilient brackets to attach the shelf onto the 2x4 it would go a long way toward ridding me of vibrations. Then use the speaker pads also to "double up" on isolation. This seems like a very simple solution indeed. Thanks for that!! df

This is a really awesome-looking build, I can't believe I've never seen it before. Is the big "nose" section of the room where the desk is completely blocked off and sealed up, or are you using it for storage or anything? It seems like a massive amount of area not being used for anything, but maybe I missed something? Also, what kind of monitors are you using? And do you have a live room anywhere that isn't shown in the pics on the first page?

Thanks for that mr walkaway. Yup you got that right, it is a gigantic area to give up in such a small room but because its a small room i wanted some serious base trapping in there to flatten out the peaks and dips so there you have it. Superchunk (or not as was discussed earlier in the post) Its a two storey build, There is a Live room and chill space downstairs and also a small machine room/kitchen. Upstairs is control and booth. Currently using Berringher 2030a monitors and also a pair of Storm sam1 broadcast quality monitors, Using an Imac 24inch computer with logic 8 pro and reason4 and two mixers a yamaha 01x (the most versatile mixer in the world) and a yamaha mw12 for monitor mixes. Mics are rode NTA1 x 2 Rode NT5 x2 Rode M3x 3 Rode m1 x 1 SE Electronics se2000 x 1 and peavey things with dodgy switches x2 I also use a dell machine as a dedicated reason engine in the live room and a compaq laptop for abelton live engine. The two pc type things also run a host of vst stuff for me. Gotta go now. peace df

yoyo, Still here chipping away, had some festival work (www.spiritofvoice.com)for the last two weeks or so and been pretty busy getting back to the build now and hope to have it done by christmas. donal

Hey man, just been reading though your excellent build-diary!!! Was looking at your pictures of your doors, as I am looking for some suitable rubber for mine? May I ask where you brought yours from as I am having some difficulting in locating something suitable for a reasonable price ? Good luck with the remainder of your build! Steeve

Hi Steeveeeee..... Sorry for taking so long getting back in here but i managed to pick up a dose of the dreaded Swine flu in the last few days. Wow, its a real bad dose never had anything quite like this before, like a bad mescaline trip with the shits added in just for the hell of it, seem to be getting over it a bit but no sleep really.... Anyhows, to answer your question, i Got the seals from Carlbro Motor Factors, Tuam road, Galway, Ireland. Basically they are just my local car parts place. Most folk round here use G.M. type k trunk/boot rubber for the purpose, However partly due to where i live and partly due to my own stoned laziness, I opted for the easily found Generic Chinese brand my local place had in stock, However, it should be noted that the seals were quite espensive (i thought anyway, but i am on the dole) at €120 for three doors worth. (but thats the west of Ireland for ya, U.K. ought to be cheaper for this) I gave a bit of thought to heading to a scrap yard and just salvaging some but figured that the new ones were worth the extra few quid. They seem to work very efficiently too. some words of advice regarding fitting, if you are hanging new doors, temporarily fit the seals nice and tight then hang the doors to fit them. , remove the seals and then paint the door and frame. I permanently installed mine straight out (no way they are coming off without ruining them and the trim) and now i gotta lot more edges to deal with in the gloss painting to come in the next few weeks. hope this helps. peace df

Just wondering if anyone had attempted to build sliding glass doors from scratch, it looks like its going to have to be the way i go about it, Just cant afford the pre built type at all. Anyone got plans for this? peace. df

mostly been painting around here, Getting the trimming done out in the cr and vox booth, also put my feet into the live room for the first time. Took down some wallpaper done a bit of painting. A lot done and more to do! df

Ok, so its been a bit mental about here for the last few weeks. Lots of work done!! :D The control room and vocal booth upstairs are almost completely finished (even got some gear in there ) Carpets in and all painting done, just got to finish some wiring and build one more trap for the booth. All the rooms downstairs are finished being painted (oww my back im six foot eight inches (over 2m) tall and painting skirting board is no fun for me) Finally the glass doors between the tracking room and conservatory are built and installed. I eventually decided to not build these myself (as my other post) and i am glad of it now. In the end i went with a UPVC large sliding door with custom made double glazing panels in it. they are very very heavy as one side of the glazing units are 8mm laminated glass and the other side of the unit is 4mm laminated glass. The cavity is filled with argon gas, they are not quite as isolating as i would have hoped for in the low end but in the high end where my problematic polycarbonate roof causes noise they are fantastic so job done and done well, (i havent carried out scientific tests on them yet but when the door is closed during rain, i cant hear it anymore where before the noise of the rain on polycarbon roof was just so loud) A room that was useless before during rain (in the west of ireland pretty much every day) is now very much usable and still flooded with natural light and views to the lovely garden. I love it when a plan comes together. We decide that to install the door in the archway would have left to small an enterance to the room so we built it onto the wall inside the room allowing the door to slide right back to one side leaving almost three quaters of the arch open space SWEET!! Also got started with a bit of the wiring between upstairs cr and downstairs tracking room. We put in a trunk through the floor/celieng , Its carrying eight channels of XLR, eight channels of TRS, Its also packing firewire 400 and 800 usb 2.0 (on a repeater cable) and cat6e ethernet cable. Still to go in are adat tosh and midi. The xlr and trs i went with eventually are premade units from Thomann, http://www.thomann.de/ie/the_sssnake_ms ... ekabel.htm cheap as chips and very efficient. I have been using one of them for years for small live shows and just found it to be great value for money One of these also runs from the cr to the booth. Using these has cut out all the worry i had over phantom power in my wiring and patchbay setup, its all lovely and simple and safe. nice!!! :D I literally just mounted two of these boxes onto the wall with grip n stick. It doesnt look as nice as a wall box, but i didnt fancy taking apart the units and soldering them back together, prefering instead to go the nice safe route. Also got another superdoor built and installed in the hall between the house and the tracking room. The design i am using for these is just like the one in Rods book, except i am not using sheets of lead (way to exspensive) and i am using a generic chinese brand trunk seal rather than the impossible to source in Ireland type k gm seal. By not using the lead sheet i have cut back on the cost of the doors significantly First, i could use the original door frame instead of having to build a much sturdier one to carry the extra weight of the lead. second i didnt have to buy the lead (€150 per sheet / per door) To be honest the level of sound isolation i am getting with just the doors as they are is quite significant, I have a pair of hundred watt nearfields and in the tracking room playing dub reggae as loud as they go you can barely hear it with these doors without the lead!!! I used some moldings to design the house hall facing side of the door with framing like all the other doors in the house All the other ones are beveled into the door but on my superdoor they are raised, but the eye can barely see the difference and it matches much better. I will get some pics up in the next few days. Hope all reading this are well and healthy. Blessings. DF

I will do the pics tomorow, ye guys will be proud ( i hope !!)

Anyone that can say "cheap as chips" surely will do a good job! Looking forward to the pictures.

Ok so here go's with the pics!!

And some more piccys