Tadpui
Well-known member
After years of wanting a dedicated studio space, and months of enduring the construction process, my home studio is finally finished.
I just wanted to share some before and after pics, as well as a few in-progress shots. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, so humor me while I show it off a bit.
First, a shot of where I did all of my recording for 10 year prior to now. 3 concrete walls, concrete floor, an acoustical nightmare. The carpet remnants on the floor and walls was a nice touch as well.
And my guitar area, complete with all of the junk that I'd accumulated over the course of having a big, unfinished basement:
The support beam and drain that were a challenge to work around. They ended up inside the double wall between the studio and the rest of the basement:
A different perspective of the "before" studio. Just lovely!
Fast forward a few weeks and the existing framing was gone (that's the only part of this that I did myself...I hired out all of the actual construction). We did away with the two framed-in closets that were there and just made the room a big rectangle. This vastly increased my square footage, and gives me a nice open area to maneuver microphones, stools, guitars, etc.
We went with Roxul Safe 'n Sound as the insulation, although I understand that the pink stuff would have been just as effective in this application. At this point, the room was insanely dead...almost totally anechoic. It was uncomfortable to even be in the room. It felt like my ears were clogged up when there was almost zero reverb in the room.
They installed a 2nd set of ceiling joists that were decoupled from the bedroom floor above and rested it on the walls of the studio. So it's almost a room-within-a-room design. Then they filled the cavity with more Roxul. It's remarkably effective at keeping the noise out of the master bedroom directly overhead.
Fast forward several more weeks and it's starting to look like an actual room. Drywall is up, one layer of 5/8", one layer of 1/2" with Green Glue in-between. The first layer is all sealed airtight with acoustical caulk. You can also get an idea of the double wall that straddles the I-beam and drainage from the upstairs bathrooms:
Then just last week the finishing touches started going in. Halogen track lighting, a couple coats of paint, laminate wood flooring. I even moved in my GIK soffit traps right away:
An exterior shot of the room, with the double doors. The interior studio door is a metal exterior door/jamb with weather stripping to keep it airtight. The exterior studio door is a solid-core wooden door that's nice and heavy.
Then I got my desk all set up. It's a Middle Atlantic MDV-DSK and two MDV-R12 side racks. One holds my computer and a couple of patch bays, and the other is currently storage. They're both on casters, so the storage rack can roll into the room to provide a surface to hold a mouse, tuner, beverage, etc. The computer rack is too tied down by cables to be rolled much of anywhere, but it's still nice to be able to easily rotate it to facilitate plugging/unplugging cables.
Also there are a couple of GIK Tri-Traps resting on the soffit traps in the corners, as well as a couple of GIK Monster Bass Traps at the first reflection points on the walls:
Then I got the ceiling cloud mounted at the first reflection point on the ceiling. These are two GIK 244 Bass Traps:
The other end of the room is guitar heaven. On the walls are 3 GIK Monster Bass Traps, the outer 2 have range limiters on them. A few stools for sitting and jamming, and my growing amp collection (Mesa Lone Star Special, Traynor YCV80, Fender 68 Deluxe Reverb, Marshall DSL40CST). Mister Paul and Mister Tele are also present:
I'm still astounded that this is my own space. It's really a dream come true, I've been daydreaming of having a space like this for over a decade. And now to see it in reality, I'm beside myself. I still have some work to do to control the low frequencies in the room, there's a couple of pretty big peaks and nulls to address. But otherwise I love how it sounds. Lively but not too lively. I'll probably dampen it a bit more as I get to know the room a bit better. There is a slight ring after I clap in the middle of the room, so some additional absorption or some diffusion will be in order. And I need a multi-guitar rack to neatly hold all of my instruments.
---------- Update ----------
Argh...seriously, none of the image links worked? Hmmm...I'll figure out where I can host them for direct linking. Dropbox apparently doesn't like it.
*edit* OK, I hosted the photos on Flickr. I'll see if I can get rid of the thumbnails so you don't have to click through to their site to see the pics.
*edit* I finally conquered the image uploader and inline feature. Thanks Steen!
I just wanted to share some before and after pics, as well as a few in-progress shots. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, so humor me while I show it off a bit.
First, a shot of where I did all of my recording for 10 year prior to now. 3 concrete walls, concrete floor, an acoustical nightmare. The carpet remnants on the floor and walls was a nice touch as well.
And my guitar area, complete with all of the junk that I'd accumulated over the course of having a big, unfinished basement:
The support beam and drain that were a challenge to work around. They ended up inside the double wall between the studio and the rest of the basement:
A different perspective of the "before" studio. Just lovely!
Fast forward a few weeks and the existing framing was gone (that's the only part of this that I did myself...I hired out all of the actual construction). We did away with the two framed-in closets that were there and just made the room a big rectangle. This vastly increased my square footage, and gives me a nice open area to maneuver microphones, stools, guitars, etc.
We went with Roxul Safe 'n Sound as the insulation, although I understand that the pink stuff would have been just as effective in this application. At this point, the room was insanely dead...almost totally anechoic. It was uncomfortable to even be in the room. It felt like my ears were clogged up when there was almost zero reverb in the room.
They installed a 2nd set of ceiling joists that were decoupled from the bedroom floor above and rested it on the walls of the studio. So it's almost a room-within-a-room design. Then they filled the cavity with more Roxul. It's remarkably effective at keeping the noise out of the master bedroom directly overhead.
Fast forward several more weeks and it's starting to look like an actual room. Drywall is up, one layer of 5/8", one layer of 1/2" with Green Glue in-between. The first layer is all sealed airtight with acoustical caulk. You can also get an idea of the double wall that straddles the I-beam and drainage from the upstairs bathrooms:
Then just last week the finishing touches started going in. Halogen track lighting, a couple coats of paint, laminate wood flooring. I even moved in my GIK soffit traps right away:
An exterior shot of the room, with the double doors. The interior studio door is a metal exterior door/jamb with weather stripping to keep it airtight. The exterior studio door is a solid-core wooden door that's nice and heavy.
Then I got my desk all set up. It's a Middle Atlantic MDV-DSK and two MDV-R12 side racks. One holds my computer and a couple of patch bays, and the other is currently storage. They're both on casters, so the storage rack can roll into the room to provide a surface to hold a mouse, tuner, beverage, etc. The computer rack is too tied down by cables to be rolled much of anywhere, but it's still nice to be able to easily rotate it to facilitate plugging/unplugging cables.
Also there are a couple of GIK Tri-Traps resting on the soffit traps in the corners, as well as a couple of GIK Monster Bass Traps at the first reflection points on the walls:
Then I got the ceiling cloud mounted at the first reflection point on the ceiling. These are two GIK 244 Bass Traps:
The other end of the room is guitar heaven. On the walls are 3 GIK Monster Bass Traps, the outer 2 have range limiters on them. A few stools for sitting and jamming, and my growing amp collection (Mesa Lone Star Special, Traynor YCV80, Fender 68 Deluxe Reverb, Marshall DSL40CST). Mister Paul and Mister Tele are also present:
I'm still astounded that this is my own space. It's really a dream come true, I've been daydreaming of having a space like this for over a decade. And now to see it in reality, I'm beside myself. I still have some work to do to control the low frequencies in the room, there's a couple of pretty big peaks and nulls to address. But otherwise I love how it sounds. Lively but not too lively. I'll probably dampen it a bit more as I get to know the room a bit better. There is a slight ring after I clap in the middle of the room, so some additional absorption or some diffusion will be in order. And I need a multi-guitar rack to neatly hold all of my instruments.
---------- Update ----------
Argh...seriously, none of the image links worked? Hmmm...I'll figure out where I can host them for direct linking. Dropbox apparently doesn't like it.
*edit* OK, I hosted the photos on Flickr. I'll see if I can get rid of the thumbnails so you don't have to click through to their site to see the pics.
*edit* I finally conquered the image uploader and inline feature. Thanks Steen!
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