Budget - Down to the Last Drop

So I finally got some Event 20/20 BAS monitors (they list on Musican's friend for $899) on E-bay (used) for $460 including shipping. That is the last major purchase for the studio. After that, I have 171.52 left before I return my RAM, which will add about $75 back to that total. The remaining purchases are :

• Patch Cables - You need a lot of these ($20)
• A good set of cables to go from the mixer out to the monitors (TRS->XLR or TRS->TRS Balanced) ($30)
• Calk and Triple Expanding Foam for finishing up the room. ($50)
• Possibly a 400-600 Watt PSU for the computer ($40)
• An extension chord and Surge Protector for the room.($30)

The cash left ($0-$75) will be donated to the Ardour project which is an amazing piece of free (as in beer and speech) software.

Problems with RAM

It looks like the RAM I ordered isn't Registered, so I had to order some RAM off E-bay (the TYAN Tiger won't take anything but Registered/ECC memory). Hopefully the return process for the RAM I ordered will go smoothly, but I lost about $20 bucks off of the mistake. Still haven't been able to get the TR8s off of e-bay for anything that approaches what I want to pay. There's an auction ending tonight. I'll keep trying for a few weeks after that, but I'm thinking I'm going to be better off ordering from Musician's Friend along with some additional patch cables.

General - Budget Run Down

Here's a run down of the expenses thus far in the project. It is 90% complete.

• Home Depot - Lumber, Sheet rock and screws - $778.97
• Home Depot - R-13 Insulation, Staples - $38.36
• Home Depot - R-19 Insulation, Staples - $57.85
• Musician's Friend - $2229.75
  • Microphone Stands and Cables and a Popper Stopper
  • Mics : Rode NT1-A, Shure Drum Mic 6-Pack, and 2 Audix I-5s
  • Isolation Headphones and a Headphone amp
  • The RME Hammerfall PCI device and Multiface
• Local Classified Ad - Mackie VLZ 1604 Pro - $550
• Home Depot - Insulation - $20.50
• Zzounds.com - Snake - $219.95
• Friend's old Computer case, SCSI HDD, CDRom, SCSI Controller, etc - $125
• Home Depot - Insulation for attic- $36.29
• E-bay - Motherboard and Processors (Tyan Tiger with AMD MP 2000+) - $314.99
• E-bay - Bass Traps - $77.99
• E-bay - Acoustic Foam - $47.00
• E-bay - Matrox G450 Video Card - $36.40
• Memory Pro - 2 512 GB PC2100 DDR Ram - $99.99
• E-bay - 76GB Fujitsu SCSI 10K RPM HDD - $109.99
• Friend - Parts for Door to Isolatio Booth - $100

Total remaining : $712.52. All that's left is the Monitors, which I am bidding on E-bay, the Event Tuned Reference TR8 monitors. And then various small expenses to finish up the room like buying Great Stuff (triple expanding foam) to fill in the cracks in the room. Calk to really seal it up. Tape and mud to tape and float the final layer of sheet rock, and an underlayment of carpet. If I can afford another set of bass traps and acoustic foam, I'll probably get them, but it all depends on how much I can get this pair of monitors for!

Control Room - Picking The Right Monitors.

Monitors are hard to pick. Along with proper treatment of the control room, Monitors are possibly the most important investement any home studio can make. From the reviews I've read, and from the specs I see, the Event TR8 Tuned Reference Monitors are the best under $1000 monitors that you'll find. I'm going to try them out and put a review here.

General - The State Of The Project

Mics, cables, stands, headphones and soundcards are in. I bought a Mixer from the classifieds that lists for 1000, got it for 550 (which was only about 50 more than I wanted to pay. It's a very nice Mackie 16 channel with 2 aux sends and 4 submixes. Should work out nicely. Next steps:

• Get 12x4 snake (ordered)
• Order Control Room Treatment
• Construct Bass Traps
• Order Monitors

The Isolation room now has all of the insulation up, and the first layer of sheet rock is up on the inside. Next steps:

• Calk all of the gaps in the first layer
• Put up first Outer layer
• Put in the double door
• Run snake and electricity to room
• Add second layer of sheetrock with liquid nails (to absorb more vibrations)
• Tape and float second layer of sheetrock
• Put down Carpet

As far as the computer goes, I have several e-bay bids up to try and get the computer for a cheap price. I hope it works out, because low e-bay bids are pretty much the only way I'm going to be able to get this thing under budget :). Casey Peel donated (inexpensivly, I might add) a case, SCSI Controller and HDD over the weekend. Thanks, Casey.

General - Do It Yourself Bass Traps

I've been looking for a way to build my own movable bass traps to make the mixes in my room a bit better. I'm hoping to be able to build these for about 1/4 of the price that it would take to buy bass traps for the control room. Grab some adhesive and put some half-pipes up on the corners to help absorb the sound. We'll see if it works.

Recording - Micing Drums

Here's an article on getting big studio sound for cheap in the comfort of your own home. I'll be applying this to the studio. Also, I'm thinking about using the Living room as a place to record for certain sounds. Getting the nice big sound is hard. But with a firm isolation room and a nice big open living area, it could be really, really cool.