Not happy With Mackie/Loud Tech

[Crash]

Hi Guys,
I thought I'd share some pics of my studio. Comments and critiques are welcome.

I wish I had proper iso booths like that. Very nice looking space.

[Old School]

Hi Crash,
Thanks, there are 4 of them and I built the space so that everyone still has visual contact with each other and with me. I have been in a lot of studios and never liked any of them, so I built this from a musicians point of view. Even in the larger studios I have visited, the drum booths always seemed tiny to me, so I made it big. Visual cues can sometimes be very important to a band so I wanted to preserve that eye contact.

Have a blessed day,
Mike

[doktor1360]

Hi Crash,
Thanks, there are 4 of them and I built the space so that everyone still has visual contact with each other and with me. I have been in a lot of studios and never liked any of them, so I built this from a musicians point of view. Even in the larger studios I have visited, the drum booths always seemed tiny to me, so I made it big. Visual cues can sometimes be very important to a band so I wanted to preserve that eye contact.

Have a blessed day,
Mike

Wow that's a well planned out design... it's obvious for the reasons that you've pointed out and more. Personally, I absolutely love the control & drum rooms spaces. All has a real nice feel to it... if I only had the time/space & ca$h (in that 1-2 order). Ideal lighting... and I completely agree about drum rooms - to the extent that if less than 600 sq ft are available for a drum kit, might as well deaden the space as well as it could be, and then handle the ambient qualities with hardware (or plugins)... there's just not enuff room any room mic-ing for it to be 'open' and sound effective and real, having spacious-ness - not be 'boxy' as it were. This is just my opinion, but I've always noticed and made mental notes about it. The drum space that you have really is impressive... the whole place really is dynamite, man... \m/

All the best with it, and your business endeavors (personal too)...

Peace

[doktor1360]

well summarized doktor1360 !

Appreciate the 'shout out', Capt A... have to add, I love your musical space (pictured) as well!

I can see you've got G.A.S. like quite a few of us lurking around this forum...

[Bruce Graham]

Hey Old School;

Great looking booth's and Drum Room. Any chance you can give us a sample of how they sound?

Bruce

[captainamerica]

Looks great Mike...! well laid out. Not always easy with computer and speaker monitors competing for real-estate, the acoustic challenges and positioning of monitoring, DAW vs D8b tracking/mixing and the ability to see the musicians.

[captainamerica]

Here's my LIVE studio,,,,no isolation booths, no resilient channels, just an open barn, converted with shiplap wood and some control room insulation panels. I wanted an open "1-man cockpit control" LIVE jazz/country blues environment since most of my projects are my own for film and music projects.
My d8b is integrated with my Mackie MIDI control surfaces (and my old Amig 2000 on the left) for full SMPTE/MIDI control. I was able to extend my d8b cable (thanks to Y-my-R) > 50 feet to my machine/server room where I keep all my noisy CPUs away from the main studio area. This tiny area gives me a place to debug things. The BArn ~ 500x500 but has really high ceilings...great for natural acoustics.

[RJH_MUSIC]

Seriously nice pics and love the colors. If my basement wasn't was so damp, i would do something like this. Yes, i think 19 Roland synths is probably too much. I should consider selling some of the stuff and downsizing. KORG M1 - One of the best synths ever made. So was the 01/W. hence I have the M3R and O3R/W. I will post some pics in a bit.

[Crash]

Here's my LIVE studio,,,,no isolation booths, no resilient channels, just an open barn, converted with shiplap wood and some control room insulation panels. I wanted an open "1-man cockpit control" LIVE jazz/country blues environment since most of my projects are my own for film and music projects.
My d8b is integrated with my Mackie MIDI control surfaces (and my old Amig 2000 on the left) for full SMPTE/MIDI control. I was able to extend my d8b cable (thanks to Y-my-R) > 50 feet to my machine/server room where I keep all my noisy CPUs away from the main studio area. This tiny area gives me a place to debug things. The BArn ~ 500x500 but has really high ceilings...great for natural acoustics.

Are you using arm extenders to reach those d8b faders? That looks like quite the reach.

[Y-my-R]

Nice to see all these impressive studio pics! You guys are SERIOUS!

I guess I share a few pics of my humble little home studio as well:

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It’s a converted (free standing) double-garage. Obviously, I still need to get serious about the room acoustics. That’s next on the list (…or better monitors. I need improvements in both areas ASAP).

It’s configured so I can have a band play live (albeit with e-drums triggering virtual instruments (e.g. Superior Drummer) and amp sims for guitar (mostly UA stuff) - but at least without noticeable latency… and I can change all the sounds after recording or re-amp for the guitars) and record straight to the DAW (with or without the D8B in the chain via 24 ADAT channels over the Tape I/O slots, or just directly into the audio interfaces). Alternatively, once I got 3 TDIF cables (I only got one right now), I could record through the D8B into the HDR (via the TDIF ports on the DIO-8 cards… it works by just switching a setting in the D8B).

That beige serial switch under the TV, is to switch the D8B between “Mixer” and “ProBox” operation. In ProBox mode, I have it configured so it extends the Mackie Control in the middle, for simultaneous control of 32 DAW channels (but you can also switch layers for that to control 32 channels of a specific thing… like, 32 audio channels, or 32 VI channels, etc. etc.), so it isn’t as static as that sounds).

There’s an adjacent (narrow) room with a 20-channel stagebox that connects to the patchbay and the D8B, that I use for (mostly vocal and guitar cab) recording that has an open attic that is around 14 feet high at the highest point. But it’s a mess in there, so I don’t want to share any pics of that.

And since the pics above are from last year and I always feel that I can’t get “everything” in the same frame, I took a quick video, spinning around in the middle, haha:



Anyway… definitely not a commercial facility. But the way its set up, I have workflow choices incl. “ all ITB”, “classic” via the D8B and HDR (at least once I add those TDIF cables), as well as any imaginable hybrid-approach. But, yes… I’m one of those terrible people, who spend more time on optimizing everything, than actually using it. I guess that’s a hobby, too

...oh, and the reason why there are two chairs is, because I like to sit closer to the monitor when "writing" and recording stuff by myself. It's easier to tweak the details. And when it's time to mix, or do any sort of critical listening, I move to the chair in the middle