a couple of studio photos

[JoPo]

Nice & clean, Garyb ! Félicitations !

I hope you don't have neighbourhood troubles with music noise. As soon as there is some drums, it could happend !

You have a very nice place for all night long feverish jam sessions !

Cheers !

[garyb]

the shop was already insulated and then the rooms that were just built were insulated too. there's not much noise that goes outside. i plan to record drums during daylight hours anyway, but i don't think that noise is a problem. maybe a big bass amp turned all the way up would make trouble for me, but that's not something i plan on doing. also, the houses are not very close together. that was a prime consideration, whether or not i would bother neighbors....

[siriusbliss]

Congrats Gary.

One of these day I may stop up that way.

Watch out for the volcanoes!

Greg

[garyb]

yeah, the recent earthquake in Montana did some mild damage here. fortunately, there really isn't a lot of activity in this area. the old spot was more likely to have a bad earthquake.

sure! you're welcome to visit.

[Nestor]

In the seventies, we had a bumpy rock band and we would usually do our rehearsal in a badly build garage. The place had some thin metal bands as a rooftop. Overall, there where holes everywhere…, the sound would go out in full power like in a rock concert, and we liked to play loud, oh yeah, that was loud! We were so crazy every time a guitar solo would kick in the song and that could take 30 minutes, at least… I know very well that you know what I’m talking about! Crazy times, yes! No effects of any kind were used, just pure rock sound and lots of loudness was the way in those days. There was a neighbor that would get really angry with us every time we rehearsed (today, I would say he was absolutely right by the way), and the way he had to tell us about his feelings was to through bricks to the metal roof. Today, I actually hate when somebody go extremely loud...

At first, we didn’t know where this strange noise would come from, would could hardly notice there was something weird now and then while rehearsing, but the sound of the band was so loud we did not realize it was somebody throwing bricks to our roof. We didn’t discover it until one day one of us had to get into the house roof for some reason, then you could see the many bricks. Man, we laughed a lot this day! What a discovery, the noises were from our angry neighbor!

We knew immediately who was the person doing it, of course, as he had part of his house in construction and the bricks could only be from his garden. We would see him all the time at the many shops in town, of course.

As we realized he would not be daring to actually come to our place, because we rehearsed for months like this, this funny fact became part of the rehearsal every time, we were young, it was fun and even great to have an angry neighbor participating. From the moment we discovered it, we would answer with crazy bangs of the whole band playing anything crazy for a few seconds, like saying: “we know you are throwing bricks to the roof, take, this is for you!”

We started to stop earlier and he would even smile at us in the street, there was a crazy complicity, today…, after so many years gone by, I think he actually enjoyed its participation in some way.

Well, just a little tell about our musical life

[garyb]

yeah, we made a heck of a noise when we were young, too.
it really wasn't cool, but as kids we thought it was.

[Nestor]

Now we suffer our own Karma

[RA]

Very COOL Gary!!!!!

Good home improvement; Al would have been proud of you....whoo hoo hoo hoo

also...if i may tipp you and others on VERY GOOD acoustic treatment panels for scattering (cause you don't want everything dead)...in dutch they're called houtwol cement platen, in german holzwolle, or you can find it by brandnames like Fibrolith, Heraklith etc....looks like this:

heraklith_1.5mm.jpg (29.38 KiB) Viewed 6092 times

The thicker they are the better, like 2,5-3 cm

Have a good summer ya'll. Busy working here, so haven't had my portion of daily PZ for a while.

Best,Ray

[astroman]

by chance I found that those 'Tatami' japanese floor matresses have excellent acoustical features if used standing as shields or right at walls.
Not cheapo but usable in a lot of ways - and they look good.
Congrats Gary for the new location

cheers, Tom

[garyb]

Ray, that looks like a really cool material. it doesn't seem to be common in the USA.

astro- i'll bet tatami mats would be great absorbers.

[Marco]

In Germany this Material was built in my grandfather's house, he said heraklid, used in the 50ties. Today not common use, today Rigips is used instead. I guess heraklid is expensive nowadays. But if it is really useful as studio absorbers then it makes me smile I lived in that house for 25 years before I bought my own - bigger nicer and no neighborhood because I am loud while music production no heraklid used in this house because it is 1937 built. But I have good materials to tame reflections.

[RA]

Hi gary...in usa it is called cemented wood wool.

http://www.cewood.com/products/acoustic-panels

It should be actually verry affordable. It is good for mostly scattering...diffusing and minor absorption of mid highs...low end goes through...so you can use it to finish off a basstrap...making it a broadband acoustic panel....great stuff. Here it is used A LOT in for example car parking buildings...mostly on the ceilings.

[garyb]

that's actually hard to find here. i have seen large-scale commercial suppliers who sell this product, but not at the "consumer" level.

i have some rock wool products already. searching for wood wool, i found an interesting product that uses a cotton wool that is similar, but is more flexible and light. it's really inexpensive and would provide the additional dampening that i'm looking for, so thanks!

[braincell]

Mass Loaded Vinyl is good for soundproofing.

[RA]

Especially in a relative small room i would always go for diffusing and scattering of mids and highs to keep it as live as possible...but.....absorb all the low ends cause that is always the problem then. Then hang up some curtains you can pull in to dampen the mids and highs according to taste. Imho opinion that will bring out the best of you sounds ESPECIALLY when recording drums or a amp cab in there...room sound is NEVER better from a hw box....the room is just what it needs to bring out the best. NEVER deaden a room in a way that you cant adjust it. It does not have to cost a lot. And for low end problems...make your walls in a way that they are NOT parallel to eachother...sort of double trapezium. Standing waves are bad. And a flutter echo is better solved with diffusing rather than dampening i guess.

With the heraklith you can fill up a wall with dampening rockwool of 20 cm or so for absorbing the low end...and leave some room behind the rockwool!...dont put wood panels over it cause you end up just isolating sounds for your neighbours...instead finish off with like 50 cm heraklith...60 cm plasterboard( make it a double one so it wont resonate)..then again 50 cm heraklith..60 cm plasterboard and so on....a curtain you can pull in front of that wall...and voila....beautifull adjustable acoustic treatment.

Check the pics and tour of studio 1 on studiouden.nl which i use where this is used. Also...Dont deaden your controllroom....you'll end up with out of balance mixes. Been there...done that....you will slap yourself silly...a good mix is not rocketscience...its good monitoring...and your mixing room is just that!.....im not mr know it all...like i said...been there...done that .....i made all the mistakes and was fortunate enough finding people on my way showing me the better way. I learned my students 'an expert is not someone who knows it all....it is someone who made all the mistakes'....and for acoustics you dont have to hire an expert if you know what to look for and just learn from what has been done....also it doesnt have to cost much....if you do it right...or better from the start instead of trying all sorts of things that are just marketing.

Hope it helps for future developments and future generations. Keep us posted gary! Hope you find the woodwool...you will Love it

[garyb]

yep, i agree with all that, and it's pretty much the approach i'm using.

[Nestor]

Mass Loaded Vinyl is good for soundproofing.

I have used a 3mms barrier in my studio, it is withing the panels, not outside, and they work marvelously well. This is exactly the one I have used:

[img]http://sonoflex.com/fonac/wp-content/up ... -1_032.jpg[/img}

The 8mm was way too expensive. Anyway, with 3mm in both sides it DOES work perfectly well.