Hybrid Studio - ground up including Monitors and furniture

Hi Stuart,

Soundman2020 wrote:

I'm looking at a calibrated decibel meter on the internet that's affordable but suits my project.

Take a look at that link I gave you, about how to use REW: In it, I mention the characteristics you should be looking for in a sound level meter, plus a few brands and models that I have found to be good at reasonable prices... Here it is again: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =3&t=21122 . - Stuart -

I found the ExTech 407730, which is available in the Netherlands and costs 100 Euro's. Does A&C weigthing, 40 - 130 Db range, Fast and Slow response, Max Hold and is calibrated of factory. QUESTION: Is this a good dB meter for my project AND calibration of REW? Ofcourse there are others, but I have to make a choice and the more expensive ones have additional options, which I'm not shure I would need. kind regards , Frans

I found the ExTech 407730,

Yes, that's an excellent meter. One of the ones I recommend. - Stuart -

Frans Wessels wrote:

Soundman2020 wrote:

Take a look at that link I gave you, about how to use REW: In it, I mention the characteristics you should be looking for in a sound level meter, plus a few brands and models that I have found to be good at reasonable prices... Here it is again: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=21122 . Which mic should you buy? I do NOT recommend the Behringer ECM8000 mic for this, as I've heard too many sad stories about people getting faulty mics, including my own personal experience. - Stuart -

Hi Stuart, Yes, I'm looking into that. I've learned more this week than in the past few year on the internet. So as you stated, I'm on the right forum here to ge me a control room. :wink: Seems like a good usable sound level meter comes at 100 - 200 euro's, which is OK by me. It is an important tool for the preparation and actual build. Not sure about the mike I use on REW, it is most likely the the Behringer :oops: I'll check on that. Kind regards, Frans

So much for buying the right gear...... :cry: Ooh well, I guess that's just life, win some / loose some.

So much for buying the right gear...... :cry: Ooh well, I guess that's just life, win some / loose some.

I've used that mic with good results. The mic is just famous for being hit or miss. Also, there are a few different calibration files floating around the internet for it. And it's basically impossible to know which one is right for your mic. So, I'd suggest using it for everything except frequency response. There's no reason you can't use it for things like RT60 and waterfall plot type measurements! Greg

The decibel meter has arrived. :P I drew a map of the shed and its surroundings. A - measuring spot OUTSIDE noise before entering the studio B - INSIDE noise in studio C - measuring spot OUSIDE noise for our house at living-room window location. Now find some time to do measurements. First indication of traffic noise (dBC slow rate) at A is 66 dBC for normal cars driving by at allowed speed (40 miles / 60 km). That's not to bad. I think the earth wall is of much help.

I refreshed the diagram image of the room in the shed. ...

What diagram image are you talking about? And how could you possibly be "refreshing" anything, when this is your very first post on the forum? This smells very much like a spammer! Typical behavior...

papa1000 wrote:

I refreshed the diagram image of the room in the shed. The shed is "single block" with a compressed wood roof and rooftop tiles. To make the complete circumstance unmistakable, I attracted the shed aggregate with the controlroom to be work inside. Try not to have more space, since the shed likewise houses a working seat and different products that should be inside. The shed is standing 10 meters from our home and around 40 meters from our neighbors house. Next rendition of the illustration will be only the controlroom.

Sorry, I don't understand a word of what you are trying to say here. Although this is just my life time hobby and I don't make an income out of it, building this control room is important to me. That's why I opted to post this topic on this forum and get guidance from other members. So please take this seriously OR just read. kind regards, Frans

I'm pretty certain he is a spammer, Frans. He copied some text from one of your earlier posts and rephrased it in convoluted terms with several distant synonyms, probably with the intention of coming back later and inserting his spam links into his text and into his signature. That's what they are doing lately, to try to disguise their low-life pond-scum intentions... but he didn't actually post any spam yet, so he hasn't technically violated the forum terms.... thus, I can't really ban him and delete his posts.... Yet! But I can follow him around everywhere he goes on the forum, just waiting for him to do that, then he's out! As soon as he tries, he's gone instantly, then I'll clean up your thread for you... - Stuart -

Hi Stuart, OK, I'll ignore it. I'm having trouble understanding this kind of crap, that is not technically but human behaviour. Your attention to tackle people with this behaviour on the forum is VERY much appreciated, add's to the value this forum has. ANYway, Haven't found time to do the first environment measurements, BUT next week I have a few days of to measure the sound pressure level of traffic around my house and inside out measurements when playing back some music material. kind regards, Frans

BINGO! Spammer gone. Banned and blocked...

Thank you

Haven't found time to do the first environment measurements, BUT next week I have a few days of to measure the sound pressure level of traffic around my house and inside out measurements when playing back some music material.

Great! Looking forward to seeing that, so we can help you figure out your isolation plan. - Stuart - (PS. Sorry about the spammer... he's gone for good now)

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to work on my to be studio. HOWEVER, I did work on the studio furniture and started building the console furniture. See attached photo. Will update with more detail on how and why I ended up designing this desk. It's for the Mackie 32-8 bus with 24 channel extension. Will go to the paint shop shortly.

Very nice Frans. cheers john

John Sayers wrote:

Very nice Frans. cheers john

Thanks!

Frans Wessels wrote:

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to work on my to be studio. HOWEVER, I did work on the studio furniture and started building the console furniture. See attached photo. Will update with more detail on how and why I ended up designing this desk. It's for the Mackie 32-8 bus with 24 channel extension. Will go to the paint shop shortly.

Ooh well. so much for plans. It did NOT end up in the paint shop, only a few parts did. Here is why; I started this whole idea some 20 years ago (as I realised while day-dreaming at the "not this year" Christmas tree). SO, action! 1 - I have a room upstairs in our house that is not really used and big enough. 2 - I have a lot of gear waiting for me to get fired on. Why don't I put it in that room and START MIXING!?!? :P So that's exactly what I did, dragged the whole shabang upstairs, added loads of cabling (which I am still short of :oops: ) and fired it off. HEY HEY, my studio is alive ! Only had to do some gain staging, re-patching, Studio One template editing, I/O assigning, etc. I knew it is a lot of physical stuff, the old school studio, but I LOVE IT :yahoo: Here's some photo's. The room is NOT treated at all !! (Yet, I might add an absorptive ceiling as temporary measure, it IS a TEMPORARY room after all. :mrgreen: I was supprised by the "quality" of sound when played at around 85dB. The angled ceiling and the back of the room having closets with "louvre type) doors seems to "prevent" a fair part of standing waves and reflections (my best guess on why it sounds OK'ish). The Genelec monitors are active and have special roll off filters to be used when they are placed on a mixing desk. I also added vibration damping pads under the Genelec's, which (combined with the correct filter setting) improved the low end a fair bit. Walking through the room made me observe some changes in the low end (cancelations and the likes), but not a big difference. At the mixing position, it proved to be OK for now. I don't know if an absorber hanging above the mixing desk would help me some further, I could try (not that much of a deal to make one. Anyway, I can use the studio to my liking AND make progress on the real deal studio room. First action is to measure traffic noise, that's where I ended this item. Keep you posted.

It looks like fun for sure! Without taking your thread completely off course from studio design, care to share what you are using for I/O with your Mackie? Greg

Gregwor wrote:

It looks like fun for sure! Without taking your thread completely off course from studio design, care to share what you are using for I/O with your Mackie? Greg

Hi Greg, Sure. As I started this thread, I DO NOT record, but use multitracks from studio's and found on the internet. ALL HARDWARE is second hand (at least), which brings the investment down to roughly 20 % of the normal price. The Mackie cost me 300 Dollars. The Mackie is what they call an -In-Line mixer. The idea is that you record your inputs to a tape-deck (or other recording device) and WHILE recording, send the output of the tape deck BACK into the desk in a dedicated (MIX B) set of inputs. There are special gain-, pan-, asign MIX B to L&R, switches to split-up of the channel EQ and monitor choices to have these MIX B inputs listened to. So, while recording you can listen to what ends-up on tape. If you need, You can adjust this record output in the mix-down to 2 tracks. An other possibility is to use these MixB input set as normal inputs. My 56 channel Mackie then ends up in a 112 channel desk. :shot: The interfaces I use: I use the Motiv 24 I/O, 4 units, which do AD/DA (they are the convertor from the Software on the MacPro to the Mackie and vice versa). VERY good price performance. They are connected to a PCI-e interface card in the MacPro that holds 4 firewire type connections. With each unit supporting 24 inputs (DA conversion) and 24 outputs (AD conversion) I have 96 channels of I/O to and from the Mackie analog console. The Mackie bus can run this with ease (as I now also found to be true. I run them @ 24 bit 44,1 kHz. I have defined my standard channel lay-out on the Mackie console for ease of use (from channel 1 to channel 32. I know what is where without opening my eyes): 2x Kick 2x Snare 1x HiHatt 3x Toms 2x Overhead (stereo image) 2x Room (stereo image for coloration / space feel of drum set) 2x Percussion 2x Bass (Mike and DI) 2x Lead guitar (Stereo image) 2x Rythm guitar )Stereo image) 2x Acoustic guitar (Stereo image) 2x Key / Piano (Stereo image) 2x Strings / Organ (Stereo image) 2x Horns (Stereo image) 2x Lead Vocals 2x Backing Vocals This is the first 32 tracks on the Mackie. From the remainder 24 Channels I use: 2x Kick drum parallel compression (via inserts) 2x Snare parallel compression (via inserts) 8x Effect units (4 stereo sets, via aux sent on the Mackie to the effect input to the related channel) The remainder 10 channels are variable for what is on the recording. Mixing - How it than works is: - The DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), I use Presonus Studio One be that does not matter that much, holds all the tracks with recorded resources like drums and so on. - The DAW uses the MOTU interface card as its I/O device - Each channel on the 4 Motu 24 I/O's has it's own unique address. I label that address the same as the channel on the Mackie. - So, as an example, Track 3 (holding the Snare Top recording) in the DAW is "Snare Top" and the 3rd output of the first Motu 24 I/O is "Snare Top". THAT label is also visible in the DAW software as a "send bus" of the 3rd track. - Which means I send the track audio in the DAW ("Snare Top" as the 3rd track) to the Motu 24 I/O which does the DA conversion and sends the analog signal via the jack cable connected to the 3rd Motu I/O jack chassis connector to the 3rd analog line input of the Mackie table, which of-course also is labelled "Snare Top". - Now I have the audio from the DAW (track 3) on the MacPro in my Mackie console on channel 3. - After doing this for ALL tracks in the DAW (where I sometimes map more digital tracks to 1 or 2 analog ports, like when I have 4 acoustic guitars tracks mapped to 2 channels of the console) I have ALL tracks mapped to the Mackie Analog console and can start mixing. - The DAW has an I/O template file, holding all this I/O configuration settings. - Having a new recording I apply the I/O template file to that recording and "bam" I'm ready to mix the new recording. - GAIN staging is important here, I have a 1kHz test tone plugin on each track of the DAW (set at -18dB) and dial in the Mackie channel connected gain so the meter sets at 0 dB for that channel. - Than I do Volume automation on each track in the DAW to prevent the signal on the Mackie Channel "overload". The recorded signals vary on all recordings, sometimes HOT, sometimes very low. I am thinking on normalising each track, but don't know if that is the way to go. Mixing is the way back INTO the DAW; - It is an 8 bus, meaning of course 8 output submasters - Each Channel on the Mackie holds select switches for these 8 busses. - I use 2x Drum bus, 2x Guitar bus, 2x Keys and other instruments bus and 2x vocal bus (so 4 stereo busses) - These busses ALL have an insert with compressors AND a analog direct out, which is connected to the Motu 24 I/O input for AD conversion into a record-enabled set of 2 tracks for recording the mix into that bus. - The master L&R outputs also go to the Motu 24 I/O input for AD conversion into a separate record-enabled pair of tracks in the DAW. - The 4 "parallel compression" channels of the Mackie (kick and snare drum) AND the 8 effect channels ALL have their own direct out to the Motu 24 I/O input to the DAW record-enabled tracks. - This is called STEM recording, where the "STEM" is a recording of audio from the Analog mixer. - These STEMS are input for the Mastering process, which is on a separate Mac Mini on the same Ethernet switch with the SSD Raid disk set of the MAcPro (holding all recordings and STEMS) mapped. So I read the STEMS from the MacPro with a version of Studio One and Mastering software to create the final master file with a stereo recording of the song I mixed. I am currently working on the patch pannel, between the Motu 24 I/O, the Mackie console and 19" units like compressors, effects, noise gates and the likes. Well, that's about it in a nut shell ( :oops: ) Added 2 foto's, one of the Motu I/O's and one of the Studio One DAW mixer, in the middle you see the sends (piano I believe). Questions always welcome. kind regards, Frans

I used to do a hybrid mixing approach similar to what you do, but with clients schedules, sometimes I have to record or mix 3 different projects a day. Even using something as simple as a hardware compressor, it was an absolute pain in my ass having to manually recall settings. It made me look amateur as I'd be rushing to dial in settings with the client sitting there waiting. I couldn't justify charging them money to document or recall settings, and it was super stressful when a cable or connection got sketchy and I had to troubleshoot it mid session. I'm slowly going more and more "digital" these days. I've picked up some Slate ML1 and ML2 microphones for this exact reason. I'm tempted to sell all my colored preamps and just buy a few 8 channel Millennia preamps and use preamp emulations (like the Slate VCC). As much as I love gear, the ease of use, no real maintenance/repairs, and the fact that even seasoned pros can't hear the difference with the advancements in coding has me wanting to go smaller and more simple. It almost saddens me to see $60,000 worth of microphones sitting in their boxes as my Slate ML1 is permanently set up for vocal recording :? Greg

Absolutely. Mixing in the box is a zillion times more efficiënt and sound quality has improved to a level that hardware is difficult to keep up with. Hybrid is my hobby , that’s the only reason why for me to have this setupinstructies. No one is my cliënt but myself. I do Some live mixing and recording all digital. Being 65 Years slow moves me away from that. If it was my way of earning money i’d be mixing in the box only. I have the waves SSL plug-in so sound wise it’s no issue Nice to here your view

It's all about having fun dude! And since you already own all of the gear and don't have to be jumping between sessions, then you're doing it right! :thu: Greg

Hi all, Just a short update. I added my 19 inch rack furniture (tilted 45 degrees) in my temporary studio. See picture. AND, changed the colours of the EQ section of my Mackie to the SSL version. WHY??? because I can :lol: Working with it, it's a bit easier to find the knobs because I don't sit every day behind the desk. kind regards, Frans

Hi All, We Made a big decision and will move house. Now that of course does not mean the end of the studio, it will move with me. As I currently use a room upstairs in our house, it has a almost triangulair shape. Allthough withouten ANY acoustics treatment it sounds not to bad. No low end build up naar the side Walls as there none. :D QUESTION Is such a shape of the room kind of ideal ?? If so, our new house should have a room big enough with such a shape. I only need to sit in it and have enough space to place my speakers. ANY input very welcome.