Johns Standard Control Room

for version 1.3.8 and later: "If you add more VST plug-ins later, they will not appear in the Effect menu until you go to the Effects tab of Audacity Preferences, check "Rescan VST effects next time Audacity is started", then restart Audacity. However if you subsequently remove any VST plug-ins, they will automatically be removed from the Effect menu after restart, without need for a rescan (as long as you are using 1.3.10 or later)."

I'm looking at the VST list in the Audacity effect manager and don't see it. I don't see it anywhere. Maybe I need a newer version of audacity?

i think you need the later version since you're running 1.2.6 and i think with version 1.3.8 they fixed a lot of the VST concerns.

That did the trick. Thanks again! :D

Dumb questions: 1. Is 6 degrees enough of an angle for the inner walls with this design (to send the flutter echos toward the rear of the room to be dealt with later)? I can go to 8 deg easily 2. Will the mix position be approximately at 38% of the room depth ? (Knowing where the RFZ is, determines where I want the sliding glass door EDIT: which will probably be much closer to the front of the room than shown) 3. Dumb question#3. Should mechanical isolation be maintained between the inner and outer walls in the area of the doorway framing? I presume so, but want to confirm. 4. If so, how does one finish off the area between the inner and outer walls in the doorway and maintain isolation? With all the caulking that is suggested, I presume its airtight and not just fabric covering fiberglass and framing? Rubber sheets? 5. What effect would mounting the speakers on stands, for now, have in the design? Can I build modular soffits later? 6. EDIT Additional question. Is it OK to put my ventilation supply and return ducts in the larger wall cavity up front on the left and right sides? Thanks

Any thoughts on previous post before the inner walls go up> Outer wall framing is underway. Pictures My current "studio". I bang my shins every night getting to my side of the bed by the keyboard. GET ME OUT OF HERE I can't write songs in this space :cry: When I was displaced out of the former spare bedroom, I not only lost my studio, I lost my office too. People complain about small cubicals. How do you like my loft wedgical. Duck your head or hit the beam! Meanwhile progress. Second layer of sheetrock up on old ceiling and outer west wall framed. Plastic is temp to hold heat in. "Free" labor. Leaves tools on top of ladders and drops sheet rock screws in the driveway. (contractors nephew) But he's learning a lot. Scarf joint filled with backer rod and caulk before outer wall is framed Bridging added midspan to floor. Three additional concrete filled lally columns will be installed under this 18" LVL beam on March 7, 2011. Meanwhile, I think I'll cut the new subfloor over the large LVL beam to "open the circuit" and attempt to reduce interior flanking noise so I won't hear beer bottles in anyones kitchen or my wife stamping her feet. Lets see if that green glue joist tape actually does dampen vibrations. Any thoughts on previous post before the inner walls go up. Wall (sliding door) angle? Mix position?

If you can go to 12 degrees that would be best but 8 will be better than 6. You can add soffits later if desired. Yes the door frame and jamb need to be decoupled. If you don't go with double doors, then you would use a massive single door and extend the jamb to cover the opening but leave a slight gap which is sealed with backer rod and caulk. If you have to connect them due to structural concerns, then do so and accept some loss there. Since the angled wall are isolation, you could put your supply and return in the space.

Thank you very much Glenn for all your help. Very grateful. :thu:

More photos for your late night viewing! Added concrete filled lally columns under the LVL beams. Fire stops added to the bottom pockets of the outside North Wall. Filling in gap with backer rod (and flexible sealant) to maintain floor isolation from North wall Started framing the outer wall under the old beam. We flattened out some pipe insulation to use as a gasket and attached the beam with 3 inch lag bolts compressing the gasket as much as possible. It will be caulked as well. Ordered 24 inch wide unfaced fiberglass insulation that will placed horizontally on the north wall before framing the inner walls. Planning on spacing the inner walls 3 or 4 inches away from those existing walls. I've read here that a larger air space is better for attenuating lower frequencies. Low budget floating wall mount? Yoga mats cut into 3 inch strips. Lab tests (bathroom scale and large thumb) showed approx 25% compression at 2 PSI. Neoprene fuel line, lag bolt, fender washer and rubber nerf washers. Just had a another large delivery of acoustic insulation, it was free but the upper temperature range is limited. Also FS: 2000 Dodge Neon. As you can see, it's good in snow. I have to admit that I didn't think this project would be as much as a pain in the.......neck. The outside north wall has required so much attention, sheetrock in all the odd shaped pockets, caulking, caulking, calking, firestops, more caulking, backer rod. Its all detail isn't it? When other folks in this forum said, "I only have 3000 or 5000 dollars in my budget, I thought, pfft, I'm not worried about the money. (I'm still not but my wife is starting to) The point being I can see how a real studio can cost a bazillion dollars. But I can tell I'm going to be very happy with the results. The improvement is vast already and the room is still open to the rest of the building. I WILL take sound readings. I need to set up Audacity on sound activated recording. Since most of the time there is no traffic, but when it does pass by I'm in the house.

nice work! not to worry, soon you'll be covering up all that nice caulk on the walls with insulation :)

A little more progress. Just about all of the framing is done. We've decide to put strapping up on the ceiling to stiffen up the "floating inner structure", but that will have to wait until I do the electrical wiring and put up the insulation. I ran the circular saw through the OSB subfloor, between the inner and outer walls. Then did some impact tests on the floor using a 16 oz. carpenters hammer and my hand as a sensor. (uncalibrated; but one of my fingers might still be certified from years of vibration analysis work in industry :blah: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090129/ ... 09.68.html) The difference is sustantial. Before cutting, you could clearly feel the the impulses transfer laterally throught the OSB (flanking) After cutting, it was hard to detect at all. The Green Glue joist tape does seem to do some dampening as they claimed. It's a subjective test but still valid. The inner walls are isolated on 1/2" thick soft rubber (see previous post for weight caluculations and psi). The foam "nerf toy" washers compressed and stayed flat, so I removed them and cut out squares of rubber (same as used under the plates) and used those under the large fender washers. The lag bolts were tightened enough to compress the washer pads about 75%. This is so when the weight of the sheet rock is added, and the wall plate rubber cushion compresses approx 25% (hopefully thereabouts) the large washers under the lag bolts will not be rattling around inside the wall when I play a bass note. Did another subjective test: Hit the outer wall framing with the bottom of my fist while feeling the inner wall framing..............the outer wall studs vibrated visibly at a low but audible frequency.........but again I felt nothing on the inner wall studs. This is good. The inner structure is sucessfully isolated from the outer structure, (except for the soft rubber it sits on, and the isolating bolts, made out of neoprene fuel line, fender washers and more rubber pads which seem to be working rather well, so far). So if you HAVE to put your music room on an elevated structure AND you CAN build an isolated frame for the subfloor, (joists not attached to existing framing anywhere), using joist tape and cutting your subfloor does help. Of course an isolated concrete slab is the way to go, but not always possibly for amateur studio's. So using all the isolation tricks you can, will still improve the situation with a wood frame structure to a noticable degree, especially when compared to normal costruction methods. With the framing done, I've picked up my ventilation and electrical supplies and plan on starting wiring tommorow. Then we can go back to stuffing more insulation in the new walls and ceiling, then on to more layers of sheetrock (gypsum wall board). Our electric code does allow us to just poke electrical wires through a small hole in the wall into a surface mounted electrical box (with a strain relief clamp) (like wiremold brand by LeGrand, I found at Home Despot) The hole can then be filled with acoustic sealant caulking. After reading all the other posts, this seems to be the fastest and easiest way to go. No worries about cutting large holes in the walls, putty pads around outlet boxes, special framing boxes etc. The surface mount outlets were $5.99 each which included the outlet (receptacle) and the wall (cover) plate. 8) PS: I did angle the front side walls at 12 degrees. Here are two photos. More to come. (Got to take the clients bowling, it's Wednesday) Cross bracing is temporary until sheet rock is installed.

that's really good news on the isolation! construction is looking good!

Framing is complete and all the wiring is complete except for the ground wiring. Two light circuits for LED track lighting, one in the front and two in the back of room. Power connected to the main panel. Separate circuits for lights and for outlets. Wiring to electric outlet locations complete and connected to the main panel. I picked up a 24 VDC heating and cooling digital thermostat and a 24 VDC to 120 VAC control relay to allow this thermostat to control a separate air conditioner mounted in a separate mechanical room or some other higher tech system if needed in the future. I noticed my local HVAC supplier carries Fantech products which I learned about on this forum. So I'm looking into getting an HRV unit for the house and possibly the studio. At the very least a FG-6 fan for ventilation. Installed CAT 5 cable. Installed air register boots for supply and return air. Mounted 6 inch couplers in outer wall with vibration damping rubber around them. Will use insulated 6 inch flex duct to interconnect couplers with register boots. So we're about ready for final insulation, vapor barrier and sheetrock. Here are some photos I just took this evening.

i'm guessing "slacker" isn't in your vocabulary? :mrgreen:

This forum has all the answers. Though buried within billions and billions (remember Carl Sagan) of bits of information. Lots of digging required, but its in there, thanks to John Sayers for setting this up, and the other studio designers like you Glenn, that help all the brave (or in my case foolish) souls that go down this path. I have a confession. :oops: I admit it. I was gonna cheat. Was gonna skip the "star ground" or isolated ground as it is apparently called by the U.S. electricians. Don't need it. I wasn't gonna say anything to you guys. Talked my self out of it. ("Never had a problem with hum and buzz before. Heck, I'm a midi guy, all in the box stuff") But it kept nagging at me. :? I kept reading and researching. Then I remembered my friend Scott, with his homemade guitar and the wire we had to stick in his shorts to stop the buzzing. OK, the walls are still open, nows the time to do it. Check the code. Oh yea, its rural Vermont. Knob and tube wires, with no ground required. Makes the cows dance. I'm running romex 12-2 to each outlet, so I won't use the built in ground wire. Instead, we need a spool of 12 gage insulated green wire to run from each outlet directly back to the main panel ground bar. (I just installed 2 new ground rods last year along with the new electric service and new electric panel) Code man says, I can run it along with the romex, (i think I'll tape it too) and running it in conduit for neatness is OK. So I'll use conduit from the point where the ground wires go through the floor and over into the service panel. Make it look tidy. So.... Just came back from Home Despot, got a 500 foot roll of green 12 gage TNNF ground wire and some conduit. Yes! I con-do-it! Slacker? I've been there, done that. Spent years eating cases of junk food and watching tv. After a heart attack from 95% blockage and triple bypass, I'm trying something slightly different. Can you say, "low fat diet and exercise, and NO! HYDROGENATED FATS!" There is still much to do and so little time. As Clint Eastwood said in Space Cowboys, "The Clock's Ticking Bob, and I'm Only Getting Older" GIT R' DONE!!!!!

cheers!

OK, The star grounding.......it's done, only took a couple hours. It was easy; while the framing is still exposed. Here are some photos. Let me know if anything looks wrong before we close it up. I know I need to caulk the wires and the conduit where they go through the floor. And I forgot to get clamps to attach the conduit to the 2x4. I think the star grounding is done correctly for this situation. The ground bar is connected to two ground rods less than 8 feet away outside. BTW, I've seen :mrgreen: here and there. What does :mrgreen: mean? Excuse my forum ignorance. Let me know if anything looks wrong before we close it up.

The insulation and sheet rock are arriving tomorrow (March 30, 2011) and should be done in a week. Whats' next? The floor? Test the room as is? I know Glenn will respond. Anyone else have any comments, advice, criticism, slander, death threats or worse... encouragement? And what does this mean? :arrow: :mrgreen: research: quotes from other forums (Telecaster Guitar Forum and silverfishlongboarding.com/forum "I always thought it denoted envy (why else would it be green?) but in a friendly banterish way. I've used it for that several times, would hate to think people thought I was being sarcastic." " :mrgreen: isn't an emoticon....he's the guy who runs this place." "I personally think he's a green Chinese dude...but hey...that's just me. :mrgreen: " "I think he died some time ago :mrgreen: because someone shot him in the knee " "He could be holding his breath, too. Or maybe he turns that color to attract a mate. " :mrgreen: is for when you're trying to be sarcastic. There's 3 smilies for different stages of "Happy". "I think :mrgreen: is for when you say something kinda cutting or snarky to a fellow member that maybe doesn't know you so well; green kinda takes the edge off, and makes everything ok. "To me, :mrgreen: just means a big grin. As in, I am happy, even if nobody reading my post" My wife just chimed in and said, :mrgreen: "no it means environmental" (she was born in Vermont)

my only thought is the grounds normal sit in with the wiring they are pair with. on the testing, i'd say wait until you have the drywall up but you might just do some hammer tests to see how much structure contact you've got and where that can be felt/heard. maybe if you have a friend with a loud truck you could have them rev it outside for a bit while you check around as well to feel for any significant vibrations or resonances.

Thanks for the feedback Glenn, The ground wires are taped to the Romex until they reach the conduit where they separate. Normally there should be no current flow in these wires except in an emergency or power on/off surges right? So what is the concern? Will having them all together in a conduit for 15 feet cause any potential problem? Is it an eddy current induction thing? The reason audio cables are designed the way they are? I can't find any info about this.

JohnH wrote:

And what does this mean? :arrow: :mrgreen:

I always assumed that when you refer to someone being green, it mean't that they were a newbie. So I thought it was to be used when someone offers up some friendly advice, but isn't 100% sure if what they are saying is correct. :poke: (I guess this would be the reply if the advice was wrong)

Brian, I think the emoticon, :mrgreen: Mr. Green, is not clearly defined. I thought he was about the money and cost, but that's a U.S. thing, greenbacks and all. Clearly this is a serious problem. :wink:

i believe the grounds are grouped because it's code... one idea is not losing track of which safety ground goes which which circuit and not having some other work activity disconnect it, as well as possible surges on one causing a melting on the wire bundle etc.

The outlets in question are all on the same 20 amp circuit. I checked with a licenced electrician and he said it was fine. (Does that mean it's to code, or safe? I don't know). So I'm not 100% sure if I do need to do anything about this or not. There's still time as the walls are still open. A whole house surge protection device is waiting to be installed in this panel as well. I could tag each ground wire and label each outlet.

If your licensed electrician has verified and signed off on it, I'm probably just being a worry wart...