Dog + Bear Studio build

Wow ... I step away for a bit [working and enjoying my build :wink: ] ... to see this all coming together. It looks great Stevev !! I went back and rescanned the thread from the beginning just to refresh myself from where this all started. Look forward to seeing the next details go in ! It's fun to read the reactions to the new room. I enjoy just being in my control room. When I fire up the monitors ... it is really something. I smiled when you described both the isolation from the outside and the acoustics ! Big Congrats !!! Will be watching from the background. Cheers !

RJHollins wrote:

I enjoy just being in my control room. When I fire up the monitors ... it is really something.

Thanks RJ, and I'm glad to be able to say that I feel the same about my CR :D We were doing a live double bass and violin track today. I had the violin miked up and had a listen to the guy playing in the live room, then walked back and forth between the live and control room and it sounded spot on. Not much, if any, colouration coming from either room.

I have a renewed respect for anyone involed in the upholstry industry. Trying to get fabric to do as you wish is like trying to herd cats :shock: It's coming along nicely but very, very, very slowly. I'm really happy with the result, given that i've not done any upholstry work before, but still, it's very tedious and quite frustrating at times. All I can say is 'air stapler'. I cannot believe how hard this would be without one!

nearly at the end of the fabric work for the CR. (thank God!!) I've decided to do the live room with more of a curtain style hanging as it'll stand up to musician punishment a lot better. The tight upholstry look is great for the control room, as long as no one leans on what they 'think' are the walls. It tends to create 'arse' shaped divets in the fabric :evil: And as a side note, the lighting is all 'cold' or 'white' LED, which works well with the fairly non reflective wall fabric and reasonably reflective ceiling fabric (white-ish calico). The reflected light from the ceiling fills the room quite nicely without feeling like a fluro. I'll get the missus to take some shots with her SLR at some point instead of my phone-cam. Hopefully that'll give a better impression of the lighting without the glare.

You might want to consider putting some wood slats across the front of the fabric in places, both for acoustics (a bit of diffusion and a bit of reflection), but mainly to protect the fabric. Not as a proper slot wall, but rather more like very widely spaced slats in more or less random locations, or locations that will give the best protection against careless / clumsy musicians. If you stain / varnish / paint the wood, it can look very nice. Stuart

thanks for the tip Stuart. The biggest problem was going to the back wall of the CR, but there'll be a couch in front of that so it should be reasonably protected. I might look at putting a few more slats in other strategic positions though.

Soundman2020 wrote:

Just wondering if you have done any final acoustic testing on your room, Steve, to see how much isolation you are getting, and how the room response is looking, for each of the rooms? I'm real interested in how well those Daiken units handle isolation through their air exchange system.

Haven't had a chance to properly seal up where the penetrations for the air-con is yet Stuart. There's been a few projects that have been waiting for completion so any studio time has been actually in there and tracking.Once I get the two penetrations sealed i'll do some more scientific testing for sure and post up results of room response for both the live and control rooms. Having said that, I've finally installed the access door on the internal leaf. With 'rage against the machine' playing, (heavy bass and drums) at around 90-95db, and both doors closed, it's almost inaudible directly outside the doors. Now you know how I said I'd fly you over here to hit me with a stick if i wasn't finished by the end of 2013.....well the way the work calender is booking up I'm starting to think I might not make it :shock: Could be an endless summer for you this year if I don't get my act together :wink:

Now you know how I said I'd fly you over here to hit me with a stick if i wasn't finished by the end of 2013.....well the way the work calender is booking up I'm starting to think I might not make it :shock: Could be an endless summer for you this year if I don't get my act together

Cool! I'll get out my suitcases and start packing.... :) 8) - Stuart -

... any nice beaches around where you live? :wink: I need a vacation, that's for sure! I'm starting to lok forward to this, so pleas do slow down a bit on that build!!!! :!: - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

.. any nice beaches around where you live?

unfortunately no Stuart :wink: we're up in the hills which also means the odd fall of snow in the winter :D I finally made a decision on flooring and went for the strandwoven bamboo. 14mm thick and 14 coats/layers of polyurethane and other protective coats. Goes down on a 2mm underlay with vapour barrier attached. I won't be getting a chance to put it down for at least a couple of weeks, but i'll post up some pics once it's down.

we're up in the hills which also means the odd fall of snow in the winter

Oh cool! Then I can stay for winter, and learn to ski! I always wanted to learn to ski.... :) By the way, that flooring looks REALLY nice! I reckon your place is going to be somewhat amazing... - Stuart -

Thanks Stuart :D I know I've said it a few times in my thread, but the advice from this forum has been what has really made my build what it is. (and maybe 1200 hr's manual labour) As a bit of a side note, a young friend of mine who is studying film production came over on the weekend to do some film overdubs with his actors. Nice guys, fun session. But the real grin for me was when the rest of his crew turned up (around 9 or 10, 20 year olds) and they wanted to hear the isolation between the rooms. I'm in the live room pounding away at my drum kit and they're in the control room all smiling as they could only hear a teeny bit of kick! Great moment :mrgreen:

that's because you play wimpy drums :) :thu:

John Sayers wrote:

that's because you play wimpy drums :) :thu:

yeah, I tried being a hard-core drummer John, but I couldn't stand dribbling out of 'both sides' of my mouth :D ...and cue the 'drummer' jokes :shot:

i just read through yr thread steve, wow, what a great looking studio yr building, well done, i will keep watching for more updates, plenty of cash and hard work gone into that, wish i had that sorta cash to throw at it, but i think im gonna slow down, and try to do it better the first time, so i hope you dont mind me continually asking dumb questions, the information i have been recieving from this forum regarding building a soundproof room is invaluable, thank you cheers Neil

cheers Neil :D :D

neilstar wrote:

wish i had that sorta cash to throw at it

Well, technically I don't, the bank does though :roll:

neilstar wrote:

i think im gonna slow down, and try to do it better the first time

excellent idea mate. There were a few points in my build where I changed my thinking or my plan because of advice given to me here. Sometimes it'll sound like people are being picky or pedantic, but they've got your best intrest in mind and want you to end up with the best building you can afford. And there's no dumb questions, because if you already knew everything about building a studio then you wouldn't be here like the rest of us :D

After a monster job away from home for the last six weeks, I've finally managed to get back in the studio for some build time. Control room floor went in today and I've got to say I'm really impressed with this product 8) Very easy to put down and at 14mm thick it's got a great feel to it when walking on it. I thought there might be a bit of a 'floating feel' but it feels like a genuine nailed down timber floor. Cutting in was tricky as there's obviously a lot of angled walls being a studio. There's still a bit of finishing to do with the skirting boards but I should get on to that tomorrow, which will mean the control room is pretty much done apart from furmiture. I've got a local furniture maker getting together a quote to build a classy rack for the outboard gear and with any luck I'll be able to get him to sort out a desk top as well now that I know which console I'm going with (Midas VeniceF24)

That looks pretty darn nice! Good workmanship all around. REW? - Stuart -

I should get a chance to run REW later today and see if the final finishes in the room have made much difference. Maybe it's just psychological, but the room did actually seem a little brighter with the highly reflective floor instead of the concrete. I'll post up the REW data when I'm done.

floor looks great Steve. :thu:

Thanks John :D I've been busy building desks and installing consoles, but should get a chance to run REW for some final results tomorrow. I've also got a couple of Spacedec swing arms for my PC monitors on order. Hopefully i'll be able to mount them in a way that means I can get them nice and upright for editing/tracking, but swing them down and out of the way for mixing. There seems to be enough adjusment in the units by looking at the tech specs, but there's nothing like having the physical unit on site to see exactly how it looks!

Finally built myself a desk and got the console in and installed. I think the swing arms for the computer monitors are waiting for me at the post office so I'll see what I can come up with once I have a look at them. I also did some REW measurments for the control room, which at first had me pretty alarmed as it was showing huge modes at 50, 100, 200, 300 etc etc. After a bit of trouble shooting I found that my SPL meter is adding a lot of noise to the signal. Running a spectrum analyzer over the signal from the meter confirmed this so it looks like it's back to Galaxy for a warranty claim :roll: I then pulled out a U89 to double check and these are the results. I'm not sure how the 89 compares to the Galaxy SPL meter in terms of flat response, but it's probably the most accurate mic i've got in the locker. Here's the dropbox link if anyone wants to take a more in depth look at the results: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416 ... ments.mdat Still waiting on a quote from a furniture maker to construct a timber rack unit, but if he doesn't get back to me soon I'll just have to put one together myself. In my spare time....which is non-existant :shock:

it was showing huge modes at 50, 100, 200, 300

Hmmm.... And you live in Australia, where power is 50 Hz.... :) I'm thinking "Mains Hum".... Did you use a properly wired cable for that? Everything correctly grounded? Just checking, but did you have the U89 on omni for those tests? OK, looking at the REW data, there are several puzzling things there: First, either you didn't do the calibration correctly against a sound level meter, or your room and system are amazingly, astoundingly quiet! According to your graphs, you did those tests at about 55 dB, meaning your RT-60 measurements went down to -5 dB :shock: :!: :!: I'd re-check the calibration of REW against an accurate SLM. You should do the tests with each individual speaker giving you around 80 dB on both the REW meter and your SLM, so both together should give you about 86 dB. Next, the readings from Left and Right speakers are very, very different. Almost like it was two physically different speakers. There's a difference of around 4 to 15 dB at all points across the spectrum, with L being higher in some places but R in others: Perhaps something changed in the room between doing the L and R readings? Maybe you yourself were in a different place, or you moved the sofa, desk etc.? Another curiosity: summing the L and R SPL curves does not match the "Stereo" curve. Or rather, it does match in the low end, up to about 2 kHz, but above that it just goes wild. I would try to figure out why the two are so different. The L and R curves should be at practically the same level, showing more or less the same thing (except for minor variations due to asymmetry in the room), and the reading with both speakers on should be consistently about 5 or 6 dB louder across the board. Next, it looks like you overdid the baffle step compensation. On all the graphs, there's a consistent drop of about 4 dB below 120 Hz. How do you have the controls set on the rear of your speakers? Are you using a sub? Are you using anything else that could be shaping the frequency response, such as a graphic equalizer, or a crossover? The good news is that the room seems to be behaving very nicely! - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

Hmmm.... And you live in Australia, where power is 50 Hz.... :) I'm thinking "Mains Hum".... Did you use a properly wired cable for that? Everything correctly grounded?

This is a fault in the SPL meter itself Stuart. Battery powered. I plugged a pair of headphones in to it and there was a load of noise coming out of it which was almost louder than the mic signal itself.

Soundman2020 wrote:

Just checking, but did you have the U89 on omni for those tests?

Good question, and without looking I'm going to say it was cardiod as we were using it for vocals last. I'll double check that but I'll redo the test in omni if not.

Soundman2020 wrote:

OK, looking at the REW data, there are several puzzling things there: First, either you didn't do the calibration correctly against a sound level meter, or your room and system are amazingly, astoundingly quiet! According to your graphs, you did those tests at about 55 dB, meaning your RT-60 measurements went down to -5 dB :shock: :!: :!: I'd re-check the calibration of REW against an accurate SLM. You should do the tests with each individual speaker giving you around 80 dB on both the REW meter and your SLM, so both together should give you about 86 dB.

I'll check that out as I'm pretty sure i'll be doing the test again using the omni pattern anyway. I probably didn't go through the calibration process properly as I was thinking about a dozen other things at the time. Your right, I probably did run it too quiet :oops:

Soundman2020 wrote:

Next, the readings from Left and Right speakers are very, very different. Almost like it was two physically different speakers. There's a difference of around 4 to 15 dB at all points across the spectrum, with L being higher in some places but R in others: Perhaps something changed in the room between doing the L and R readings? Maybe you yourself were in a different place, or you moved the sofa, desk etc.? Another curiosity: summing the L and R SPL curves does not match the "Stereo" curve. Or rather, it does match in the low end, up to about 2 kHz, but above that it just goes wild. I would try to figure out why the two are so different. The L and R curves should be at practically the same level, showing more or less the same thing (except for minor variations due to asymmetry in the room), and the reading with both speakers on should be consistently about 5 or 6 dB louder across the board.

Look's like i'm running the test again so i'll pay particular attention to the making sure the L and R tests are repeated the same way. Like I say, I was doing a bunch of other stuff at the time so it wouldn't surprise me if something got moved, a door got opened etc etc.

Soundman2020 wrote:

Next, it looks like you overdid the baffle step compensation. On all the graphs, there's a consistent drop of about 4 dB below 120 Hz. How do you have the controls set on the rear of your speakers? Are you using a sub? Are you using anything else that could be shaping the frequency response, such as a graphic equalizer, or a crossover?

No sub, no EQ, no crossover. As the monitors are now soffit mounted I can't make a 100% certain call on the settings :roll: ....but, I do remeber setting everything to as flat/unaltered as it would go. I hope nothing got tweaked/knocked/switched when I put them in or it could be a long and tedious process to get them out and have a look :cry:

Soundman2020 wrote:

The good news is that the room seems to be behaving very nicely!

To be honest Stuart, it really sounds excellent to me in the room. Nothing really appears to be jumping out in the mix too much as you move around the room (except the bass when you get to the back of the room). So i'd have to say i've done something a little skewed in my measurments. I'll repeat the process with more attention to detail and re-post.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416 ... s%202.mdat Here's the link to attempt number 2 :D I can guarantee that the U89 was in omni, nothing moved around the room, no doors opened, I didn't get sidetracked by phone calls/people etc. How'd we go on this one Stuart?