Room Divider: part 2
ok, still struggling to get my home studio into shape. However, after much thought I decided that the best way to use this room divideer was to remove the legs and mount it to the wall. TO my suprise this was the right idea. It removed sound reflections from my amps and seems to have improved my guitar sounds a lot. SO that worked out well, though I had to use a drill to get this done and it was tricky as I was only one person to mount the 5x6 room divider to the wall. IT nicely covered a window (at least for the winter) and now that it is up, I hardly see it Its not in the way and it really makes a difference. Now, I also had to move a seris of small shelves which held soem cd masters and software discs. SO that was easy enough to do, so I mounted to a different wall in the studio room. Thsi was not simole at all to try to get it to be level for one and I had to use quite a few supporting screws. But it worked well!!! So for $20.00 and some work, I really improved my sound and the studio looks better as well. In the summer, I will take down the room divider and put in the window air conditioner, but we will see about that later.
Audio Studio Desk & Speaker Stands
While I really like the $2000 ready made audio studio desk with built in racks, the $2k price tag is jsut not for me. If I had $2k to invest in my studio, it would be in gear not the audio desk. So I scratched that idea. However, visiting a thrift store, I found a desk made out of wood which was just the right size and it was $25.00. It has a nice shape, looks quite modern shape wise and the maple color, is solid and looks fairly new . Now this is more like it. I went home , measured and then got into my trusty 82' minivan which I use for hauling things,etc.. and got the desk. It's nice and sturdy and looks like maple. So, I got it into my studio room. Perfect, except for one thing. Do I keep my studio monitors on speaker stands? or not? Truth is, the speaker stands are a bit too high and with foam under the speaker to mute vibrations; the speaker seems a bit at risk of falling off and these are my Mackie hr824's at about $1300.00 pr, so I dont want to take a risk. On the desk they seem safer , more secure. On the other hand to have them on stands and out of the way leaves a lot of room for other gear. Well, I will try it both ways, but in a way the stand s might look nice, but they are a bit dangerous for the mackies I would think. Perhaps I would put the mackies on the desk and a different pair of monitors on stands later? Just not sure yet, still working this out. Also, positioning the desk is trial and errror (more on this later). Though ,wow, how nice to have a place to put some of this extra gear that was laying around.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Backup hard drives
One would think that 2 500 GB ext usb2.0 drives each with the same data would be quite secure as a backup. However, this is not the case at all. In fact, a few weeks ago my 2 drives both took a fall from the top of a minitower case to their untimely death. On both drives: bad heads, motors seized up and damaged platters = an expensive recovery service. As many of my albums and recordings from 1998 and on were stored on these drives, recovery was the only solution or those albums would be lost forever (at least the masters, some mp3 copies of some of the albums remained but with inferior quality). So, for a week I researched and got quotes on data recovery services. It is horribly expensive with an average recovery at about $1400.00-3500.00. A physically damaged drive requires a clean room to be recovered which is an expensive as well. Finally, I discovered low cost data recovery in CA and they could do it for $649.00 if the data was recoverable at all. So, I sent them both drives and I am glad I did as they said I was extremely lucky to have 2 drives with the same data. As a result, they were able to recover 220 GB of data, that’s was everything except ten files!!! I highly recommend them as they were first rate and low cost and did a great job, miraculous really.
SO, I got the drive data back on an Iomega terabyte drive I had purchased for this purpose (as I already had one and figured this would be a good backup as well). I copied the data on to my other terabyte drive. I also received the 2 500 GB drives back and as they are in warranty, I will send them in for replacement. The 1terrabyte Iomega drives cost about $200each, but hopefully these will last.
Conclusion, backup your stuff and not just on hard drives, but on to DVD’s!!! It's a pain in the ass, but it will be well worth while. I will never go through that again as my backup behavior has changed for the better. In fact, I should have known that I have music and data I created from 1990 which still exists on cd-r's and the hard drives have long since died or have been replaced. Having DVD’s with a 50 year shelf life (my neighbor informed me) make it a worthwhile backup medium. For a hard drive, its not if it will fail, but when will it fail.
Rackmount Case PC
As a result of my drives falling from my minitower and sick of having my pc on the floor, I ordered a Rackmount pc case. It was a 4 sp Rackmount case with 6 drive bays int, 3 5.25" ext bays and 1 3.5" and space for 2 power supplies and packed with fans. The cost of the case was about $50.00 which for new is quiet inexpensive. It's nice, with a locking door where the ext drive bays are. Though the fans aren’t that great, they pretty quiet ,but in an audio "home" studio you ant it to be as quiet as you can, so this will require replacing all the fans, the power supply and the cpu fan as well. But a silent fan is about $6-7 bucks. So not bad really.
One other flaw I discovered later was that while the case is 19" like most rackmount gear, the specs for the width of rackmount music gear and computer gear are comp0letely different. For instance, this case is 23" in depth which is huge really and is pretty standard for PC rackmount servers. However, most music gear is much smaller, with most racks dealing with up to maybe 19" or less cases. In fact, a lot of music rack ear is only about 14" in depth!!! So the choices are this:
1) Use existing case at 23" with about 5" hanging out the back of the rack case. This would not work if this was for portable use. However, in a studio the rack is not going to move form its current location and even if the case hangs out the back, so what?! Who cares? The front will still be accessible and what people will see.
2) On the market, I found a 4sp rackmount PC case with a depth of 18.5" instead of 23", much better, but more cost at $80 without power supply.
3) I also found a 2 sp rackmount PC case with an amazing 13.9" depth. Perfect, but all your pci cards will be on risers and your power supply will be proprietary and you only get 1 5.25" bay ext and 2 3.5" bays int, so 2 hard drives and that’s it. That kind of sucks for a studio pc where you need DVD drives, cd-r drives, etc.I need at least 3 .But for portability it’s really cool, oh did I mention the price? About $213 without power supply. So you pay for a small depth.
So for studio use, this rackmount pc will do ok. its more quiet than my minitower and looks cool and I can mount it in a rack where its out of the way, off the floor and accessible, sweet!!
Audio Desk Furniture
I seem to be consumed by this idea of a new studio desk/console for my studio. I think this stems from the fact that I keep my monitors on some speaker stands and it just doesn’t seem safe for the equipment. I mean the stands a re sturdy, but why tempt fate. Also, for the design I want which is quite classic, I found a company who makes something similar but for $2k. I am at the point where I know for a fact that this could be built for $200 maybe $300bucks. In fact, I am on the verge of doing this myself. I just add a countertop on some prebuilt rack cases and go form there. I mean the $2k desk, at least 1/2 that must be there profit. Wow, I should build some of these and sell them as there really isn’t anything out there that is similar at a reasonable price and for $200-300; you get a tiny desk which just won’t work for me. I have 3 vs. digital recorders I need access to as well as 2 adat recorders and add to that 2 laptops and a couple of control surfaces (with moving faders cool!!), my desk console just is too small and cramped.
I have struggled with this for years. There just isn’t much studio furniture out there, especially not locally which is a shame. So, I learned to make due with a spray painted microwave cart which holds a pc and some other rack gear and it works just fine. Anyway, as most would, I want a good looking studio environment but without paying obscene prices for furniture when it could be invested in gear and stuff that makes your recordings better, but I think if you build it yourself, you can do it cheaply and get what you want.
Alesis adat blackface and adat XT
These are coolest "obsolete" digital recorders out there. I recall when each was about $3500.00 and now I got 2 recently for less than $150.00!?! Amazing, one must consider that digital gear is never really obsolete. In fact, I suddenly have added 16 a/d and d/converters to my studio in that each adat has 8in's and 8outs and I can run that into cubase or sonar via adat optical light pipe. Very cool!!! And inexpensive way to get 16 a/d converters!! Luckily the emu 1202m has 8ch's of adat and the ext box has another 8 for a total of 16 ,plus its own inputs and out puts. So with the three vs's and the adats and the emu card, that's almsot 48 in/outs!! Wow!! Though the VS digitally can transfer about 2 ch. at one time, so that would be closer to about 24 in/out a/d.
The darn adat optical cable is expensive for a cable, at least $25.00 for three feet?! Locally. So mail-order I found closer to twelve feet for $1.99!! Well, its more if you put the adats in a rack not near your console then you will need a long adat optical cable. Well, this brings me to that desk I have wanted to build. It would be nice. Oh yeah, the adats can sync with my Roland recorders as well. Wow, I want more of these, the black face is limited to 48k 16 bit, but the 20 and xl have 20 bit, something like that.
One would think that 2 500 GB ext usb2.0 drives each with the same data would be quite secure as a backup. However, this is not the case at all. In fact, a few weeks ago my 2 drives both took a fall from the top of a minitower case to their untimely death. On both drives: bad heads, motors seized up and damaged platters = an expensive recovery service. As many of my albums and recordings from 1998 and on were stored on these drives, recovery was the only solution or those albums would be lost forever (at least the masters, some mp3 copies of some of the albums remained but with inferior quality). So, for a week I researched and got quotes on data recovery services. It is horribly expensive with an average recovery at about $1400.00-3500.00. A physically damaged drive requires a clean room to be recovered which is an expensive as well. Finally, I discovered low cost data recovery in CA and they could do it for $649.00 if the data was recoverable at all. So, I sent them both drives and I am glad I did as they said I was extremely lucky to have 2 drives with the same data. As a result, they were able to recover 220 GB of data, that’s was everything except ten files!!! I highly recommend them as they were first rate and low cost and did a great job, miraculous really.
SO, I got the drive data back on an Iomega terabyte drive I had purchased for this purpose (as I already had one and figured this would be a good backup as well). I copied the data on to my other terabyte drive. I also received the 2 500 GB drives back and as they are in warranty, I will send them in for replacement. The 1terrabyte Iomega drives cost about $200each, but hopefully these will last.
Conclusion, backup your stuff and not just on hard drives, but on to DVD’s!!! It's a pain in the ass, but it will be well worth while. I will never go through that again as my backup behavior has changed for the better. In fact, I should have known that I have music and data I created from 1990 which still exists on cd-r's and the hard drives have long since died or have been replaced. Having DVD’s with a 50 year shelf life (my neighbor informed me) make it a worthwhile backup medium. For a hard drive, its not if it will fail, but when will it fail.
Rackmount Case PC
As a result of my drives falling from my minitower and sick of having my pc on the floor, I ordered a Rackmount pc case. It was a 4 sp Rackmount case with 6 drive bays int, 3 5.25" ext bays and 1 3.5" and space for 2 power supplies and packed with fans. The cost of the case was about $50.00 which for new is quiet inexpensive. It's nice, with a locking door where the ext drive bays are. Though the fans aren’t that great, they pretty quiet ,but in an audio "home" studio you ant it to be as quiet as you can, so this will require replacing all the fans, the power supply and the cpu fan as well. But a silent fan is about $6-7 bucks. So not bad really.
One other flaw I discovered later was that while the case is 19" like most rackmount gear, the specs for the width of rackmount music gear and computer gear are comp0letely different. For instance, this case is 23" in depth which is huge really and is pretty standard for PC rackmount servers. However, most music gear is much smaller, with most racks dealing with up to maybe 19" or less cases. In fact, a lot of music rack ear is only about 14" in depth!!! So the choices are this:
1) Use existing case at 23" with about 5" hanging out the back of the rack case. This would not work if this was for portable use. However, in a studio the rack is not going to move form its current location and even if the case hangs out the back, so what?! Who cares? The front will still be accessible and what people will see.
2) On the market, I found a 4sp rackmount PC case with a depth of 18.5" instead of 23", much better, but more cost at $80 without power supply.
3) I also found a 2 sp rackmount PC case with an amazing 13.9" depth. Perfect, but all your pci cards will be on risers and your power supply will be proprietary and you only get 1 5.25" bay ext and 2 3.5" bays int, so 2 hard drives and that’s it. That kind of sucks for a studio pc where you need DVD drives, cd-r drives, etc.I need at least 3 .But for portability it’s really cool, oh did I mention the price? About $213 without power supply. So you pay for a small depth.
So for studio use, this rackmount pc will do ok. its more quiet than my minitower and looks cool and I can mount it in a rack where its out of the way, off the floor and accessible, sweet!!
Audio Desk Furniture
I seem to be consumed by this idea of a new studio desk/console for my studio. I think this stems from the fact that I keep my monitors on some speaker stands and it just doesn’t seem safe for the equipment. I mean the stands a re sturdy, but why tempt fate. Also, for the design I want which is quite classic, I found a company who makes something similar but for $2k. I am at the point where I know for a fact that this could be built for $200 maybe $300bucks. In fact, I am on the verge of doing this myself. I just add a countertop on some prebuilt rack cases and go form there. I mean the $2k desk, at least 1/2 that must be there profit. Wow, I should build some of these and sell them as there really isn’t anything out there that is similar at a reasonable price and for $200-300; you get a tiny desk which just won’t work for me. I have 3 vs. digital recorders I need access to as well as 2 adat recorders and add to that 2 laptops and a couple of control surfaces (with moving faders cool!!), my desk console just is too small and cramped.
I have struggled with this for years. There just isn’t much studio furniture out there, especially not locally which is a shame. So, I learned to make due with a spray painted microwave cart which holds a pc and some other rack gear and it works just fine. Anyway, as most would, I want a good looking studio environment but without paying obscene prices for furniture when it could be invested in gear and stuff that makes your recordings better, but I think if you build it yourself, you can do it cheaply and get what you want.
Alesis adat blackface and adat XT
These are coolest "obsolete" digital recorders out there. I recall when each was about $3500.00 and now I got 2 recently for less than $150.00!?! Amazing, one must consider that digital gear is never really obsolete. In fact, I suddenly have added 16 a/d and d/converters to my studio in that each adat has 8in's and 8outs and I can run that into cubase or sonar via adat optical light pipe. Very cool!!! And inexpensive way to get 16 a/d converters!! Luckily the emu 1202m has 8ch's of adat and the ext box has another 8 for a total of 16 ,plus its own inputs and out puts. So with the three vs's and the adats and the emu card, that's almsot 48 in/outs!! Wow!! Though the VS digitally can transfer about 2 ch. at one time, so that would be closer to about 24 in/out a/d.
The darn adat optical cable is expensive for a cable, at least $25.00 for three feet?! Locally. So mail-order I found closer to twelve feet for $1.99!! Well, its more if you put the adats in a rack not near your console then you will need a long adat optical cable. Well, this brings me to that desk I have wanted to build. It would be nice. Oh yeah, the adats can sync with my Roland recorders as well. Wow, I want more of these, the black face is limited to 48k 16 bit, but the 20 and xl have 20 bit, something like that.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Audio recording studio Ideas
Room Divider
Ok, I often look for common furniture that would work well as part of my audio recording studio. Well, this leads me to look in thrift stores, used furniture stores, goodwillls,etc...On this particular occasion, I was looking around and came upon a room divider, an office sectional if you will. It was $19.99 and it was really in great condition. It had a steel frame painted light gray and two steel "feet" to keep it upright. It had carpeting on each side which was spotless in light grey as well. It didn't seem that big in the store, but this goodwill was quite large (and in fact I was amazed at the size after I got it home). Well, it didn't take long before I was thinking of applications for this room divider for my home studio. As I record in stereo live, I often have wanted something like a room divider to isolate each guitar amplifier, I use 2, so I thought this would work well. Also, it would work really against a wall to remove early reflections .In fact, it could even be mounted on the a ceiling for acoustic purposes (though this would be quite a task because of its size).
Well, for $19.99,I had nothing to lose, so I bought it without thinking of how to get it home. I have a mini van and I use it for purposes such as this. I discovered that even in the mini van it would barely fit. SO I got it in the van with the back doors open and slowly made my way home. When I got it in my living room I thought I had made a mistake and how terrible that I would have to return it (meaning I would have to reload it in the van yuk). However, just to try I moved it into the studio room. But, not before I fixed the legs so that it would stand up straight. The thing was huge, a good 7ft high and 6-ft wide. However, in my studio room, it suddenly took a life of its own and fit perfectly. I realized that it would be perfect against a wall ,especially one with a window, and it is opposite my guitar amps so it Will absorb many of the sound wave rather than reflecting them. Also, at any time I can use it to divide the amps so that each microphone picks up only one amp.
I want the room divider to be able to divide the room so that each microphone picks up the sound from only one amp for an important reason. I played a concert in 2005 which was professionally recorder and the mics they used , as well as the space between the amps, gave a lot of separation. The result was a really pleasing ping pong effect when I used delays that would pan left and right, with sound coming out sometimes on the left amp and sometimes on the right and the stereo separation worked. SO, I want recreate this in a much smaller room. If anything, the $19.99 was well spent as it will enhance my studio room acoustically and also allow me to enhance my recordings hopefully by providing separation of my guitar amps.
2-room studio
this also brought up an idea of putting my amps in another room. Ideally this would work well, however, I would then need some monitors to continue playing in my studio room (so I can hear what I am doing). However, I did think that a studio snake would make this possible. a Studio snake is a bunch of cables wrapped together into one cable that then attach to a box that has xlr and 1/4" jacks. So if I did put amps in the other room I could do it neatly. However, for pedalboards that I use, I would not be able to use the pedalboards in the studio room without very long cable. In any case, When I play , I do like having the actual amps in the same room. I will experiment and see how it works out. The mics I use for the guitar amps are so close to the amps that they don't really pickup too much ambient noise anyway.
Studio Furniture
The studio console is must in any studio, even a home studio. It is where I mix, edit and master my recordings. My desk is quite small and is a standard computer desk. It works perfectly for me as it holds 2 digital recorders,PC, monitor and so on. however, I seem to have outgrown it. I have my mackie monitor speakers on speaker stands and this makes me quite nervous as they were expensive and the speaker stands don't seem to sturdy. My computer desk just doesn't have space for them as I use 2 monitors which takes up most of the desk space. I wish my desk was longer and that it had 2 rack units on the desktop that I could put my monitor speakers on. So , I looked into upgrading and I was quite astonished at the prices of studio furniture. In fact, I found the desk I would have loved to have and would fit well, but it had a price between $1500-2500.00 .It is quite expensive, especially when this is money that could be put toward gear haha. Ok, well, truth be known ,if one was handy, it would not take much to build something similar for $200-300.00. However, I have a fear of power tools, well , I just would like to keep all of my fingers. So this is a dilemma. In fact, for rack cases that sell anywhere form $88-400.00, it would be easy to build one for $20-50.00 . So I am toying with this idea.
Ok, I often look for common furniture that would work well as part of my audio recording studio. Well, this leads me to look in thrift stores, used furniture stores, goodwillls,etc...On this particular occasion, I was looking around and came upon a room divider, an office sectional if you will. It was $19.99 and it was really in great condition. It had a steel frame painted light gray and two steel "feet" to keep it upright. It had carpeting on each side which was spotless in light grey as well. It didn't seem that big in the store, but this goodwill was quite large (and in fact I was amazed at the size after I got it home). Well, it didn't take long before I was thinking of applications for this room divider for my home studio. As I record in stereo live, I often have wanted something like a room divider to isolate each guitar amplifier, I use 2, so I thought this would work well. Also, it would work really against a wall to remove early reflections .In fact, it could even be mounted on the a ceiling for acoustic purposes (though this would be quite a task because of its size).
Well, for $19.99,I had nothing to lose, so I bought it without thinking of how to get it home. I have a mini van and I use it for purposes such as this. I discovered that even in the mini van it would barely fit. SO I got it in the van with the back doors open and slowly made my way home. When I got it in my living room I thought I had made a mistake and how terrible that I would have to return it (meaning I would have to reload it in the van yuk). However, just to try I moved it into the studio room. But, not before I fixed the legs so that it would stand up straight. The thing was huge, a good 7ft high and 6-ft wide. However, in my studio room, it suddenly took a life of its own and fit perfectly. I realized that it would be perfect against a wall ,especially one with a window, and it is opposite my guitar amps so it Will absorb many of the sound wave rather than reflecting them. Also, at any time I can use it to divide the amps so that each microphone picks up only one amp.
I want the room divider to be able to divide the room so that each microphone picks up the sound from only one amp for an important reason. I played a concert in 2005 which was professionally recorder and the mics they used , as well as the space between the amps, gave a lot of separation. The result was a really pleasing ping pong effect when I used delays that would pan left and right, with sound coming out sometimes on the left amp and sometimes on the right and the stereo separation worked. SO, I want recreate this in a much smaller room. If anything, the $19.99 was well spent as it will enhance my studio room acoustically and also allow me to enhance my recordings hopefully by providing separation of my guitar amps.
2-room studio
this also brought up an idea of putting my amps in another room. Ideally this would work well, however, I would then need some monitors to continue playing in my studio room (so I can hear what I am doing). However, I did think that a studio snake would make this possible. a Studio snake is a bunch of cables wrapped together into one cable that then attach to a box that has xlr and 1/4" jacks. So if I did put amps in the other room I could do it neatly. However, for pedalboards that I use, I would not be able to use the pedalboards in the studio room without very long cable. In any case, When I play , I do like having the actual amps in the same room. I will experiment and see how it works out. The mics I use for the guitar amps are so close to the amps that they don't really pickup too much ambient noise anyway.
Studio Furniture
The studio console is must in any studio, even a home studio. It is where I mix, edit and master my recordings. My desk is quite small and is a standard computer desk. It works perfectly for me as it holds 2 digital recorders,PC, monitor and so on. however, I seem to have outgrown it. I have my mackie monitor speakers on speaker stands and this makes me quite nervous as they were expensive and the speaker stands don't seem to sturdy. My computer desk just doesn't have space for them as I use 2 monitors which takes up most of the desk space. I wish my desk was longer and that it had 2 rack units on the desktop that I could put my monitor speakers on. So , I looked into upgrading and I was quite astonished at the prices of studio furniture. In fact, I found the desk I would have loved to have and would fit well, but it had a price between $1500-2500.00 .It is quite expensive, especially when this is money that could be put toward gear haha. Ok, well, truth be known ,if one was handy, it would not take much to build something similar for $200-300.00. However, I have a fear of power tools, well , I just would like to keep all of my fingers. So this is a dilemma. In fact, for rack cases that sell anywhere form $88-400.00, it would be easy to build one for $20-50.00 . So I am toying with this idea.
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