SSL Mix Room in Frankfurt / Germany

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mozartandfriends
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 9:42 am
Location: Frankfurt / Germany
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SSL Mix Room in Frankfurt / Germany

Post by mozartandfriends »

Hi Guys,

I've been following this forum for almost two years now and spent countless hours checking out the impressive projects that were developed using help of the board members.

It's about time to present the project I'm currently planning with my friends and partners and I'd be delighted to receive a lot of input and feedback from your guys.

A few words about myself: my name is Marc and I'm running a production company called Mozart & Friends based in Germany. We're about 10 people, mostly songwriters and producers. We work with both major and indie-labels in all big territories. If you want to know more, check out the link in my signature.

We have rented a room in the ground floor of a small building. In the basement of the building right underneath us is a club (discothek) that is making noise from Wed to Sat starting around 10pm (The noise is actually no concern to us. We can hear the club when it's open, but we usually stop working before 10pm. The noise from the club still allows mixing.).
Above us there an office where people work during normal work hours.

The room is roughly 11,50 m x 5,90 m. The ceiling height is 3,10 m. The room has one door leading to the outside, and another one to the entrance hallway of the house. There are two windows on one of the long sides. The floor is solid concrete.

We're planning to build a room in a room with a size of 7,00 m x 5,70 m (average) and a ceiling height of 2,70 m. The room will have two doors and one window to the outside.

The room will be used for mixing and producing as well as vocal recording (no booth required). We're listening at loud levels about 20% of the time, going right to the edge of what our main speakers can deliver.

The center piece of the mix room will be a Solid State Logic SL4048G Inline Mixing Console. We have a small collection of nice outboard incl. AMS RMX16, DMX15-80, Retro Sta-Level and Summit TLA-100A Tube Compressors, some UREI Comps, Lexicon 224 Reverb as well as some Keyboard Stuff including Moog Voyager, Roland Jupiter 6, Roland Fantom X8, Roland V-Synth.

The DAW is a Mac Pro 8-Core running Logic Pro 9. Converters are SSL Alpha-Link (48 Channels AD/DA + 24 Channels AES Digital + 24 Channel ADAT Optical) driven by the SSL MADI Xtreme 128 PCIe Card. We have another pair of A/D in the Neve 1073 Mic Pre that we use to record vocals, mostly with a Sony C800G.

Main monitors are a pair of B&W 802D Diamond Speakers and Dynaudio BM6A / Yamaha HS-50 as Nearfields. We have at this point NOT planned to do Surround Work, although our Console is Capable of LCRS panning and 5.1 / 7.1.

The studio will only be used by our inhouse team of producers and writers and there are no plans to make it available to rent for outside people.

Before we got the room, it was used as a private storage room over many years and we had to obtain a build permission from the city in order to start the project and use the room for a business.

The build permission has recently been granted, we had to hire an architect to fill out all the forms and to draw up a rough plan of what we're going to do.

This is pretty much a DIY-project, me and some of my team of people will do most of the building work. We're trying to not go beyond a budget of 10.000 € for the room in a room construction.

We have a pretty good idea of what we want to do, but we're still at the beginning of working out how to do it exactly.

Next up we'll post some drawings that we've submitted to obtain the building permissions and of course some photos of the room in its current state.

Comments and feedback more than welcome! :D

UPDATE November 18th, 2010:
We have an announcement to make: we're proud to be working with Studio Designer & Consultant John H. Brandt for our project.


Check out his website:
http://jhbrandt.net/
Last edited by mozartandfriends on Thu Nov 18, 2010 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mozartandfriends
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 9:42 am
Location: Frankfurt / Germany
Contact:

Pictures of room in it's current state

Post by mozartandfriends »

Here are some current pictures of the room. For those who are interested, we'll post some pics of the console later on.
room_before1.jpg
room_before2.jpg
room_before3.jpg
mozartandfriends
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 9:42 am
Location: Frankfurt / Germany
Contact:

Drawings done by an architect

Post by mozartandfriends »

These drawings were done by an architect - they were required in order to obtain the build permission.
ground_floor.jpg
side_view_A.jpg
side_view_B.jpg
mozartandfriends
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 9:42 am
Location: Frankfurt / Germany
Contact:

SSL G-Series Console

Post by mozartandfriends »

Some pictures of the SSL G-Series console. For those who are interested, here's a youtube-clip of us buying the console and picking it up in Paris with a truck:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty_SPobPmMg

Before we bought it, the desk was recapped by the former head of Tech at SSL France, Gil Martini.
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Soundman2020
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Re: SSL Mix Room in Frankfurt / Germany

Post by Soundman2020 »

Hi Marc, and welcome!!

I'm looking at your equipment list, and turning various shades of green, while also drooling!!!! If you ever feel like throwing some of that in the trash, please let me know so I can send you my trash bin to catch it....

Anyway, regarding your room: I don't speak German too well, so its hard for me to follow the plans, but I did notice that the room is not symmetrical, and from the photos you seem to have the console right in the middle of the room, which is of course the worst possible place.

So the first question is: Can the plans done by the architect be changed, or are those now written in stone due to the building permit? In other words, are you allowed to change the positions and angles of walls? You do need to get the room symmetrical of you hope to do good mixes in there that translate well. That implies changing the positions of some of the inner-leaf walls.

Second question: Can you move the console? It needs to be at the best position acoustically, which is NOT the middle of the room. So if the console cannot be moved, then the inner-leaf walls will have to be built around it in the right places. Actually, even the thought of having an SSL in the middle of a construction site sets my teeth on edge, so I'm hoping that you can get the thing out of the room while you build, then put it back in the right spot when the build is finished.

Regarding your floor: from what you say, it does not seem to be a problem, so you might want to just leave it as it is: bare concrete. Or maybe stain it for aesthetics. Or perhaps put some laminate flooring on it. But at least you don't need to float it!
Above us there an office where people work during normal work hours. ... The ceiling is a wooden construction, not very strong. You can clearly hear people walking upstairs.
Ouch! that sounds like your weak link. You say you will be using the room mostly during the day, which is when the guys in the office do NOT want to hear you, and you certainly don't want to hear them. Can you provide more details of how that floor above you is built? Photos would be good.

Just clarifying: this is going to be a single-room build, correct? No separate CR and LR? No tracking of drums, bass, electric guitars, etc? Joist voice?


- Stuart -
mozartandfriends
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 9:42 am
Location: Frankfurt / Germany
Contact:

Re: SSL Mix Room in Frankfurt / Germany

Post by mozartandfriends »

Hi Stuart,

thanks for the warm welcome and your comments!

Regarding your questions:
1. I don't think I'll trash our equipment anyway soon! But I'll keep you in mind... :D

2. I have added the planned room layout below. The construction doesn't fill the entire room. Imagine a wall about a meter behind the console. When that wall is in the room the mix position is exactly at 38% of the room length.
The walls in the drawing of the architect contain walls that are not yet there. We are allowed to change the layout of the walls. Given the size of the console, it will be interesting what options there are.
10_11_13_ssl_room_layout.jpg
3. The console can be moved. We mounted wheels underneath it. No joke. Not sure if we're allowed to drive the German Autobahn with it though. :yahoo:
10_11_13_StudioLayout_console_speakers2.jpg
4. Floor: yes, we think there's no point to float the floor. We'll put some nice laminate flooring on it.

5. The rooms above are used by me and my people. It will be a writing room once the mix room is finished. Isolation is important.

6. Yes, it's a single-room build, no tracking, just mixing and vocal-recording.
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