It's all in your head

Atoms are mostly made up of empty space. The Universe is mostly empty. Space is just the construct that gives the illusion of separate objects. Our consciousness collapses infinite potential into one possibility, one moment. We are collectively defining reality. Our observation collapses space. Our Intention destroys time. When we focus our mids we can transcend time and space. We can enter a quantum state we can make thought more real than anything else. Then we will witness another dimension, where we can observe time and space from outside itself. We can traverse any distance, be in any moment and connect to the eternal light.

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All the building is complete and I now have a fully treated mixing and recording studio.  Let me just say that if you ever choose to invest in one thing for your studio, let it be acoustic treatment!  When mixing clarity is many times better and all mixes are translating much much better as a result.  For recording the nasty room sound has been killed and there are more options to control the balance and tone of microphone recordings.

Here it is in all its glory:

If you want to find out how I did it see the previous articles:

Part 1 – Planning the studio

Part 2 – Building Bass Absorbers (Room corners)

Part 3 – Building More Absorbers (Ceiling-wall corners)

Part 4 – Cloud absorbers, Wall and door Panels

 A Mixing and Recording Studio Space

For tracking the room is perhaps a little bit too dead, but given the acoustics to begin with it is probably preferable  that its too dead than too reflective or “nasty” as I have the option of adding some reverb later. I still have some character available and movable treatment for controlling the tone and wetness of sounds. It’s been hard making the treatment work for a single-room mixing and recording studio and in the end I think I’ve got a better room from a mixing perspective but still retained a very usable recording space.

For mixing the treatment is priceless.  Coupled with some new monitors (Adam A7X’s) it is so much easier to hear mix details and adjustments and mixes are translating a lot lot better onto other systems from hi-fis to iPod headphones to built in laptop speakers.

I’m also really pleased with the feel of the room as well as the improved acoustics for mixing and tracking.  All of the musicians who have recorded here so far have commented on the comfortable atmosphere.  Many also seem to prefer the one-room studio as it allows for better communication between myself and the performer rather than having to use talkback.

The Acoustic Tests

I’ve finally gotten around to testing and comparing the acoustics from before and after.  So apparent were the results of treating the room that I’ve been listening and listening to tracks non-stop rather than looking at numbers and graphs!  I’ve run several recording and mixing sessions so far and they sounded considerably better than before the treatment.

Here are the charts for before I treated the room.  All the measurements were taken from the listening position.

Using this waterfall you can see the resonant low frequencies clearly.  You can also see a lot of jitter in the mid and high frequency ranges.  Some “jitter” is good but this seems like too much.

Here are the same tests from the same position post-treatment:

As you can see, the response is much more even now across the board.  I’m really impressed with how much the low frequencies have been controlled and evened out.

Now open for recording and Mixing!

Since taking these pictures and measurements I’ve made a few more improvements.  Some basotect from thomann and attached to the ceiling has helped sort out some flutter echo in the middle of the room and above the drum kit.  I’ve made a curtain which I use to block off the entire fireplace if I want a less wet sound when tracking.

Overall this project has cost me a little over £1000.  Not a bad price considering the results and definitely cheaper than any of the quotes I received for far less treatment.  I’ve learned an incredible amount doing it as well as some very practical DIY skills.  I recommend the DIY approach to anyone thinking of treating a room.  It is well worth the time and effort and you’ll pick up many skills along the way.

Studio Treatment Part 5 – Finished Mixing and recording Studio All the building is complete and I now have a fully treated mixing and recording studio.  Let me just say that if you ever choose to invest in one thing for your studio, let it be acoustic treatment!  

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Studio Build Part 4 - Broadband Absorbers - Cloud, Wall and Door Panels

Following on from the previous posts about building acoustic treatment I’m going to walk through the creation of the panels I made to hang from the ceiling walls and doors of my living-room studio. All the panels were made from the same insulation and so all have the same acoustic properties.  Again, I used Knauf Earthwool RS60 as I had done for the corner absorbers. First I made and installed…

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In my previous posts I wrote about the planning process for building my acoustic treatment and refining the space and how I installed bass traps in the two available corners of my studio.

In this post I’m going to show you how I built the rest of my broad-band absorbers.

With my trihedral corners covered, The next set of treatment involved absorbing sound in the dihedral corners.  The only ones available to build along were where the ceiling meets the walls.  Following the success of the trihedral corner traps I used a similar design.  I chose to fill the corners with insulation rather than straddle them to maximise the low-end absorption.  As with the upright traps I used Knauf Earthwool RS60.

First I constructed the frames using reclaimed wood from the Newcastle Wood Recycling Centre.  I made them 60 x 60 cm along the wall and ceiling.  This should be large enough to absorb frequencies as low as 80 or even 70hz.  It was also a convenient size to cut the insulation to as it is supplied in blocks of 120cm x 60cm.  The absorber can always be bigger to absorb more low frequencies but at some point you have to leave enough space to actually get into the room…

I added strips of MDF running horizontally along the wall and ceiling to “hold” the insulation in place against the wall.  The MDF turned out to be far to flimsy for the job so I reinforced ti with some 1×1 timbers.  It foiled my plans a bit and made it very hard to get the insulation in.  Suffice to say that it is horrible stuff to work with overhead.  Check out the pictures below to see the frames and insulation.

  I constructed a similar frame above my window, except due to the size of the window this one measured only 30cm down the wall and out along the ceiling, meaning that it would not be very effective down at the lower frequencies but help to absorb a lot of the mid and high frequencies.

 The challenge here was to accommodate the curtain rail.  I planned to make curtains from Kilo surge wool, which as its name suggests is a sort of wool that weighs about 1kg per square metre.  It has excellent acoustic properties (for a piece of fabric) and is commonly used in theatre and studio applications.   The problem with the surge wool is the weight and so I had to fit a heavy duty curtain rail within the frames for the absorber.  Because of the limited space above the window I wanted the absorber to be as big as possible – in order to absorb as many low-frequencies as possible.  This meant cutting gaps into the absorber from which the curtain rail supports would protrude.  The curtain itself was lined with the kilo surge wool covered with a nicer colour poly-cotton as the kilo surge wool is only available in black.

  To cover the unsightly insulation and make a more cosy creative environment I used 70/30 poly cotton screens, stretched over lightweight wooden frames and stuck to the front of the absorbers using heavy duty velcro.  The adhesive on the velcro was awful so I ended up using a multi-purpose adhesive and staples to stick the velcro to the frames and screens.  I used Dylon machine dye to dye some white fabric the same colour as my walls.  I would definitely advise against this!  It would have been far easier to buy similar coloured fabric of the correct cotton/polyester mix.  After many washing machine cycles though, I was pleased with the result.

Studio Build Part 3 - Building More Broadband Absorbers In my previous posts I wrote about the planning process for building my acoustic treatment and refining the space and…

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Building Corner Bass Absorbers

Building Corner Bass Absorbers

The first bit of building for the acoustic treatment of Blueleaf Studio commences.  I’ve started instilling the bass traps first as the low frequencies are usually the hardest to tame in any room, and are also the most crucial when it comes to mixing.  You can read plenty of articles on bass traps on the internet like this one.  I got shed loads of information from the acoustic and studio…

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Planning Blueleaf Studio

The Grand re-opening of Blueleaf Recording Studio is on the horizon.  This series will document the process of designing and building a new studio space for audio mixing and recording.  Hopefully it’ll provide some useful information for anyone else taking the DIY approach to acoustics…

After reading extensively about acoustics for a few weeks and researching the various options available to me…

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Hikkaduwa and Koskoda

We arrived in Hikkaduwa with our friends James and Kayleigh when it was late and dark. We tried a few guest houses all charging above 1000 rupees and were told that to get a room for less was not possible. However, a little further down the road a kindly man offered us some basic rooms for 700 rupees a night which we took willingly. The rooms had attached bathrooms and opened onto a small green…

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My new sounds:

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https://soundcloud.com/spoonbill/sets/tinkerbox

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The First Rule Of Logic

The First Rule Of Logic

“Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry. ” —Charles Sanders Peirce, “First Rule of Logic”

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My new sounds:

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My new sounds:

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Green Web Design - Planting Trees To Make A New Woodland

I don’t just talk about Green Web Design – I actually try to do positive things.  We can all do something to support, encourage and bring us closer to nature; which ultimately is what has supplied us with the technology to make Green Web Design a reality.

Personally, I try to do conservation and environmental work when when time allows for it -especially when the weather is good in spring and…

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Create A Responsive Pop-up Login Box for WordPress

Create A Responsive Pop-up Login Box for WordPress

Following on from my last tutorial, How to make a WordPress AJAX login form, I’m going to show you how to make your own lightbox-style pop and touch on some funky CSS3 techniques.

1. Add To Our HTML

We need to add a few lines to our HTML <form>element from the last tutorial for the popup to work – An inner div to wrap the pop-up content and give us a nice translucent border around our pop-up,…

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How to Make A WordPress AJAX Login Form

How to Make A WordPress AJAX Login Form

In this tutorial we’re going to learn how to build an AJAX login form for a WordPress site.   I’m going to show you how to put this in your theme, but if you have a commercial theme I recommend putting this functionality into a plugin to make updates easier.

So without further ado, let’s get started!

1. Add The Form To Your Theme

The first thing we need is a form for our users to type their login…

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