Budget Linux Audio Studio Project

Reflections

2006-06-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

Well, the BLASP has been completed for about 6 months now. We finished the Isolation room (mostly) and we've recorded an EP and are finishing up a full-length CD. There are several things that I learned that I'd like to pass along to anyone else considering any part of this project.

Isolation Room
- Less Sheet Rock - Two layers of Sheet rock on all sides is probably overkill. You can get by with two on the outside and one on the inside. Definatly use 5/8 inch fire retardant, though.
- Carpet is good - Put Carpet down as soon as you can and put whatever wiring you can afford to under it, coming out in the CENTER of the room
DAW
- Faster HD - The most annoying part of the DAW has been that the hard drive has regularly not been able to keep up with all of the tracks unless they were cached. Buy a very fast hard drive *and* I/O interfaces that can keep up with it.. The SCSI hard drive is good, but needs to be ULTRA360.
- 8 is not enough - 8 inputs just isn't enough for most recording needs. 16 would have worked *much* better for many of our recording sessions. Being able to record scratches of everything while you're recording drums is imperative. We had to mic the high and middle tom on one mic so we could record the drums and bass together, and we didn't get to include a scratch of the guitar or vocals
- It's hard to "tune the room" if you're untrained when your putting up acoustic foam, etc. Using an A-B technique with a mastered CD adjusted for volume is probably easier for a home studio with a weird space than getting perfect sounding monitors, which will pretty much be impossible on a low budget
Studio Equipment (Mics, etc)
- More Rode NT1-A's please If I were to do it all over again, I'd get 4 Audix I-5's, a Kick Mic and 2 Rode NT1-A's. Total = $1000, which is just a little more than what I spent anyway for 2 Audix I-5, a Drum-Mic kit with 2 overhead compressors and kick drums and 1 Rode NT1-A. The Rode NT1-A's are inexpensive and sound fantastic. This will definatly be the first addition to the project once there is any income
- Definatly use the snake The snake has proved invaluable. Don't try to do a studio without it

I'll post non-mastered mixes of most of the songs off of our upcoming album in the next month or so once they're finished recording and mixing.

Finally.

2005-12-28T12:20:00.000-08:00

It's been a year since I announced that the B.L.A.S.P. project would commence. But we've now gone through a round in the Studio. Here's a link to "Sweet Secret" - it's just a preliminary mix, but it shows what we can do with $5555 and OSS, baby!

DAW - Ardour and Recording.

2005-10-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

Ardour is now in it's 0.99 (which is thier fully functioning version). We used it last weekend to record the drum parts to 3 of the songs we're putting on the Green Letters next EP.

"Sweet Secret", "Eat at Joes" and "Carol and Me"

Carol and Me was interesting because of the fact that it is in both 5/4 and 6/4 (alternating). We were able to use Ardour to set the sections of the song that were 5/4 and 6/4 and Hydrogen to generate the drum part in both sections as well. I think we got some good takes of all three songs.

We prepared the room by removing all of the non-recording equipment / drums from the isolation room. We put the drums underneath the low ceiling. We put the Shure Mic package on the 3 toms, and just inside the hole of the kick and we put the overheads about 3 feet apart, equidistant from the snare, about 6 feet high and pointing at the hi-hat (OHR) and ride (OHL). We then took the Rode NT-1A and put it at the other end of the room way up toward the ceiling to get a nice room noise.

When we listened to the rode track, it sounded very good just by itself. We will definatly be trying a drum track using only that mic during the recording process.

Progress is being made. We are hoping to have the songs mixed by the time we go to the December 16th show.

Recording : A Girl Unknown

2005-09-01T05:46:00.000-07:00

NICE! We've started the process of recording our first song, "A Girl Unknown". It's going well. We've recorded the acoustic guitars and drums. There is some editing to be done and bass and harmony parts to be added, but it should be recorded soon, edited soon thereafter and ready for the website by the end of September.

2005-08-08T11:08:00.000-07:00

Mixing info
Drum mic placement
General Mic Placement

Bownie

2005-07-19T06:47:00.000-07:00

Bownie.com has set up a very good "ground up" guide to recording music. It's really for the musician (like me) that wants to be able to record himself without paying $25-$50 an hour. Take a look through it to get the basics.

Ardour?

2005-07-11T12:44:00.000-07:00

Ardour has been "close" to 1.0 for almost a year now. The last release was April 17th with a beta that works great--but isn't quite there. The 0.99 release was expect on May 10th, 2005. I don't fault the guys for taking their time and getting it done. It's free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech style goodness for us audio geeks, but it's frustrating to not have any new information!

We begin recording our next album this week. It should be fun. Let's hope the improvements to Ardour come quickly!

Air Conditioned Studio

2005-05-29T10:29:00.000-07:00

I added air conditioning to the studio today. Very cool, literally. The nicest thing is that I was able to take the opening to the attic, cut up a new piece of drywall, and attach a light, A/C and a hole for the snake into it. It basically means that I've modified the least amount of the house possible--which will make this (relativly) easy to tear down when we move. Goodness, I hope that's not for a very long time.

General - Update

2005-05-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

The DAW is now working now that my RAM issues have been resolved. My number one suggestion when putting together your DAW is to make sure you research your MoBo THOROUGHLY before buying all additional components, especially RAM, CPUs and Video Cards.

The Isolation room has the 2 outside layers on except for the low-ceiling and around the door. All that is left other than that is the second inside layer and A/C ducting into the room.

I also found some good information on how to EQ a drum kit (often the hardest part to properly EQ). It's on a site that gives some good tracking information all around.

Acoustic Treatment of a Room

2005-04-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

I've been reading about acoustic treatment to try to figure out how to orient my control room. Little did I know that the control room is the most important room to have symmetrical and acoustically pristine.

Currently, I am in the situation of having difficulty with the symmetry of the room. It has an offset window which has a 1 ft. wide ledge. This leaves a rather large gap for sound, especially with the way my desk is oriented. I may have to sacrifice the room or some part of the desk in order to re-orient the room to have the monitors at a reasonable distance apart, have the symmetry dealt with (there are 2 doors on one side.) If I move the desk around so that the monitors are pointing across the short length of the room, then I'm afraid it will have significant detriments on the sound. We'll see!

Budget - Down to the Last Drop

2005-03-28T13:59:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-24T09:01:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-20T18:32:00.000-08:00

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.

2005-03-16T15:05:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-14T09:38:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-07T15:12:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-03T11:58:00.000-08:00

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.

Isolation Room - Frame Finished

2005-02-21T06:30:00.000-08:00

The frame is complete for the isolation room. Next steps : Double door frame, Insulation and sheetrock.

Isolation Room - Construction Begins

2005-02-16T05:59:00.000-08:00

The Isolation room is coming together nicely. We have about 60% of the framing done. Insulation on both sides of the walls and 2 layers of drywall will be next, followed by ceiling insulation, carpet padding and carpet, and a door. I hope it can be done by April. Which means we'll have to pipe A/C into it. Fun! Already looking like the computer is going to pay the price.

General - Total Numbers

2005-01-18T13:06:00.000-08:00

Description Stock Qty Each Total

Shure SM57 Instrument/Vocal Mic
Buy Warranty
Eligible for FREE SHIPPING on orders over $199! In Stock remove $89.00 $89.00

AP Audio APC-24S 24" Stereo Patch Cable/8 Pack
Eligible for FREE SHIPPING on orders over $199! In Stock remove $24.99 $24.99

Behringer Eurodesk MX2442A Mixer
Buy Warranty
Heavy Item - Does NOT qualify for free shipping. In Stock remove $379.99 $379.99

American Cable Co. Standard Lo-Z Microphone Cable 50 Foot*
Eligible for FREE SHIPPING on orders over $199! In Stock remove $7.99 $63.92

American Cable Co. Stage Snake 12x4 100 Foot*
Heavy Item - Does NOT qualify for free shipping. In Stock remove $169.99 $169.99

Musician's Friend Mic Stand with Regular Boom
Eligible for FREE SHIPPING on orders over $199! In Stock remove $12.99 $12.99

Shure KSM27 Studio Microphone
Eligible for FREE SHIPPING on orders over $199! In Stock remove $299.00 $299.00

Shure PG 6-Piece Drum Microphone Package
Buy Warranty
Eligible for FREE SHIPPING on orders over $199! In Stock remove $399.00 $399.00

Nady MST-5B Tripod Mic Stand with Boom Black*
Eligible for FREE SHIPPING on orders over $199! In Stock remove $14.99 $104.93

Audio-Technica ATH-M30 Professional Monitor Headphones
Eligible for FREE SHIPPING on orders over $199! In Stock remove $59.99 $179.97

Behringer B2031A Truth Active Monitors (Pair)
Buy Warranty
Eligible for FREE SHIPPING on orders over $199! In Stock remove $339.99 $339.99

RME Hammerfall HDSP Multiface
Buy Warranty
Eligible for FREE SHIPPING on orders over $199! In Stock remove $649.00 $649.00

RME Hammerfall HDSP PCI Card
Buy Warranty
Eligible for FREE SHIPPING on orders over $199! In Stock remove $269.00 $269.00

MXL MXL 990/991 Recording Mic Package
Buy Warranty
Eligible for FREE SHIPPING on orders over $199! In Stock remove $99.99 $99.99

Sub Total: $3,081.76

*Applicable sales tax will be added for MO, UT and WA orders.

Estimated Shipping to 78660

Express Shipping (2-5 business days)	$50.24
Two Day Shipping (2 business days)	$271.52
One Day Shipping (1 business day)	$461.60

Plus $1227 for the Computer + 1196.55 for the Isolation room = $5555.55

Isolation Room - Price Estimates

2005-01-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

Drywall - 150 ft for walls + 8 ft for ceilings = ~160 ft = 40 sheets @ $7/per = $280
Studs - 51 studs @5/per = $255
Plates - 5 @ $7 = $35
Isulation - 13 rolls @ $10/per + 1 pad @ 50 for Ceiling= $180
Carpet/padding = $50
Solid Core Doors - 2 @ $80 = $160
Hinges/sound stoppers - $40
Drywall Tape/Drywall screws/Calk - $100
Padding and Acoustic treatment inside - $100

Total : $1200

Now, what I'll need is to borrow power tools like a good table saw and figure out how to hang the door frames. Besides that, it looks like we're in business. I'll end up with about $50 in cushion. Hopefully this will cover tax/shipping/etc.

DAW - Ardour

2005-01-07T08:16:00.000-08:00

Ardour should be releasing it's 1.0 version in the next 2 months. I'll be super excited to dig into it and try recording once we have a computer built for such things. We'll see how it all goes down. I feel that a lot of this process will be wrestling with the computer to get it up and running, but that things will run very smoothly after that. Very exciting! I have also decided that since this project is required to come in under-budget (at least by a few dollars), that the difference in cost and the actual budget will be donated to Ardour. All the more reason to come in as under-budget as possible!

General - Pricing

2005-01-07T07:55:00.000-08:00

Over the last 24 hours I've priced out several things. This will give me motivation to get my butt moving because a lot of these things are on sale.

Computer :

Tyan tiger S2466 Motherboard - $184
Athlon MP2400+ (2x) - $278
200 GB Firewire HDD (Audio storage/recording)- $149
Matrox G450 DUAL HEAD Graphics Card - $49
PC2100 DDR 1GB Ram (2x) - $154
22 inch Monitor - $263
Case / Fan - ~$120
Hammerfall Multiface + HDSP PCI Card - ~$1100

Mics/Recording Equipment

MXL 990/991 Prcording Mic PKG - $99
SHURE PG 6-piece Drum Mic Pkg - $399
KSM27 Studio Mic (Vocals/Acoustic) - $299
SHURE SM57 - $89
Cables, Stands and Clips - $300
Bheringer EuroDesk MX2442A - $379
Bheringer Monitors - $339
QH560 Deluxe Studio Headphones (4x) - $98)

Garage "conversion"

Structure and drywall - $400
Soundproofing/acoustic treatment (also in control room) - $600

Under this budget, there's still another $250 left in the BLASP fund for cushion/Tax/extra building materials/etc. If there's any left, we'll get a webcam and throw it down in the isolation room.

The first thing that has to happen is setting up Tim's college fund (of some sort) so that I can start buying some of this stuff while it's still on sale.

The next step is to get it okayed with the HOA (no garage conversions are allowed, but we're not converting it to a living area, just using it for a recording space.

Isolation Room - Tools and Test

2005-01-03T13:11:00.001-08:00

Over the Christmas Holidays, I received a slew of gifts related to the isolation room including a drywall repair kit, a saw, a box cutter, and a book on design, which is very cool. I did more precise measuring when I got back into town and concluded that a 7.5x14 room is pretty much what I'm looking at if I want to be able to fit storage and a car into the garage as well. As a test we're going to set up the whole band on one half of the garage this week and test it out, just to see if it's really enough space to practice in. I fear that it will basically end up being for recording only and not for practicing with the whole band. I think the way to fix that is by making a window which does 1 good thing and 1 bad thing : It gives the bassist the ability to sit outside of the isolation room and still jam with the band, but it leaks more sound no matter what because glass is going to be harder to sound-proof than drywall. We will see how it works. Before pictures coming soon.

General - Reference

2004-12-14T10:29:00.000-08:00

I have been doing general research for the studio for the last week now. I've found this site, The Home Recording Connection that seems to have a lot of low cost solutions to home studios.

Of particular interest was the article on building your isolation room.

I've continued to formulate how to build the recording space(s) and I think that it might still be do-able to put the isolation room on the right side of the garage (facing the house), which makes things work out nicely for house access, etc. It gives the benefit of only having to install one door and keeping the noise further from the living room. It has the added detriment of having to more heavily insulate the outer wall. I'm also convinced that the closet in the upstairs entertainment room (which will probably end up being the control room) will make a good vocal booth without giving up the storage space. More ideas all the time!