Poor Home Studio Design

A

Ash Telecaster

New member
Hello,

I spent some bucks in the realization of a life long dream building a home studio. Unfortunately I am coming to realize I have made design mistakes along the way. Of course I thought I knew what I was doing but I was wrong. Now I need to fix the mistakes, hopefully in an affordable way, but I am a little confused over what direction to take. Mainly because the more gear I look at the less compatible it all seems (eyes crossing). This means I am probably still missing something.

My biggest issue is headphone monitoring.

I have a small-ish room, roughly 14' x 16'
A small accoustic Jazz drum kit with 2 overheads, kick mic, snare/high hat mic
Korg TR61 keyboard line direct
Hartke HA5500 bass amp used line direct
Eleven Rack used exclusively as a guitar processor, line direct
A Rode nt-1 / T.C. Voiceworks in an adjoining room
A Yamaha EMX 5014c analog powered mixer mostly used for rehearsing with vocals and keys
A Tascam us-1800 USB audio interface
A Samson S-que8 headphone amp
Audio Technica ATH-M50 and Sony MDR-7506 headphones
A home built PC running Reaper DAW

Only the drums and the vocals in the next room have open mics.

To put it technically the headphone mix sucks. It's hard to hear anything above the drums, even this little jazz kit, and the clarity and seperation are not good. Part of the problem, I believe, is because I am not able to adjust the monitor mix. I cannot even bring the drums down as the Tascam levels affect the recording input level. There is a monitor mix on the us-1800 that is supposed to mix the output from the DAW with the inputs on the Tascam to avoid latency. It's not real good.

So I am thinking what I need is a mixer that also handles the usb multitrack audio interface. I prefer to stick with USB if possible as I ran cabling into another room to avoid noise from the PC fans. Or I need a mixer that will interface well with the Tascam us-1800 while giving me the monitor mix I need. In either case I probably need a better headphone amp.

When I record the quality is pretty good. It's easy to fatten up the sound of the jazz kit. I have to learn how to mix bass better. Meaning how to sound fat while not freaking out your car speakers. Thats a technique issue I believe.

Of course I could have it all wrong. It wouldn't be the first time obviously. I would really appreciate your thoughts on how I might make this work better. Of course I would like to keep the expense down, I've already blown a bundle on this rig. I can probably stretch as far as $1g if I have too.

The us-1800 has 8 xlr inputs, 6 1/4" inputs, digital and MIDI I/O as well.

I appreciate any thoughts you have on this subject. It is clearly more complex to do this right than I innitially anticipated and thank you in advance for your expertise! Sorry this email is so long, I wanted to provide a complete picture.
 
Have you tried monitoring via Reaper? As long as your PC is fast enough, you should be able to keep the latency down enough to do that.

I used the 1800/1641 for years with live drums. I did add a HA4700 headphone amp as the headphone output from the Tascam does not have as much volume as I needed.

I have now ran a video monitor into the drum room (20' from control room) and control my DAW with a wireless mouse. Headphone line runs through a snake into a $50 mixer so that I can control overall volume and eq while cooped up in the drum room.
 
On the latency, double check your buffer size if you haven't done so. For headphones I use Presonus' HP4, mainly so I would have multi headphone outs, but it worked out better as each headphone out can now control the individual volume.

I think Jimmy covered the other areas.
 
Thanks Jimmy,

I tried that but the latency was too much. Maybe I don't have it set up optimally for that although I suspect the PC's capabilities have something to do with that. It has a x64 chip (I don't remember the particulars), 8 gigs of RAM, a SSD OS drive and a decent second hard drive drive for storing the audio. I am using XP x64 with Reaper. I started out with Windows 7 and Cakewalk but it ran very poorly. This configuration runs well for recording but there is too much latency when I try to monitor from the software. Maybe a newer PC is the direction I ned to go.
 
Hi DM,

I have heard good things about the Presonus. Probably a lot better than the c-que8.

I'll have to look into the buffer size. I just went with default values.
 
Yeah, try the 'Lowest Latency' setting in the US1800 control panel.

With my current home built PC (even with the 1800) , I can run 60+ tracks with gobs of VST's, some VSTi's and still record vocal tracks with less than 10ms of delay. Monitoring through Cubase.
 
Ash Telecaster said:
Thanks Jimmy,

I tried that but the latency was too much. Maybe I don't have it set up optimally for that although I suspect the PC's capabilities have something to do with that. It has a x64 chip (I don't remember the particulars), 8 gigs of RAM, a SSD OS drive and a decent second hard drive drive for storing the audio. I am using XP x64 with Reaper. I started out with Windows 7 and Cakewalk but it ran very poorly. This configuration runs well for recording but there is too much latency when I try to monitor from the software. Maybe a newer PC is the direction I ned to go.
Click to expand...

Truth is, the interface's DSP does most of the processing. USB is mainly just a transport. Between the interface drivers and the hardware, that will play a major role.

There is a thread somewhere around here that shows the different interfaces and their latencies. Using same computer, so interface plays more of a role than the computer. (Still need a good computer).
 
DM60 said:
Truth is, the interface's DSP does most of the processing. USB is mainly just a transport. Between the interface drivers and the hardware, that will play a major role.

There is a thread somewhere around here that shows the different interfaces and their latencies. Using same computer, so interface plays more of a role than the computer. (Still need a good computer).
Click to expand...

I'll definitely need to find that thread! I need to make a good move here and maybe a different I/O is key. It was pretty cheap and doesn't get the best reviews.

Another consideration is trying to use the inserts on the Yamaha as a channel out, if it will work without a return, then convert to xlr if thats even posible.

Just read this in one of their brochures...

"Insert patch points on the mono
input channels and aux and effect sends
allow you to route the mixer’s signals to
external signal processing and/or monitor
systems as required."

That just might be the way to go.
 
Last edited:
DM60 said:
Truth is, the interface's DSP does most of the processing. USB is mainly just a transport. Between the interface drivers and the hardware, that will play a major role.

There is a thread somewhere around here that shows the different interfaces and their latencies. Using same computer, so interface plays more of a role than the computer. (Still need a good computer).
Click to expand...

Yes, but my point was that I used the same interface with minimal latency. Therefore it seems the issue is elsewhere.
 
jimmys69 said:
Yes, but my point was that I used the same interface with minimal latency. Therefore it seems the issue is elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Jimmy, yea I got that, was just letting the OP know his computer shouldn't be the problem. He seemed to have enough computer to handle the job. Could be more of a buffer setting. Just wanting them to better understand where the work is being done.
 
jimmys69 said:
Yes, but my point was that I used the same interface with minimal latency. Therefore it seems the issue is elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Oh yah, I got that. It's a matter of weighing options thats all. If I can make a few software tweeks and solve my problem then that is the way to go for sure!
 
So here is what I'm doing,

A friend gave me a Mackie CR1604 which I am using as my monitor mixer. I then bought a Furman HA6-AB and four HR-2's. I've also added two pair of Sennheiser HD 280 Pros. So now I have a pair of Audio Technica ATH-M50's, a pair of Sony MDR-7506's, a pair of Senheiser HD 280 Pros, and a pair of Samson CH700 headphones running from 4 Furman stations each with two headphone connections and independent volume controls.

Another friend of mine brought over plexiglass panels (at least I'm guessing they are plexiglass) that completely surround the drums.

If that doesn't do it nothing will!

I'm still setting it all up but I am confident this will greatly improve the monitor situation.

I was using an old Harmon kardon integrated amp driving a pair of JBL bookshelf speakers as my studio monitors. I've often thought of replacing them but inspite of occasional crackling in one channel they just sound too good to get rid of. Well I plugged the JBL's into the 20 watt speaker output of the Furman and what a difference in sound. I actually like it less but that may be due to it being a more accurate representation of the recorded track. It just sounds harsh to my ears compared to what I'm used to.
 
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