finley sound: posterous

making the world a better place one album at a time

Studio Construction: End of Week Four

As you can tell from the photos below, the exterior of the addition has been painted and the roof and door have been installed.  Inside the studio, three separate electrical circuits have been installed - one for recording equipment, one for playback equipment, and one for everything else (computer, hard drives, etc.).

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Studio Construction: End of Week Three

This week the windows were installed and some of the siding.  The interior of the studio is still bare studs.

Norm of  A/V RoomService was able to get us an upgrade of their IsoPad product because their supplier was out of the standard version.  They provided the upgraded IsoPad for the same price.  Thanks Norm!

IsoPad acts as a buffer between the walls, floor and ceiling, allowing each to be acoustically isolated from each other.  In other words, the walls, floor and ceiling are not in direct contact with each other.  This stops vibrations or resonance in one surface from transferring to another.

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Studio Construction: The Evil Beam

I should have known things were moving forward too smoothly. 

Today, our contractor realized that there would be no way to get the HVAC ducts into the studio as originally spec'ed because of the height of the false ceiling (9' 10").  It seems an engineered structural beam - essentially supporting the entire Southwest corner of our house - was blocking the entry point into the studio. Yes, the evil beam.

For standard construction, this would not have been a problem.  A standard ceiling is 8' high.  However, A/V RoomService spec'ed out the EXACT interior dimensions of the studio for optimum performance. Even a small deviation could radically change the distribution of room modes and thus adversely effect the sound of the room.  I was worried that a change in the height of the ceiling would likely necessitate a change to the width and length...and space was already at a premium.

After a few phone calls to Norm, we arrived at the next best ceiling height.  8' 2".  Reduced from 9' 10". Quite a bit shorter, but still acoustically valid.

Here is the offending beam - the joists are fastened to it.  The HVAC ducting will enter the studio below the beam and between the wall studs.

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Studio Construction: End of Week Two

This week I received the final acoustic specs from Norm over at A/V RoomService. The specs include the interior dimensions of the studio and details for the electrical wiring. False walls and a ceiling will eventually be built to bring the interior dimensions to the proper size.

In these photos: the exterior of the studio and our first interior shot!

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Studio Construction: End of Week One

The studio addition is moving right along. We have an inspection scheduled for Monday morning and if everything goes well, the foundation will be poured Monday afternoon.  

We've got to give our contractor Steve McSween of Lake Builders Inc. props for getting a ton of work done in just a couple of days!

In these photos: getting ready to dig the foundation and the obligatory end of week photo.

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Let the Construction Begin!

It's been a long time coming, but today we finally broke ground on our office/recording studio addition.  Currently, my "studio" is set up in our master bedroom.  The room is an odd shape and has a number of acoustic issues that have made mixing more challenging.  Because the room also needs to function as a bedroom, the placement of my studio monitors has been less than ideal - in a corner mere inches from the wall. This of course reinforces the bass frequencies and makes it difficult to achieve a mix that translates well across a variety of listening environments without multiple mix revisions.  Additionally, hanging any sort of acoustic treatment has been out of the question due to aesthetics and window locations.

I've been working with Norm Varney and Harry Alter of A/V RoomService on the design of the studio - including proper dimensions, acoustic treatment, noise control, and electrical wiring.  Both Norm and Harry are passionate about their work and I've been really impressed with how detail oriented they are.  Plus, they are really nice guys!

Due to property setback issues, the studio is limited to a maximum external dimension of 10'x16'.  Yes, this is pretty small for a studio, but Norm assures me it will sound great.  

And a small space is better than no space.

A bonus to building the studio now is that the additional cost for making it acoustically sound will be fairly minimal.  In other words, it can be more expensive to retrofit an existing room if it was built with less than ideal dimensions, HVAC ducting, and electrical wiring.

Here's what things looked like at the beginning of the day (minus the HVAC condenser and two small concrete pads that were already moved before I could take the photo).  And at the end of the day.

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