It’s taken us a long time to get the “look” we wanted for our new workspace. We’ve had it up and running for some time, but the studio wasn’t shall we say, “client ready” due to the fact the booth and the other little construction projects were getting in the way of everything else. Now, we feel good about the overall look and feel of the studio and even though we still have a way to go to have everything up and complete, we’re at a point where we can switch on the lights and welcome people in.
The studio, as always has been designed around multi-tasking and multi-functionality. There are 4 Windows workstations and one Mac. The Mac and a few of the windows boxes handle video projects. The Mac is also the primary graphics machine and is what we use for all of the office stuff. One Windows box handles ProTools, the other Adobe. One is an exclusive video encoder and the other is a file storage device.
There are currently 2 instances of source-connect, a phone patch, an ISDN box, a Tascam CDR-W, a Lexicon effects unit, an M-Audio Delta 44 and Delta 66 as well as an Echo Gina Digital Audio Interface that are all routed into and through a Mackie VLZ16-Pro Mixer, along with the audio routing from all 5 computer workstations. The mixer serves as “command central” allowing us to route various signals around in all sorts of crazy configurations.
The computer workstations are all fed from a bank of Sun and IBM servers running GNU Linux. The servers are the newest addition to the ever increasing electric bill, and handle the majority of our file storage and distribution. We produce a ton of audio here – and they are more then necessary.
All of the computers and servers (the noisy boxes at least) are heading for the “electric room” where they will be segregated from the recording/mixing environment and connected to the mixer with a 20 channel snake. As it stands right now – they’re not a real issue because all we have to do is hop into the booth and close the doors, but if we want to be able to record quietly while sitting at the mixer we’ll have to separate the noisy computers from the room we’re sitting in. Our work area, or mix-area is lightly treated with Auralex Acoustic foam to attenuate room noise and reflection. We didn’t want to over-treat it as we wanted a little life in the room.
The booth of course, was the big bugaboo in this whole project. I can’t really even begin to explain what a pain it is to build one of these things by yourself. There were some people that came by to help at very key junctures along the way, like putting up the ceilings (yes ceilings) and standing up various walls and doors. Without them I might still be there.
I would have loved to get a contractor to build it but unless they specialize in home theater or acoustic design, they’ll usually look at you like a nut when you tell them you want 4 free-standing walls and a ceiling and then another one just like it built inside it. It’s very hard to explain to someone who has never explored or been exposed to the concept.
We did enlist the help of a professional carpenter in the very beginning, but after a few short-cuts and their inability to understand the exacting standards we wanted it built to, we bailed on the help and started doing everything ourselves. It really is a jigsaw puzzle and you have to think everything through a hundred times before you move forward with any one addition. The trick being that one thing you do in the beginning might prevent you from doing something later on, so you have to be prepared for the consequences and understand the ramifications an early decision might have on the future of the project.
To give you one example; all of the walls on the back of the booth have to be finished and sealed before you can raise them into place, as you wont have the opportunity to finish them once they’re up. So you have to build them and finish them before you raise them. Your measurements must be very precise over the course of the project or you will end up with a gap-laden, Swiss cheese booth. Not what the doctor ordered.
One of the more challenging aspects of voice over isolation booth design or studio design in general are the windows. Building a nice, solid, sound isolating wall and then cutting a big hole in it for a window seems to be counter-intuitive, but it’s a necessary evil if even for aesthetics.
This widow is actually two windows. One for the outer booth, or shell and one for the inner booth. If you haven’t followed along, this booth is actually two booths. Two completely free-standing isolated booths, each with their own door and widow. That would explain why there are two of them. Anyway…
The exterior window consists of two (2) .50 inch thick panes of glass which are offset from one another by about 2 inches and then sealed air tight with silicone sealant. Then behind that window is another window consisting of (2) panes of .25 inch thick glass, with the interior pane of glass set in an incline to reflect noise downward inside the booth. Below is a shot from the inside.
There are a lot of booths out there without windows in them. We feel very lucky to have one. As far as how much noise the windows let in is pure speculation. I’d be tempted to think sound would come through the walls before it ever comes through the glass.
Right now were in the middle of re-wiring the entire studio as far as audio is concerned. We still had some equipment left over at the old place and we finally got around to consolidating it. Now we have to re-route all of the audio cables, network cables and computer extension lines into the equipment room, or ”electric room”. We’re actually in the middle of it right now. Watch for a video called “Operation Rat’s Nest” where we detail the wiring move and show you what an absolute mess it is. The video should be up in a week or so.
Keep checking back on this article as we’re going to add a little more to it here in a bit - we’ll try to remember to link the new video to it as well.