Len Morgan's Studio Build Diary

len-morgan wrote:

The reason I think about this is because I'm deaf in one ear. Am I missing hearing something because I don't hear in stereo? If that is the case, will I be able properly mix anything when I'm done? Once I got my speakers up, was able to "hear" stereo to a certain extent if I closed my eyes so perhaps all is not lost.

Sorry to be so late responding to this, I've just been catching up on the thread! Your situation reminded me of David Torn - from Wikipedia: "In 1992 he was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, a life-threatening form of brain tumor. The surgery that followed left him deaf in the right ear, but didn't rob him of the ability to play and compose (arguably, very excellent) music. Torn even mixes his own albums himself, although according to him this requires sitting sideways to the studio speakers and "visualising the stereo aspects of sound" in his head rather than experimenting with them by ear." Also, below is a link to a David Torn interview where he discusses some of the unique pros and cons of only hearing in one ear. For example, he is hyper-sensitive to phase cancellation, standing waves, etc. www.innerviews.org/inner/torn2.html

that e-mail option depends on your email client. not on XP itself. Yer prolly using outlook express which indeed comes standard with XP. However, when using the OFFICE software from microsoft you'll also have a nifty prog called "photo editor" or "picture manager"(depends on office version), it's under TOOLs. That is, if you selected it on install.... Although I'm a photoshop abuser I like the photo editor a lot, it's quick simple and does the job. Further more, there should be an auto resizer in the upload script here.. so who's the admin on this board? oh, and Len. Didn't u get a software CD with that camera with some photo edit software onnit?

It's been too long since an update so I'm going to try and catch up a little. The pictures might be out of chronological order but grouped by subject. We'll start with the slotted wall in the main room. I have one piece of trim to add between the two halves of the wall (waiting on the urathane to dry, but it's pretty much done. len

Ok, now for my "corner treatment" in the drum room. This all came together quickly. This is one of the two 90 degree corners in the room and it's major purpose is to have a place to mount the connectors for mics, headphones, etc. I figured while I was there, I'd make a corner trap out of it too. Sorry, the pictures are in reverse order. len

Looks terrific, Len! My, you've been busy! 8) So, on that slot wall -- I can see variations in the widths (actually, heights) of the planks... But did you vary the widths of the slots too? It doesn't look like you did... :roll: --Keith :mrgreen:

Yes, they are varied but only in the range of 1/8" to 3/8" (only 1 1/8" gap on the bottom though). I used the Helmoltz calculator here and it's tuned to be between about 63 Hz and 100 Hz. It's hard to see because the distance I'm taking the pictures from is about 18 feet. To give you an idea, that wall itself is a little longer than 12 feet side to side. len

Right on!! :twisted:

One thing you have to remember (or take note of if your memory's as bad as mine!), is that wall is at an angle. There's almost 3' of space on the left hand side and it goes down to zero in the corners. Since the formula takes the depth of the area behind the slats into account, I divided up the space into three cavities (all calked from each other) so even though I only had three gaps, it's really 9 gaps because of the different depths. len

Hey Len...LOOKIN' GOOD! Could you post a schematic of your construction? That would be interesting and a big help to those of us building a slot resonator! Also, what angle is that wall? Keep up the great work!

Thanks for the compliments - as you can see, just because I haven't been updating here, I have been busy. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "schematic." Being an EE for a long time, I think electronics when I hear schematic. Do you mean the plans for the studio or just the wall? The studio layout is on the first page of this thread (about the middle of the page). This wall is along the East wall of the "big room" (the one in the middle that goes across the entire width of the building. Knightfly suggested this wall to avoid East/West bounce and at his suggestion, it runs from the right hand edge of the window down to the corner at the bottom of the room. I have no idea what the angle is because I was building it (as an afterthought) to the "landmarks" that were in the room. The boards are made up of plain ol' 1x4s, 1x6s, and 1x8s that were stained and then 2 coats of polyurethane to get the shine. The frame construction can be seen about 2/3rds of the way down on page 9 (the purple wall). It's just a 2x4 frame on 24" OC (more or less :-) ), then stuffed with mineral wool between the studs (but empty behind that). One thing that can't be seen from the pictures there is that I put up two "walls" of plywood from the studs to the back wall and then these were calked all the way around to make three separate (and different sized) cavities. That let me use the same three distances between slats and the same three slat sizes and still get a wide range of frequencies. Of course, dumb luck counts for a lot in my case too. I can't say whether it's better or worse than it was before but there is a noticable difference in the sound if you stand in the middle of the room and talk at the wall and with the wall at your back. And as Knightfly told me, it can't really hurt. The fact that I have some variability in the room just depending on which way you face (and how close/far away you are) makes the room more versatile. That means that I have a lot more recording possibilities in the same space which is always good. Even the room came out sounding exactly the same as before, the looks of the wood add a "wow factor" that can't be discounted when it comes to showing the place to prospective clients. I mean if it LOOKS good, it HAS TO sound good, right? :-) len

And now for the glass installation!!! It was done last Friday and took about an hour. I had the glass vendor do the install. I learned as a child that if I bought one of those little 25 cent rubber band power balsa wood airplanes at 7-11 and split the wing while I was trying to slide it into the plastic holder, well I'd just wasted a quarter. If I had my dad put it together and HE broke it, he had to buy me another one. :-) Same thing applies with glass. At $200/sheet (and I needed 4 of them), I decided to leave it to the professional. The neat thing was this local guy (I live out in the sticks in a very small town), had installed glass in recording studios before and knew about double sealing, and the gap between the panes, etc. And his step-son lives in Austin, TX and develops new bands! All the sudden that $60 installation fee doesn't look so bad. Ok, enough talk. Here's the pics

You might notice that the panes are NOT angled. This gives me the maximum gap possible. It's a little over 8" on the drum room side and over 12" on the control room side. Ok, a couple more pictures:

Looks awesome, Len! And spider-proof, too, no doubt! 8) --Keith :mrgreen:

Looks great Len! So, where did you end up going for fabric? I like the blue one a lot.

Stick, I got it at Hancock's Fabric but you could probably get it at Fabric warehouse or any similar big fabric store. I was on the close out table and I thing was $1.50/yard. I've also got some nice browns that will be going on the back wall of the control room and some orange for the big room. HOWEVER, it is sprayed with flame retardant that I bought on Knightfly's recomendation. It wasn't all that expensive (about $7/quart as I recall). I would suggest that if you go this way, to spray the cloth before mounting (with the mineral wool behind it) because and let it dry. With the MW behind it, it takes a lot longer to dry. len

Oh, so it's no fancy-dancy especially acoustically transparent stuff? Not Guilfords of Maine? Just your basic fabric from the fabric store? Cool.

I think it's as "acoustically transparent" as any GoM stuff is. I can see light through it and can breath through it (and it's not shiny). What GoM gives you is the flame retardant property which I just added myself (and saved a BUNCH of $ in the process). I bought a whole bunch of fabric (total came to about $128) and if I'd bought the same quantity at GoM, it would have been over a $1,000! One "advantage" we have is that we tend to need smaller pieces so we can get away with the "remnents" and tail ends left over from home-made prom dresses and throw pillows. Don't forget the flame retardant though. len

Great. Thanks.

Yea...Len's been busy all-right! You can tell...moving from one piece of work to the next...good deal Hey Len, what company was it that made the flame retardent solution? Does it say how long it's suppose to last? Any materials they DON'T recommend you use it on? Sooner or later we all will most likely have to deal with "material". Len, you may have come across something that is an excellent alternative for buying the more expensive stuff.

Here two links that I found provided by Knightfly: http://www.natfire.com/ http://www.stifirestop.com/ I used the first one. The lifetime they quote is 5 years and then it has to be resprayed. I have not tried this yet (in the sense that I tried to burn both treated and untreated material but I will and will report back. As to the types of material it can be used on, they have several different types available depending on the material you are using. Their web site has all the details, and you can talk to a real person if your question isn't answered there. HTH len

Ok, a minor update.... I've started covering the "tables" I've built under the windows in the main room. I decided to face the plywood with cedar planking (14 sq ft / $18.00 @ Lowes). A couple of coats of poly urethane shined them right up. This stuff is tongue and groove and by mating two pieces together, they can just make it around the 22.5 degree corners. In case you're wondering, I put the horizontal strip around the top so that the vertical pieces could be 32 inches long. That lets me get 3 piecies out of each plank instead of two and a big piece of scrap. The bottom will have either another horizontal strip of wood or cove base molding. Haven't decided yet. The cove base will be around the rest of the room and is much stronger (if kicked) than the planking would be. Ok, here's a few pictures...

Way cool! 8) Great job! --Keith :mrgreen:

Thanks, Keith. I am really happy with the way the tops of the tables are turning out. It's plain ol' MDF with 2 coats of primer, three coats of latex paint, and 4 coats of poly-urethane. I hope it will survive cold glasses being set on it and (minor) drops of lightweight equipment (headphones, DI boxes, and such. I thought about having glass tops made up to fit over them but I've spent enough on glass for now. len

How about plexiglass? It would be a shame for that work to get scuffed.

I've been thinking of that myself or possibly using Lexan. Don't know where I'd find it around here though. At least in that size (It's about 5' wide and 2 1/2 feet deep. len