John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hello all,

i'll be as succinct as possible. I will be asking about wiring, as it relates to XLR's, 1/4" etc between the rooms of my DIY home studio. Illustration at bottom of post.

Studio details:
I live in Western Canada, my studio is above my garage, and currently it is rough framed. It has two rooms. First, a control room which is ±13 X 16 with a 6:12 pitch roof on 8' walls. The second room is ±8 1/2 X 16, same ceiling. Between the rooms are two sets of double doors, with windows for communication.

Uses:
Most of the time it will just be me. Guitars wailing, vocal chords straining, and no one bothering me...

1-When recording, I'll likely have the double doors open, to utilise as much of the volume as possible.(16' X 23' total)

2- For mixing, I'll close the doors, which turns the CR into a perfectly symmetrical shape.

3-I may be recording others in the future, so with the doors closed, I'll get some measure of isolation between them if I want to record separate things simultaneously(I have no illusions of getting high STC's. It's just to get a reasonable amount of isolation.) I would also want to be able put my guitar amp in the second room, close the doors, and be able to record and just hear the sound the mics are giving me.


Wiring:
-All cables will run under the floor joists, then back up through holes in the floor behind the walls, to minimise sound transmission.
-The CR plate will be in front of the desk, and the plate in the other room will be in a side wall, which will locate them about 4-5 feet apart.
-Because I have free access under the floor, it will be easy for me to add more wires later.
-I'll make sure there is extra room in the wall plates for expansion.

Connections
8 female XLRs in the CR wall plate. 8 male XLR's in the second room wall plate.

4-TRS 1/4", for headphones, etc. again, using shielded instrument wire. I can then plug my guitar cables into them and they will behave like a regular 2 pin 1/4" jacks.

(I would then buy some male-female XLR's adaptors, and TRS-XLR adapters to increase capacity and flexibility.)

2-speaker connections, likely Speakon, with 14 guage wire between.

1-keyboard extension and 1 USB extension. Both are cheap. This, if for some reason I want to be in the second room, with the doors closed, and control my record functions on the computer, in the control room, via the viewing windows.

2 XLR's from the front of the control room to the back of it, for future surround sound applications.

Questions:
Does this seem like a sensible plan?

Is there anything major, or obvious that I've missed?

Thank you for your time.

Keith

Does this seem like a sensible plan?
Is there anything major, or obvious that I've missed?

Hi Keith. My comments are not on wiring, but rather about your design.

1) I'm curious as to how you plan to seal those double-swing doors? I didn't know it was possible to do that successfully. Your plan shows two sets of back-to-back double doors, hinged on the outer edges and meeting in the middle, between yoru control room and live room. How do you get a good tight acoustic seal on swinging double-doors?

2) At the front of your control room, the inner leaf appears to be directly coupled to the outer leaf. Why is that?

3) At the right rear of your control room, there is a door that goes nowhere: it opens into the wall of your live room. Why do you have a door that goes nowhere?

4) The right wall of your live room is only one leaf, and it is directly coupled to the inner leaf of the rear wall. That makes no sense at all.

5) You have no space at all for bass trapping in the rear corners of the control room. Why is that? A control room with no bass trapping doesn't make much sense.

6) the inner leaf and outer leaf of the wal dividing your CR from your LR, are directly coupled to the common front wall of both. It is pointless to have two walls if you have them coupled.

All of the above are major, obvious, and do not seem sensible.


- Stuart -

I think the best thing is for me to post this back to my thread at the proper forum, so we don't start a long and winding bunny trail here.

I'll quote and answer here:

http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =1&t=11480