Studio Build “Part 9”
Everything is in, and needs to be placed, to my surprise, lots of mistakes made and lessons learnt.
The server, making too much noise in the studio and adding lots of heat. I moved this to an outside room, fiber cabling installed for speed and lightening protection. Used the in studio server room for the video equipment storage. So made a plan and got some extra space.
Vocal Booth required an additional window to have view to the sound engineer. Removed the door and added a window.
Headset cabling, only had 2 cores, realized this after they were installed, had to install new dual core for stereo. Lucky “just Iike an Irishman with a beer” I used these for instrument cabling and monitor speaker placement.
Main Console test, Switched on the main console and NOISE!!, my heart sank “you know where too”, after a lot of checking cables, solder connections, measuring distance, check electrical and audio spaces between cables, earth isolations, power connections, half day down the line, I realize unbalanced output to a balanced input. A WOW! Irritating moment for me. Packed and left it for the day. Needed to order more cable for balanced output/input, and of course floors to be lifted, more cabling installed, connecting to the patch panels.
Patch panels, ran out of space to place sound modules na catch panels, so created additional space above the main console. I forgot to add cabling between the 2 panels to route headset and audio. Floors removed again, cable pullers into the main console desk to dragged the additional cables to the top.
MIDI Controller, nice sliding draw under the main mixing console, looks real fancy, but you cannot get your chair under the desk, very uncomfortable, removed draw cut a piece out for the chair to fit.
Main Console Chair, got a nice chair, looks real good, but!, does not have enough height to view the top on the console, “You feel like Kilroy”, so off I went and got a architects chair. Wonderful invention, ow I can stand or sit comfortably at the desk. “See I knew I done the design right from the start”
One Year build became two years, country in lock down, no supplies allowed to be delivered, so now it stands.
Couch placement, nice funky color, good to sit on and have a snooze, and then it hit me where are we going to place the instruments? Sadly had to be removed.
Speaker Cabling, Note how these poor floors and to be removed again!, so back to cabling in of speak and amp cables.
Guitar stands, placed them hanging from the roof shelves, till I realized that they are in the way, restructure of the studio move a few sound reflecting boxes around, placed the new hanging stands for the guitars, get back the sound testing person.
Lessons Learnt, even though a lot of these are small things, it takes time to sort and redo. I do not think building a studio like this is a very easy task, and no matter what happens funnies will always appear. While going through all this, I managed to streamline the studio, fit everything I wanted in and made the connectivity and recording solutions better.
It has been a long journey, of which 90% of this I done myself.