Home Studio Setup/ergonomics
Todd Simpson
Sep 11 2012, 06:20 PM
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Found a spiff article on setting up your home studio for good "ergonomics". Just making it easy to reach everything basically.

http://www.guitarworld.com/session-guitar-...imum-efficiency

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vonhotch
Sep 12 2012, 03:40 AM
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I read this article this morning, I like his articles, I like his take on session guitar playing. Also wish I had the gear in that room wink.gif

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Saoirse O'Shea
Sep 12 2012, 11:19 AM
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A couple of things I'd add:

Hardware Console/Mixer -
when you set up a project put the focal track on the centre channel and place the others around it, with the less important tracks at the extermes.

A lot of people start from Channel 1 and just add as they go along. On a small desk that doesn't really matter but on larger desks you'll end up having to reach across the desk to do work. On a big 64/128 channel desk you'll end up moving about an awful lot. If you put the focal track in the centre etc it is right in front of you, in your eye line and right at had. You'll keep more of an eye on it and have to move about a lot less.

Don't be afraid to write channel names etc on the strip and mark fader ranges - if you use a felt tip you can always rub the marks off later. If ou really don't want to write on the strip then put down tape and write/mark that. New tape for each new session/project.

Patch bays and switching routers-
if you use hardware it is often easier to connect via a patchbay or router. A patchbay lets you patch hardware via the front panel in any way you want. A switching router is similar but the patching is done via press buttons etc. These are really helpful if you change the hardware chain around a bit.

Cable looms -
Any studio after a while can end up looking like a spaghetti factory with cables everywhere. Cable looms help keep things tidy and if the cables are colour coded you can tell at a glance what cable is patched to what.

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Gabriel Leopardi
Sep 12 2012, 02:46 PM
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This is a VERY important topic and the article covers it very well. These are the type of things that make a professional person more productive. Thanks for sharing this one. I will check his other articles as well. smile.gif

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Todd Simpson
Sep 12 2012, 11:50 PM
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QUOTE (Gabriel Leopardi @ Sep 12 2012, 09:46 AM) *
This is a VERY important topic and the article covers it very well. These are the type of things that make a professional person more productive. Thanks for sharing this one. I will check his other articles as well. smile.gif


This stuff really is important. I"ve been in home studios where the poor guy has to reach with his fingertips to switch audio monitors or lean all the way over the console to reach a rack piece. It really can help to have it mostly within reach.

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Gabriel Leopardi
Sep 13 2012, 12:56 AM
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QUOTE (Todd Simpson @ Sep 12 2012, 07:50 PM) *
This stuff really is important. I"ve been in home studios where the poor guy has to reach with his fingertips to switch audio monitors or lean all the way over the console to reach a rack piece. It really can help to have it mostly within reach.


hahaha definitely!! but now I remember when I was very young and I didn't have my own money, all the things were very cheap (on board sound card, pc mic, sound-blasters) and most of them had issues so recording was soo difficult and the results weren't so good, but nothing stopped me to keep on composing on my old cakewalk 9! biggrin.gif

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Todd Simpson
Sep 13 2012, 01:30 AM
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QUOTE (Gabriel Leopardi @ Sep 12 2012, 07:56 PM) *
hahaha definitely!! but now I remember when I was very young and I didn't have my own money, all the things were very cheap (on board sound card, pc mic, sound-blasters) and most of them had issues so recording was soo difficult and the results weren't so good, but nothing stopped me to keep on composing on my old cakewalk 9! biggrin.gif


Now your talking! smile.gif I remember that stuff. Windows PC, internal soundblaster, mini sized midi keyboard. Only little mini jacks in and out. We were earning the heck out of it!

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Saoirse O'Shea
Sep 13 2012, 09:07 AM
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QUOTE (Gabriel Leopardi @ Sep 13 2012, 12:56 AM) *
hahaha definitely!! but now I remember when I was very young and I didn't have my own money, all the things were very cheap (on board sound card, pc mic, sound-blasters) and most of them had issues so recording was soo difficult and the results weren't so good, but nothing stopped me to keep on composing on my old cakewalk 9! biggrin.gif


Well I'm so old that the very first home recording we did was on two a Revox B reel-2-reel tape. We recorded to one and bounced to the 2nd and had to splice tape with a razor. After a while we got hold of a little 4 track portastudio cassette tape, which kind of made some things easier and some things harder. My band mate saved his wages for 2 months to get portastudio. I can't remember hiw much it cost but I guess nowadays it would be the equivalent of about £1000.

First proper studio I worked in the main mixing desk/console was an old analogue split line. It was only 16 channels but was huge. It also used to get quite hot so in the Summer we would have the door open. That went to reel-2-reels again. It was quite a few years before daws and digital came in, first we had (different studio) were Cubase VST (i.e. before Cubase SX'SL and Before Cubase 4/5/6 etc) and we mastered on Syntrillium Cool Edit. We were still mixing down to reel-2-reel but eventually got an Otari Radar.

Hooking the analogue desk to a digital ADC was a real pain, not helped by the very slow 8 bit PC (I think it was pre 386) running on dos and some early version of Windows (can't remember which but it was pre Win 95). The pc had something like 32 meg (not gig) of ram and a couple of hard drives @250meg.

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Todd Simpson
Sep 13 2012, 10:03 PM
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Now youre really getting hardcore oldskool! smile.gif Talk about really earning it!

QUOTE (tonymiro @ Sep 13 2012, 04:07 AM) *
Well I'm so old that the very first home recording we did was on two a Revox B reel-2-reel tape. We recorded to one and bounced to the 2nd and had to splice tape with a razor. After a while we got hold of a little 4 track portastudio cassette tape, which kind of made some things easier and some things harder. My band mate saved his wages for 2 months to get portastudio. I can't remember hiw much it cost but I guess nowadays it would be the equivalent of about £1000.

First proper studio I worked in the main mixing desk/console was an old analogue split line. It was only 16 channels but was huge. It also used to get quite hot so in the Summer we would have the door open. That went to reel-2-reels again. It was quite a few years before daws and digital came in, first we had (different studio) were Cubase VST (i.e. before Cubase SX'SL and Before Cubase 4/5/6 etc) and we mastered on Syntrillium Cool Edit. We were still mixing down to reel-2-reel but eventually got an Otari Radar.

Hooking the analogue desk to a digital ADC was a real pain, not helped by the very slow 8 bit PC (I think it was pre 386) running on dos and some early version of Windows (can't remember which but it was pre Win 95). The pc had something like 32 meg (not gig) of ram and a couple of hard drives @250meg.

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Blister
Sep 14 2012, 03:45 AM
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Great article. Definitely some things I wouldn't have thought of. He seems a tad eccentric, although, I suppose many "Artists" are. The doll kinda creeps me out. Even so, it seems like a good point to have some non-musical items unique to your own personality that might help to motivate & inspire ideas. I think he might have a thing or two to learn from your setup. Todd, do you have a fireplace in your studio? unsure.gif

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vonhotch
Sep 14 2012, 02:29 PM
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I see he's got acoustic panels on the walls. How much of a priority should those be for someone doing home/hobby recording? I saw this article that showed how to make a different style that looked pretty cheap and easy. http://acousticsfreq.com/blog/?p=62

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Saoirse O'Shea
Sep 14 2012, 02:37 PM
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QUOTE (vonhotch @ Sep 14 2012, 02:29 PM) *
I see he's got acoustic panels on the walls. How much of a priority should those be for someone doing home/hobby recording? ...


Very important but the type of treatment depends on what you are doing, the size, shape of the room and what materials the room is made from. Sadly most people do not pay enough attention to getting their rooms acoustically treated and their mixes suffer because of it. Building your own is actually pretty easy and much, much cheaper then buying premade acoustic treatment. We built our own custom bass traps here.

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vonhotch
Sep 14 2012, 11:46 PM
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QUOTE (tonymiro @ Sep 14 2012, 01:37 PM) *
Very important but the type of treatment depends on what you are doing, the size, shape of the room and what materials the room is made from. Sadly most people do not pay enough attention to getting their rooms acoustically treated and their mixes suffer because of it. Building your own is actually pretty easy and much, much cheaper then buying premade acoustic treatment. We built our own custom bass traps here.

I'll keep this in mind when I get around to finally setting up a recording space. Can I ask how you did your bass traps?

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Saoirse O'Shea
Sep 15 2012, 10:29 AM
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QUOTE (vonhotch @ Sep 14 2012, 11:46 PM) *
I'll keep this in mind when I get around to finally setting up a recording space. Can I ask how you did your bass traps?


Sure - from memory so some of the details might escape me:

Our bass traps are larger than normal - they are made from sheets of rock wool set with in a wooden frame. The frame is approx 2.5x1.5 meters and 25 cm deep and we made it ourselves. As the frames are quite large they have wooden struts at 1/3rd and 2/3rds the length and are also braced across the corners. I'm rubbish at woodwork so I got a friend to make the frames.

The rockwool came as a roll and we cut it to fit the frame. You need to take care when you handle rock wool - always wear gloves and eyeprotection as the glass fibre can give you a nasty rash. The make was Owens Corning, I can't remember the actual product number but the denisty was greater than 80 kg.m3.

The rockwool is in multiple layers in the frame to fill it. It's held in place with a canvas sheet front and back and we also plut a blue cotton sheet over the front just to make them look a little better.

Our traps don't stand flat to the wall but are at an angle across the corner and so there is about 1 meters behind the centre of each trap and the corner. Our traps are floor standing so we didn't have to work out how to wall mount. Our monitors stand at an angle to the traps and room corner and are about 1 meter out from the traps. This works for our studio but it's dependent on room build and dimensions and use (a mastering studio doesn't have the same acoutic requirements as recording or mixing). We had advice from an acoustic engineer on build and treatment.

Our studio is quite big so we have the space to angle the traps and keep the monitors away from the wall and this might not be practical for you. Our monitors are mid/far field mastering monitors but most home/project studios use near field: mid/far field are designed to be placed some distance away from a wall but near field need to be close to a wall.
You need to take this in to account as well.

One thing you see in a lot of home/project studios is acoustic foam tiles and wedges. Tiles work ok as reflectors/diffusers but the wedges aren't much use as bass traps as they physically are not deep enough to absorb the low end.

If you need any more help/advice just ask. Also if you're interested I've posted various threads on mixing, mastering, monitor placement and so on. Todd has also posted threads on home studios and mixing. If you have the time try and take a look at some of these.

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We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes:
Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo.
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vonhotch
Sep 15 2012, 01:37 PM
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QUOTE (tonymiro @ Sep 15 2012, 09:29 AM) *
Sure - from memory so some of the details might escape me:

Our bass traps are larger than normal - they are made from sheets of rock wool set with in a wooden frame. The frame is approx 2.5x1.5 meters and 25 cm deep and we made it ourselves. As the frames are quite large they have wooden struts at 1/3rd and 2/3rds the length and are also braced across the corners. I'm rubbish at woodwork so I got a friend to make the frames.

The rockwool came as a roll and we cut it to fit the frame. You need to take care when you handle rock wool - always wear gloves and eyeprotection as the glass fibre can give you a nasty rash. The make was Owens Corning, I can't remember the actual product number but the denisty was greater than 80 kg.m3.

The rockwool is in multiple layers in the frame to fill it. It's held in place with a canvas sheet front and back and we also plut a blue cotton sheet over the front just to make them look a little better.

Our traps don't stand flat to the wall but are at an angle across the corner and so there is about 1 meters behind the centre of each trap and the corner. Our traps are floor standing so we didn't have to work out how to wall mount. Our monitors stand at an angle to the traps and room corner and are about 1 meter out from the traps. This works for our studio but it's dependent on room build and dimensions and use (a mastering studio doesn't have the same acoutic requirements as recording or mixing). We had advice from an acoustic engineer on build and treatment.

Our studio is quite big so we have the space to angle the traps and keep the monitors away from the wall and this might not be practical for you. Our monitors are mid/far field mastering monitors but most home/project studios use near field: mid/far field are designed to be placed some distance away from a wall but near field need to be close to a wall.
You need to take this in to account as well.

One thing you see in a lot of home/project studios is acoustic foam tiles and wedges. Tiles work ok as reflectors/diffusers but the wedges aren't much use as bass traps as they physically are not deep enough to absorb the low end.

If you need any more help/advice just ask. Also if you're interested I've posted various threads on mixing, mastering, monitor placement and so on. Todd has also posted threads on home studios and mixing. If you have the time try and take a look at some of these.


Thanks for taking the time to write all that up. This is great. All the studio/mixing stuff is really interesting. I'm trying to soak up all the info I can. I will definately check out the other articles! smile.gif

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Todd Simpson
Sep 16 2012, 06:52 PM
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QUOTE (vonhotch @ Sep 15 2012, 08:37 AM) *
Thanks for taking the time to write all that up. This is great. All the studio/mixing stuff is really interesting. I'm trying to soak up all the info I can. I will definately check out the other articles! smile.gif


Some KILLER info from Mr. Miro there! I hope that goes in the WIki! Proper accoustic treatment can really have serious impact on your mixes!

Here are some links to home recording threads in my forum btw.


Home Studio Gear
https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...showtopic=35615


Home Studio Tips n Tricks
https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...showtopic=35527

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vonhotch
Sep 16 2012, 09:32 PM
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QUOTE (Todd Simpson @ Sep 16 2012, 05:52 PM) *
Some KILLER info from Mr. Miro there! I hope that goes in the WIki! Proper accoustic treatment can really have serious impact on your mixes!

Here are some links to home recording threads in my forum btw.


Home Studio Gear
https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...showtopic=35615


Home Studio Tips n Tricks
https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...showtopic=35527


Sweet. I'll check those out thanks for the links!

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Todd Simpson
Sep 18 2012, 11:46 PM
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QUOTE (Blister @ Sep 13 2012, 10:45 PM) *
Great article. Definitely some things I wouldn't have thought of. He seems a tad eccentric, although, I suppose many "Artists" are. The doll kinda creeps me out. Even so, it seems like a good point to have some non-musical items unique to your own personality that might help to motivate & inspire ideas. I think he might have a thing or two to learn from your setup. Todd, do you have a fireplace in your studio? unsure.gif


No fireplace yet, but not a bad idea for winter recording smile.gif And maybe a nice vending machine!

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