Building the studio | all-the-things-i-do

We first started recording with just a few items in a small bedroom. We began to get more equipment and realized we would need to build a studio

The first step was to seal the basement and fix all the creeks in the ceiling. We built special staggered stud walls that are good for sound proofing. It was double wrapped with insulation. The wall between the control room and the studio is actually two walls. Both designs are to keep vibration from passing through the walls. All wires and cables passed along the brick wall so the double wall remained intact.

Communication (signal) wires and power wires had to be kept at least a foot apart.

Drywall went up in two layers for even more soundproofing. We really didn’t know how a door was supposed to be installed. Normally, a space would be left in the wall and the door and it’s frame would be inserted and shimmed into place. We just attached the door frame to the wall and then continued building the wall on the other side. The door went in so well and is more sound proof than it would have been had we done it the “right way”

Florescent lighting is not allowed in a studio because it produces a 60 cycle hum that will interfere with the recording equipment

Here, we are looking through the double pain window from the control room to the studio. One pane of glass is thicker than the other so that one will not resonate the other one.

Direct lines into the system and monitor headphones

The mixing board and other racks of equipment in the control room. The studio is a hybrid mix of analog and digital audio equipment

The sound panels are cloth stretched on frames with corrugated foam rubber inside to absorb sound. I first painted on the canvas with some spray paint, and then finished with brushwork. The colors for the logo and pictures were chosen because when I was designing a logo for us, I only had a pink, blue and black marker. We decided to keep the color scheme.

Here is the logo painted on the wall between the studio and condroll room doors.

Later, we upgraded again to an automated mixing board

Here is one of the many microphones we had for varied uses from singing to drum and acoustic instrument amplification