I scored some acoustic treatment for the studio this week. The cool thing is that, since I'm unemployed otherwise, I didn't have to pay anything for it! Nope, NOT TELLING! MUWHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!
These are bare panels, I'll have to cover them in fabric and mount them on the walls. But I'm not mounting them in my current control room. There are a few reasons why.
Let's start this off by saying that we all start somewhere, and as our ears improve in the audio field, we realize what we're doing wrong and how to correct it. That's also true of how your gear is set up. Somewhere during the mixing the Enemy By Mourning record, I realized that I was set up completely wrong, and it was taking me longer BECAUSE of that error!
Skyline Sound Studios is located in my home. When Sarah and I moved in, I picked the only room with carpet and claimed that as master control. I picked it because it had carpet, and therefore would cut down on flutter echo and such. The problem is that the only logical place to put the desk was in the corner of the room, because there are doors in two opposite corners (diagonally across from each other), and windows on one wall. There really was only one option, and I have a corner workstation desk, so I stuck it in the corner.
To say that my hearing improved over the last year would be a major understatement. I scrutinized everything so intently because I was trying to improve my skills, which would allow me to compete in the central Ohio studio market. But through the mixing of that record, I started hearing what my current gears limitations were, and wanting to go past that point. So I realized that there were some things that needed to change, both in my equipment and my room.
I did some research to see how I could improve the acoustics of my room, and that's when I realized the error of my ways in placing the desk in the corner. Let me remind you that the corner was the only logical place to put the desk in it's current room, but the problem is that bass frequencies congregate in corners. Typically, you'll wanna use bass traps to absorb them, but here I was putting my critical listening area right in the middle of low end's breeding ground.
Not being able to do anything about it yet, I mixed the Enemy By Mourning record through headphones in an attempt to take the room out of the picture. Then I spent some time looking into what the proper layouts should be and how to handle acoustics in this environment. I decided to move master control to a new room in the house, which would allow me to put the desk against a flat centered wall.
Again, we all start somewhere, and even though I've been doing this a while it was only in the last 3 years that my skills finally started sharpening. So now that I know how to correct the issue, it was time to do something about it.
I got the panels that you see below.....
.....and just now I started priming the new control room.
Before:
Ready to start:
Primed:
The panels are bare, and need to be mounted onto wood frames (to help them hang on the wall), then covered in fabric and hung. To save money, and to be more green, I'm using old bedsheets that are solid colors to cover the panels. This should give it a unique look, and they'll still look professional while being environmentally friendly. I'm still hoping to be out of this town by summer's end, so I don't wanna invest a ton of money into these panels just yet. They need to look not-ghetto and work, that's all I care about for now.
The ideal environment is to NOT be in a house, but we go to war with the army we have and not the army we want. Like most businesses, I'm starting out meager and trying to make a mountain out of a grain of sand. I'm making waves, and this new room should help the end result of my mixes improve by leaps and bounds. After all, if I'm gonna take over central Ohio's studio market by 2017, I've gotta iron out my kinks now and hustle in the business.
The interesting side effect was the feeling of a job well done, and the effects it had on my tense and anxious day/week/month/year. I'm feeling pretty awesome right now, cause I've made major steps in improving my chances of getting where I wanna be.
I'll be posting before/after pics when the new control room is up.
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