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.