How do lights and wiring affect potential studio space?

[leavings]

My brother and I are thinking of buying a house in the next year or so, and it's important to me that it have a suitable recording space. With regards to size, shape, and acoustics I know more or less what I'm looking for, but I'm in the dark about how I should treat the electricity and wiring around the room and the house if I don't want it to affect my work.

In my current recording space I have no problems with mic noise, but almost any electric instrument (guitar, bass) or amplifier picks up a lot of buzz. I have solved this problem before by positioning people such that they're perpendicular to the current (or parallel, I don't know which it is that produces the 'silent spot'). I don't want to trifle with that sort of silliness in my new joint, so I'm wondering if any of you pros know what I should look for in a new space to avoid the prior problems.

Is there any wiring configuration or equipment that is preferable in a house? Should I plan on finding insulation? Am I going to have to gut the room I want to use to install certain types of lights, etc? IS it just that my amps suck and pick up a lot of noise?

Any help or suggestions you have would be appreciated.
Thanks mofos!

Peter

 

[DDev]

Peter,

Just a couple of things that I can suggest (I'm sure others will have more to add).

First off, there are a couple of usual suspects that create the kind of hum/interference you mentioned. One is bad grounding in the electrical wiring. The other is fluorescent lighting. The second is easy to take care of. Just get rid of fluorescent lighting or make sure any fluorescent lights within 50 feet of your recording space are turned off while recording (that's a safe distance, closer is probably OK, but you get the drift).

There are recommended methods of wiring studio spaces for proper grounding, and I cannot remember the specifics. Hopefully someone with recent experience or knowledge will add to this. Sometimes ground loop noise can be eliminated with ground lift adapters for AC power cords but this is not a recommended practice as it reduces the built-in safety features of your equipment to prevent shock.

Good luck,
Darryl.....

 

[frederic]

In my newly constructed home studio, I have a main flourescent light I used mostly for the construction of the studio, because its brighter and lights most of the room. While its permanent, I don't intend to run it while recording, as I prefer the softer, yet brighter halogen track lighting I've installed everywhere, on dimmers.

However, even with the dimmers set at various settings and the main flourescent light on, I get zero hum. The reason for this is the dimmers are commercial grade levitron dimmers that have built in noise filters. These are not the same crap you buy at Lowes or Home Depot, I got these from an electrical supplier. They are a different grade, and you can feel the difference in the sliding of the toggle, as well as having no hum.

I also installed into the breaker box several noise-reducing breakers, that I'm sure helps also. I have multiple feeds to the room, the existing feed I only use for space heaters, window A/C, the TV, and the lighting, and the two new feeds are for the studio gear and computers and such. I've isolated the power this way, for noise reasons as well as not to overload any one circuit, of which I have three now. 15A for lights, outlets and space heaters, 20A for the computers, video monitors, hard disk recorders, monitoring amps, et al, and another 20A circuit for the mixers, and the producers desk/racks behind me. The load is about equal, and the two additional circuits are on opposite sides of the breaker box, meaning the tap their 120V off opposite phases of the main 220V coming in.

I have a humungous oil filled isolation transformer in the crawl space, and I had it spliced in for a while, however the humming of the transformer annoyed me greatly. This is not electrical hum, passed through the wires to the audio monitors, but physical hum from the transformer vibrating the oil at 60hz. Much like the large transformers outside industrial buildings, they hum too in the same way. In the crawl space I didn't expect to hear it to be honest, but I can and its irritating. I have to rethink how I mounted it, apparently 1" thick solid rubber mounting pads isn't enough. Might be the bolts through the flanges.

 

[leavings]

Hmm...I hear what you're saying, but a lot of it is foreign to me and sounds like when I tried to explain the use of 'govment' as slang for 'government' to Dutch people.

So, anyone read a good book or series of articles about this?

Peter